MarketNews
By: Gordon Brockhouse

PLUS
Great price, especially considering the advanced technology
Wonderful colour and detail on HD programming

MINUS
Dated cosmetics
Sibilant sound and inconsistent audio via HDMI

Vizio isn’t exactly a household name in Canada. But the Irvine, Calif. company is well known in its home country. According to iSuppli Corporation, a California-based market-research company, Vizio shipped more LCD televisions in the U.S. during 2009 than any other vendor. Canadian distribution of the Vizio line is still limited. But the company it plans to expand into Canada during 2010.

The Vizio lineup ranges from low-priced 19-inch TVs to large-screen models with advanced technology, like the 55-incher reviewed here. Cosmetically, the VF551XVT looks a bit dated. For one thing, it’s almost five inches deep – which makes it less svelte-looking than current premium flat-panels from major brands. Logos outlining the TV’s technical features are etched into the lower right corner of the bezel; there are similar illuminating logos in the lower left. Below the screen is a horizontal speaker strip with silver grille. The styling is more typical of a 2005-era TV than 2010.

Below the surface, this 55-incher is pure 2010. The “XVT” in the model name stands for “eXtreme Vizio Technology.” In the case of the VF551XVT, this means LED backlighting with local dimming, as well as 240Hz processing, all of which makes the Canadian retail price ($2,200) seem very attractive.

Many LED-illuminated LCD televisions place LEDs above and below the LCD screen, and distribute light to the rear of the panel using a grid of tiny prisms. These LED-edgelit TVs are often very slim. This Vizio television uses an array of 960 LEDs behind the screen. (While the TruLED logo in the accompanying picture might lead one to believe that the VH551XVT uses separate red, green and blue LEDs, in fact this TV uses white LEDs.) LED-backlit designs allow a feature called “local dimming,” in which groups of LEDs can be controlled independently, lowering light output behind dark areas for deeper blacks and better contrast. Not all LED-backlit TVs have local dimming, but this one does; its LED array is divided into 80 independently controllable blocks.

The goal of 240Hz processing is to prevent blurring of moving objects on the screen. The picture is refreshed 240 times per second, instead of 60, as on standard LCD televisions.

For testing, we used two program sources: a Pioneer Elite BDP-23 Blu-ray Disc player, and high-definition broadcast content recorded onto a Rogers Cable HDTV PVR. Programming include movies, prime-time series and several events from the Vancouver Olympics.

Setup: The VF551XVT comes pre-installed on a supplied rectangular base, which is nice, as you can just schlep it from the carton to a stand, plug it in, and start watching. The Getting Started poster and User Manual are very clearly written and organized, and the manual is very thorough.

When you first power the TV up, a setup wizard asks you to confirm your preferred language, and whether the TV is being used in a store or at home. Choose “Home,” and the VF551XVT defaults to Standard video mode (other options including Movie, Custom, Game, Golf, Basketball, Football, Baseball and Vivid).

In Standard mode, the Backlight Control is set at 85 (the max is 100), Brightness at 80 and Colour at 60. In the Advanced Video menu, Noise Reduction and MPEG noise reduction are both set at Low, Colour Enhancement at Normal, Adaptive Luma at Medium and Smart Dimming is turned on.

The resulting picture looked quite vibrant, without being overblown. In Olympic curling and hockey HD broadcasts, I could see texture in the ice. Skin tones looked very natural. However, dark colours in high-contrast scenes were a bit crushed. For example, in long shots, the dark blue short of the U.S. men’s hockey team looked black. Also, reds had a slightly orange tinge.

After this initial check, I loaded a calibration disc into the Pioneer Blu-ray player, which was connected directly to the display via HDMI. The standard brightness test pattern on Digital Video Essentials HD Basics displayed correctly with the default settings. But other brightness test patterns showed two problems: crushed blacks (confirming my experience watching Olympic hockey) and a magenta tinge in areas that should have been a mid-grey. Increasing brightness to 93 corrected the crushed blacks, but caused bright tones and colours to be blown out; this would affect texture in bright areas of the screen, such as ice in a hockey game. I found that the best compromise was to use the default settings for brightness (80) and backlight (85), and reduce contrast to 66 and colour to 48. Blacks were still slightly crushed, but not worrisomely so, and the magenta tinge in the mid-tones disappeared.

In the Advanced Video menu, I thought the picture looked more natural with Colour Enhancement turned Off, Adaptive Luma set to Low and Smart Dimming turned On.

Evaluation: Local dimming (or Smart Dimming as Vizio calls it) can cause side effects such as light halos in dark areas, but I saw no evidence of this (or any other picture artifacts) with this Vizio LCD. On the contrary, blacks were satisfyingly dark, and high-definition pictures had convincing three-dimensionality.

With its somber tones and colours, the 1982 sci-fi thriller Blade Runner is a good test for black performance and shadow detail. On this Vizio TV, the oppressive atmosphere was very well conveyed. Dark objects such as Decker’s coat had excellent texture; while flyovers had great (almost dizzying) depth. However, background details such as the office interiors at Tyrell Corporation were a bit crushed. I noticed the same effect in interior shots in a Masterpiece Theatre production of Jane Austen’s Emma.

Lost and House in HD both looked wonderful, with great detail, lovely warm colour and convincing skin tones.

The Opening Ceremony of the Olympics also looked fabulous. Dark tones were satisfyingly deep, with a very good transition to dark blues and greys. At the other end of the brightness scale, there was lots of texture in the snow in shots of the Rocky Mountains. However, in some shots, dark colours, such as Stephen Harper’s suit, were slightly crushed. The fireworks display against a black sky looked spectacular.

With the tweaked settings, hockey was very satisfying. In the first Canada-U.S. men’s hockey game, I could now make out the difference between the Canadian team’s black shorts and the Americans’ navy shorts, even in long shots. And there was good texture in the ice. Testifying to the effectiveness of the 240Hz processing, there was not a hint of motion blur.

Sound is a weak point of this TV. In the default Flat mode, audio is intelligible, but sounds quite sibilant. Other modes (Rock, Pop, Classic and Jazz) sound muted and “cuppy.” On my review sample, centre-channel sound did not play from Blu-ray Discs when the player was hooked up via HDMI, so that I could not hear dialog.

Audio, occasional crushed blacks, and dated cosmetics are the only weak points in what is otherwise a superb TV, which is offered at a great price considering all the advanced technology it employs.

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A Big Risk for a Big Payoff

Steven   Strauss  March 1, 2010

It’s the hope of many an entrepreneur: Get your product not only into one of the big-box stores, but into the epitome of the big-box store, Costco. The murmurs of the crowd begin. “If we could get our stuff in Costco,” they dream, “just about everything would be well in the world.”

Meet William Wang, the slayer of Costco, the titan of TV, the visionary of Vizio. His company is the maker of what has become one of Costco’s most popular products: flat-screen televisions. That alone is a remarkable feat when you consider that not only is his company less than a decade old, but televisions were barely even on Costco’s radar when they started selling Vizio TVs in 2003.

William Wang single-handedly created a whole-new profit center for Costco.

But his story is far more interesting, and bigger, than merely transforming a big-box store. Vizio has gained an amazing foothold in the country and world at large. It is now the No. 1 seller of high-definition televisions in the United States. Consider these other milestones:

• Vizio was named Good Housekeeping’s Best Big-Screen.
• Vizio won the No. 1 ranking in the Inc. 500 for top 100 computers and electronics companies for the second consecutive year.
• Vizio was named one of Advertising Age’s Hottest Brands.

So, how do you become, arguably, the world leader in the white-hot fl at-screen market in less than a decade? You see an opportunity—and then drive a truck through it.

Back in the mid ’90s, Congress began discussing a mandate that would force all television makers to convert sets from analogue to digital by the end of the decade. “At the time,” Wang says, “most digital televisions were going for around $8,000, so what I saw was a great opportunity: a legal mandate and a wide-open market for more affordable televisions to fi t that mandate.”

Wang had already been successful in the consumer electronics field, creating a successful line of monitors, which he sold at, you bet, Costco. With the congressional mandate coming into effect, and that corresponding huge opportunity approaching, Wang launched V Inc. in 2002 (later renamed Vizio).

It was a fairly audacious move. “Remember,” Wang explains, “there had been no new big player in the consumer electronics field in a long time. The players were old-school companies, like Sony, Sharp, Zenith and Panasonic.” It was, he says, “a crazy idea!” Crazy like a fox.

“I knew we could build a television cheaper, and since I already had a good working relationship and track record with Costco, I decided to pitch them the idea of working together.” Wang adds that the key was that “Costco is a great brand that offers quality goods at a reasonable price, so that is what I knew we had to create.”

So he did. Thus, shortly before the 2003 Christmas season, Costco stocked the shelves and tested a new product, a 46-inch fl at-screen TV made by a company no one had ever heard of, and that sold for a price less than half of where most competitors priced their fl at-screen TVs.

Three short months and $6 million in revenue later, the test was an overwhelming success. Costco sales records continued to be shattered by Vizio in the coming months and years, to the point where fl at-screen televisions are now one of Costco’s biggest sellers.

So was it just a great idea at a good price? Wang says the answer is a resounding no. Like his partner Costco (where you can seemingly return anything at almost any time), Wang’s business philosophy is equally dependent on two words we all hear so much about, but that actually mean something to him: customer satisfaction.

“That is our focus, our main focus,” he says. Wang explains that great customer service and satisfaction require great teamwork. To be successful, you need to team with your employees, customers, distributors, everybody. “In a sense, they are all our customers. Costco is our customer, Costco’s customers are our customers, and so on, so our job is to make everyone happy—to make Costco successful. That requires great teamwork.”

Great customer service requires a few specific actions, Wang says:

• “First, you must learn about your customers—what they like and dislike. The customer is always first.”
• “Maybe, more important, you have to listen to your customers. Do not force it. Don’t just listen to your own business philosophies, but hear the philosophies of your customers.”
• “You simply must take customer satisfaction seriously. That means not being too greedy. We take profits and pump them back into the televisions, back into the company, to make it even better for our customers.”

Given all of the above, it should not be surprising that, for Wang, the key to business success is to “give the customer more than they expect.”

Almost all entrepreneurs mention the importance of customer service. But Wang is one who actually took that idea to its logical conclusion: Customers are not just the end-users of your product or service. Instead, that word encompasses everyone dependent on your success—your suppliers, employees, even your shareholders.

So consider taking a page out of the William Wang success playbook. Expand your vision of just who constitutes your customer, and you, too, may conquer the world, one big-box store at a time.

Source: www.successmagazine.com

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by Mark Hachman

Vizio almost doubled its LCD TV sales output last year, making the once second-tier vendor the top U.S. LCD TV manufacturer for all of 2009, according to a new report released Monday.

According to iSuppli, Vizio catapulted past higher-profile names like Toshiba, Sony and Samsung, selling 5.92 million units throughout all of 2009. That represented a 92.1 percent increase in sales versus 2008, and gave the upstart LCD maker 18.7 percent of the U.S. LCD market, a full percentage point over Samsung, the previous market leader.

Vizio sold 1.84 million LCD TVs during the fourth quarter, a 49.4 percent increase over 2008. Samsung sold 1.715 million, a 29.7 percent jump; Sony sold 1.318 million, representing a 115.6 percent increase. Toshiba and LG finished fourth and fifth.

“Vizio continues to benefit from its strong brand recognition among U.S. consumers,” said Riddhi Patel, director, television systems and retail services for iSuppli, in a statement. “The company already has established itself as the price leader in LCD-TVs. The company played to this strength in 2009 by offering attractive promotions to consumers. Furthermore, Vizio moved to make its LCD-TV products more competitive with premium brands, adding higher-end features such as LED backlights and Internet connectivity.”

Critically, the Vizio TVs delivered as well. PCMag.com found that while the design was not the most aesthetically pleasing, the 55-inch Vizio VF551XVT panel’s specs delivered. The Vizio VF550XVT and Vizio VP505XVT, both also manufactured during 2009, also redefined “bang for the buck”. Vizio has also laid out an aggressive road map for 2010, including a push into the mobile TV market.

Although most LCD TV vendors grew share during 2009, others fell behind. Behind Samsung came Sony, which saw a 1.0 percent sales dip to 3.68 million units. Sony’s market share fell sharply, from 15.2 percent in 2008 to 11.6 percent in 2009. Toshiba also demonstrated outstanding growth, growing 81.7 percent to 2.394 million units, or 7.6 percent of the U.S. market. Toshiba finished 2009 in a virtual tie fourth place with LG Electronics. Sharp finished sixth, with 5.0 percent market share.

However, Samsung could take some solace in the fact that the company remained the top vendors of flat-panel televisions, which includes both LCD and plasma displays. Samsung sold 6.6 million units in 2009, up 22.6 percent from 5.4 million units in 2008, and ended 2009 with a market-leading 18.4 percent market share. Vizion finished second, at 16.8 percent, followed by Sony, Toshiba, and LG.

In LCDs, Samsung also recorded a significant 22.6 percent increase in unit sales compared to 2008, with 5.608 million sold. However, the Korean giant could not keep up with Vizio, according to iSuppli.

Source: www.pcmag.com

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