Selecting inputs is easy: Press the Input button and a list of inputs comes up. Scroll through them until you reach the one you want, then select it. Once an input is selected, a graphic pops up with the name of the input and a picture of the jacks needed—RCA (component), S-video, RGB, or DVI—presumably to help people connecting signal sources to the set. V Inc. shares Princeton Graphics' strong background in computer monitors—like most Princeton TVs, the P4 offers many features that make it easier to use as a computer display.

Performance
My first impression was that the Vizio P4, as delivered, looked better than most—as has also been true of Princeton products. The contrast was not jacked up to the top, and the settings were moderate, though not perfect. That's not a terribly important observation—even televisions that look dreadful out of the box, as many do, can be easily adjusted to bring them into line. But a company that takes care to ensure that the set looks good at the outset generally takes care with other issues as well.

And V Inc. has. After I'd made minor adjustments using the Video Essentials test DVD, the Vizio provided a most respectable picture. It was clean, without the rampant video noise that afflicts many plasmas. Colors were bright and well-delineated. Resolution was quite good, as measured using resolution charts on test discs, but not quite as sharp as I've seen on the best plasmas (which admittedly have much better resolution, which allows them to reproduce even 480-line test patterns with more detail). A quick overall appraisal revealed that the P4 didn't require large compromises in performance as the cost of purchasing a low-priced product.

That said, on closer inspection I did find liabilities, though none that are not common to plasmas. The biggest was the scaler. While there was little video noise on most program material, the Vizio displayed a variety of artifacts that the scaler/line doubler failed to clean up. The most severe came as the picture panned across lines, moving them diagonally across the screen. Those lines broke up—a common problem with all video displays.

The opening temple scene in The Fifth Element is a torture test for line doublers. With the worst of them, the desert sand bristles and sparkles with errors, and the wooden ramp with diagonal boards leading up to the temple entrance breaks up. With the Vizio, the sand was relatively stable, but the ramp exhibited breakup artifacts. This placed the scaler midway in the pantheon of built-in line doublers I've seen—not the best, but not the worst either. V Inc.'s representatives said they believed the problem would be lessened if the signal sources were fed to the P4 through its DVI input. That makes sense, but during the review period I had no source component that had a DVI output.

Like almost every other plasma, the P4 displayed a rich field of video noise that overlaid dark-gray test fields. The noise disappeared once the shade of gray crossed a certain threshold of brightness on the way to light gray. Also like many plasmas, monstrous-looking black distortions sometimes appeared in the dark-gray fields. In one case, two black, irregular vertical columns ran from top to bottom of the left side of the screen. As usual, though, they disappeared after the set was turned off, then turned back on. These black distortions under dark gray are seldom visible in normal program material. But again, many plasmas display these quirks.

Some plasmas have a problem with temporary screen burn-in—hold a stationary, bright-contrast image onscreen for a long time, and a shadow of it will be outlined on the screen for several minutes. The Vizio offers an unusual option for dealing with this: Press a button on the remote to call up a full white screen. The instruction manual notes that users may want to invoke this function "to reduce image sticking after displaying a static picture for a long time."

To begin with, "image sticking," as they call it, was a minor problem with the P4—I've seen much worse. Second, when I pressed the Full White button, the unit took a moment to muster the all-white screen, almost as if it was sucking in its breath for the effort—and when the white screen appeared, the P4 literally groaned from the effort of simultaneously firing every single one of the panel's cells. I turned it off quickly, afraid something might pop! Anyway, this is an interesting but not particularly useful feature. The P4 does, however, offer a selectable Pixel Shift mode that moves the image a small but imperceptible amount on the screen to prevent burn-in. According to V Inc., it operates on all inputs.

The biggest liability of all plasmas is black level. Though generally much better than LCDs at the task, a plasma can't portray black as well as a CRT. But the P4 was able to muster black that was close to the state of the plasma art. (I have seen better blacks on Panasonic high-definition plasma displays.) Yes, it could display true black; no, it couldn't differentiate much detail in near-black areas. One good test, from Video Essentials, is a full-white screen with two small, horizontal panels in the middle. One of those panels shows three shades of dark gray and black. An LCD can't differentiate between the shades, but the P4 could—a feat for any plasma—though the difference between the boxes was less than one would see on a CRT.

Conclusions
I watched several movies, including Enigma and About a Boy. With all of them, I found the Vizio P4 to be an excellent performer. However, I would not want to watch a particularly dark movie, such as Dark City, on this or any other plasma. And when I watched a familiar movie or scene on the P4, I could pick out areas where black detail was missing.

But there was no point in doing so. V Inc.'s Vizio P4 is close to the present state of the art for non-hi-def plasmas. If you accept that, you'll find it to be not only a bargain, but a pleasure to watch.