Vizio once again displayed its new line off-site at a Las Vegas Hotel. While Vizio continues to be in the number one or two LCD HDTV sales position, they remain the only top five TV company to opt out of a booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center, a real inconvenience and a time killer.
Prior to CES Vizio was very hush-hush, not releasing any product information. You can’t blame them. With only nine 2012 new model announcements I may have skipped the trek all together. Three entry level 3D sets are carried over from the 2011 line and a Vizio spokesman said it has not yet decided on the rest of the 2012 line-up or if they would carry over more models from last year. By comparison, during last year’s CES Vizio introduced 50 new 16:9 HDTVs.
For the third year in a row, Vizio showed its CinemaWide 2.37:1 aspect ratio TVs.
The CinemaWide models v3.0 will be available in the 50-Inch diagonal, 58-Inch and 71-Inch screen sizes (see photo). All include passive 3D functionality.
One would think a company that has been showing the same TV since 2010 would provide some sort of price information, but alas it appears Vizio can’t seem to nail it down, although the spokesman said they will start shipping soon. We’ll see, I am still waiting for that smart phone Vizio was going gaga over at last year’s CES.
All the CinemaWides have a screen resolution of 2560 x 1080 with an aspect ratio of 2.37:1, requiring some new fangled signal processing accommodate the resolution HD and SD source material. All the wide ones have Internet connectivity for streaming or surfing while viewing.
The Theater 3D models listed below are passive 3D using either LG’s film patterned retarder or a glass patterned retarder on the surface of the LCD panel. All have Vizio’s Via platform with streaming movies and TV programs from Hulu Plus, Netflix and Vudu. Via also has apps and Yahoo widgets.
Two new models in the R3D series (47 and 55-Inch) add Google TV functionality.
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We asked about any picture quality improvements but no information was provided in the press releases or during the demo. Styling wise, we have to acknowledge Vizio’s brave efforts to resist the thin depth, thin bezel trend seen on the 2012 Samsungs, LGs and Panasonics and simply continue with its wide bezel and deep cabinet design (photo). If the was any new styling on the 2012s I really couldn’t spot the differences.
For more on Vizio, check out our articles here and here.
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Hi HDGURU,
I noticed that they list three types of LED TVs:
1) Razor LED (M3DKD, XVT3DCM)
2) TruLED (R3DVS)
3) Full Array TruLED (71” XVT3DCM)
Is TruLED a zoned type of LED display? Or is “TruLED” the same as “TrueLED Full Array”? The R3DVS series do not list “Full Array.” My guess was that it is a typo on VIZIO’s part.
In either case, in 2010 CNET gave the VIZIO XVT3SV series the Best LCD-TV award and the Panasonic TC-PVT20/25 the Best Plasma TV award. Unfortunately, last year, David Katzmaier did not find them to have succeeded in the LCD category (Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20018554-1.html). I am curious to see if they any VIZIO makes it big this year.
@ mbrennan191, I agree with “HD Person,” the sides will have black bars. A 71” CinemaWide will be smaller in terms of viewing area for 16:9 material. @HDGURU, do you have a chart that shows the ratio of viewing area for 16:9 material on the CinemaWide type displays?
16:9 or 1.85-1 material will have black bars on the sides of the programming.
How do theses CinemaWide sets handle 16:9 or 1.85-1 material? They would look great for films that are 2.40-1 but many aren’t presented in that ratio.