4. Color

The GV42L contains eight-bit color processing, which is slightly less than many LCD displays that offer 10-bit color, but I don't think you'll notice much difference. While some adjustment was required to achieve the best results, the color accuracy was very good and the color saturation was excellent, with natural hues as opposed to overly saturated colors that plague some LCDs. There is a significant blue-cast with most sources, but this can be corrected to a great extent by adjusting the color temperature control. Flesh-tones were smooth and life-like with a just a slight tilt towards red tint with some source material.

Contrast/Black Level

While it has been well documented that contrast performance is usually the weakest attribute of LCD displays, there are still varying degrees of performance within the LCD realm. The GV42L does very well with live sports and other broadcasts and some movies, but not that well with movies that contain a lot of dark scenes. The GV42L does hold its own compared to other LCDs, however, and produces a pleasing overall image.

As mentioned in other reviews, I have found the best way to offset whatever issues LCDs might have with contrast performance is to raise the contrast and lower the brightness so nice deep blacks are achieved at the expense of some shadow detail. Most viewers will not miss much of the lost detail while enjoying a well-rounded image with solid lights and darks. Some viewers might prefer to keep the brightness up to see more of what is happening with darker scenes, but they'll have to put up with a lot of gray instead of black to do so.

Video Processing

The GV42L has all the standard video processing attributes you'd expect in a HDTV display: Video Scaling Engine, various stretch modes, 3D Comb filter, 3:2 Pull Down, De-Interlacing, etc. As with many HDTV displays, high-quality sources look fantastic. For example, 1080i and 720p HDTV sources, as well as 480p DVD sources, are scaled to 766p with very few overt scaling artifacts. As a rule, the lower-quality the source, the harder it is for an HDTV display to produce quality, artifact-free results. The GV42L, while performing admirably with DVD and non-HD sources, did not perform any miracles.

Analog cable broadcasts were quite noisy, but no more than many other LCD displays. Digital cable was significantly better. DVDs were mostly at the mercy of the quality of the disc-transfer itself, which is really all you can ask for. The 3:2 pulldown feature worked as it should, reducing most scaling noise and 'jaggies' during fast-motion scenes with film-based movies from non-HD sources, while 4:3 material can be viewed in its original aspect ratio, or stretched to fill the entire 16:9 screen. I found both viewing modes entirely viewable. As with most LCD displays sold today, the eight-ms response time all but eliminates motion ghosting that plagued early LCD models.

Viewing Position

I found the ideal viewing distance for the GV42L was seven to eight feet, with a little room to get a bit closer if you enjoy more size for you television dollar. LCDs, on the average, have less video noise than comparable plasmas, and the GV42L is no exception. When viewing from five to six feet, while not ideal, is more tolerable than most 42" plasmas I've tested, with the only distraction being a bit of Screen Door Effect, which is the actual LCD pixel structure. Vizio claims a 178 degree viewing angle, but this seems to be more marketing strategy than real-world suggestion; if you view the GV42L or any other LCD display I've seen from 178 degrees from any side, you will not see much except dark shadows and some glare.

Sound Quality

When using the HDMI cable, the sound quality of the removable speakers was acceptable for dialog-driven content, but all soundtracks pretty much get squeezed with very little bass response. This is true with just about any flat-panel display speakers, however.