Vizio P50HDTV10A 50 in. HDTV TV

I have to admit that I wasn't sure what all the hype was over HD television. Sure it was supposed to be a better picture and was the new trend but I wasn't sold because the price was so much more than a conventional television. Then I purchased a VIZIO 50" television and boy was I hooked!

I went to Costco for my purchase since they had the best price around on this television (under $ 1500). I'm an avid San Diego Chargers fan and had on my Tomlinson jersey since they were playing later that day and thought I could get to Costco early and have it hooked up before game time. One of the sales associates laughed as he was helping load the television in my SUV – I had forgotten that Tomlinson was a spokesman for Vizio… oh well, then this was a good thing, right? But now on to the real story…

I was still a bit shell shocked at paying so much for a television but decided to hold my opinion until I had it hooked up and was watching it. I did like the flat screen option and the fact that it would be eventually mounted on the wall and I could have more room in the living room. I unboxed it and started to hook it up. Oops, didn't realize that I needed special cables to hook the FIOS into the television, so off to Wal-Mart I went. Thirty dollars later I had the cable and was ready to once again attempt to hook up the television before my Chargers started playing. There was about 30 minutes left until game time so I was thinking I was going to have to watch the game in the bedroom. I was wrong – hook up was very simple and fast. All I had to do was hook the cable into the back of the television and into the FIOS box and I was set. The television was pre-programmed so I didn't have to do much. I quickly turned to a HD station and was ready to watch the game.

The picture quality was WOW. Yes, I soon realized why HD was the latest thing that everyone raved about. I could see blades of grass – I mean the individual blades of grass on the playing field! I could see detail in tattoos on the players. Heck, I saw sweat dripping. Ok, HD might not be a good thing with injuries that are bloody if you have a weak stomach. I was amazed and kept remarking about how clear and detailed everything was that I was watching driving those watching with me nuts.

The technical information is that this is a flat panel plasma high definition television that has a 50 inch screen. The contrast ratio is 10,000:1 with a display resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. The HDTV receiver is integrated and has an ATSC-NTSC built-in tuner. The image quality has 231000 million colors (no that's not a typo!). The rear input connectors are S-Video (2), component (2), composite (2), HDMI (2), RF (1), D-Sub (1), Audio (mini Jack) and Audio (RCA) -6. There is even a headphone jack. It has virtual surround sound with two built-in speakers. I added a few more external speakers and when hooked up to those, you feel like you are in the middle of the action! Other available features are the Picture-in-Picture option which would be great if there are two games on that you want to watch… ok I'm sure non-football fans have other ideas! There is a V-chip parental control option too and a sleep timer. It has it's own remote control which I don't use much since it's hooked to a FIOS box and I just use that control. The only time I use the TV control is when I need to adjust the volume. Language options include English, French and Spanish. It's 48.8 inches wide, 3.9 inches in depth, and 33.5 inches in height. It also comes with a 1 year warranty.

I was so impressed with the picture of my new television that I actually read part of the manual and was even more impressed. I found out that this television can display 6,144 shades of gray – I didn't know there were so many shades of gray. Now if it does that, no wonder all of those vibrant colors are so wonderful and clear!

Overall I don't have anything negative to say about my new VIZIO HD TELEVISION other than I had to spend another $ 30 on a HDMI cable to hook it up. Otherwise it was easy to set up and is amazing to watch. In fact, I'm so hooked on high definition television that I'm saving up to replace my bedroom television with a smaller Vizio HD television. I'm definitely sold not only on high definition but also on the Vizio brand!