Tv or not Tv? Vizio Answers the Riddle!

Back in the day, a television deserved the ungainly sobriquet "idiot box." There were three channels broadcasting the same gruel, the picture was full of "snow" and you had to literally get up from your easy chair to switch stations. Man, it was almost enough to drive one to read a book!

Don't dust off that Dostoyevski just yet, comrades! Vizio -- well-known for shaving dollars off the price of a flatscreen -- has come up with a new box that combines the best of both worlds: great picture and internet connectivity. The VF552XVT TruLED HDTV lets you recline in bed, connect to Netflix and Amazon and Yahoo News, and even features a Bluetooth remote with a QWERTY keyboard that enables you to Tweet, update your Facebook status and even triples as a video game controller. Mais oui!!

The miracle is that it does all these tricks wirelessly, unless you have an Ethernet cable handy, which it also accommodates. XVT stands for Extreme Vizio Technology, a handle which the 552XVT demonstrates in spades. Two million pixels give you one razor sharp 1080p image, the Dynamic Contrast Ratio is also 2 million to one -- add it up and you have deeper blacks and brighter whites. It will even wash and dry your bedsheets (maybe the next generation....)!

This is the tv of the future today, and at a price that should have you jostling with Joe the Plumber at Costco, where you can find this gem for well under $2K. All that and no mercury in the LED backlights, and a great Energy Star rating -- 50% below 3.0. Go green, go connected, go Vizio!