Vizio SV470XVT LCD HDTV Review - Performance: Color

The Vizio SV470XVT did a good job in our Color tests. Whites remained stable and red, green and blue were reproduced smoothly. The color gamut was a bit off, however, especially in the greens.

Color Temperature (9.96)
The Vizio SV470XVT did very well in our test of color temperature, which looks at how whites are displayed across a variety of intensities. Ideally a television would display white the same whether it's a bright white or a pale grey. The chart below shows the color temperature of white across a range from black to the brightest white. Ideally we would see very little variation from the center line, which the Vizio SV470XVT manages admirably.

This second chart shows the same information in a slightly different way. Here the measured colors are plotted onto the Lu'v' color space, which provides more information than just the color temperature. The center of the chart is the measured white at the maximum intensity. You can see here that the vast majority of whites on the Vizio SV470XVT fell within this circle, meaning you won't be able to tell the difference. Even when the whites fell outside of the circle they remained close to the edge. The effect is that whites on the Vizio SV470XVT will be displayed very accurately without the color cast that we see on some displays  when whites are innacurate.

RGB Curve (8.77)
The Vizio SV470XVT did well, but not great, in our test of how colors in the signal are interpreted. When a display produces the range of colors you see they accomplish this by mixing red, green and blue. Interpreting the signal received for each of these colors is vital to ensuring colors are displayed accuracy, and this is what we look at in this test. Below you see three graphs, one for each color, that shows you the performance of each color.

What we look for here is how smooth curves are. We want a nice slightly curved slope like a slide. If the curves are jagged with obvious steps or are closer to a straight line this represents problems. For example subtle color changes will be lost and you will see problems like color banding in skies and foliage. You can see that the Vizio SV470XVT's RGB curves are relatively smooth and nicely sloped, avoiding such problems. Where we do see a small problem, however is with peak levels. You can see that the red graph ends in a small plateau and the blue one has a more pronounced one. What this means is that at higher intensities the ability of the display loses the ability to differentiate between colors. We also noted that there were no significant artifacts or loss of detail as we ran through various scenes on the Vizio SV470XVT.

Color Gamut (5.98)
The color gamut is the range of colors that a television is capable of displaying, ideally the color gamut will match the international standard for high definition tvs. The Vizio SV470XVT's color gamut did have some minor problems, but was otherwise good. Below you can see the Vizio SV470XVT's color gamut graphed against the standard, called  ITU Recommendation .709. The Vizio SV470XVT's color gamut is shown with a dotted line while the standard is shown with a solid line.

You can see that there are some innacuracies in the color gamut, in particular in the greens and the blues. The slight shift outward of the green means that greens can appear more intense than they should. The shift in the blue is less of an issue but can still cause some inaccuracies in color reproduction. Reds were right where we would like them to be. Below you can see the exact color coordinates that we measured and how far they deviate from the ideal. D65 refers to the color coordinates of white.