Sorry to repost, but is anyone using this tv with Dishnetwork? I want to know if the Dish remote will control the tv.
Thanks,
Tom in TX

bidzer,
Would you please identify the make and model of your stand. It looks nice.

I don't know the specific maker of the stand. We bought it at Walmart of all places and it was made just for them it looks like. The manual says VAS is the maker, but I think they resell it to Walmart. It was $229

The best thing about it, is that the whole mount moves 170 degress so you can watch the TV from anywhere, basically. It also makes it easy to get access to all the inputs on each side thanks to the spine design on the TX.

They don't have this at Walmat.com, but if anyone is interested, I can go there and get a SKU for you. I'm very happy with the TX and the stand :-)

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z252/bidzer/DSC_5501.jpg

I just called Westinghouse again. The engineering department has not got back to the call center as of yet(big surprize). He asked me what troubleshooting steps I have taken to fix the issue. I told him about my ps3 test and cable test and he asked me if I did a factory reset through the menu options, or a complete power shut down were you unplug the unit for a min of 20sec. I told him no and would try it tonight. I will post tonight if either one of these troubleshooting options work.
To update the flickering issue.
I got home and did like the call center guy said and did a power shut down and un-pluged the unit. I also did a factory reset. Neither helped. I will be returning it tomorrow with my fingers crossed with hopes of getting one that works properly.

For anybody who was still mildly curious I was able to solve the mystery of exactly which scaler is in use for the TX series: http://www.betanews.com/newswire/pr/Tridents_HiDTVTM_Pro_Powers_Westinghouses_New_Family_of_Larg eScreen_1080p_LCD_TVs/68287

This brings up some pretty big questions my part. Let's start by going over a few things the HiDTV chipset is capable of doing: PIP/POP/Splitscreen capability, 3D adaptive noise reduction functions, full 16-bit OSD engine, extensive color/gamma/RGB controls...... I could go on. This is a SOC solution (system on chip) which means basically they should be able to toss it in the tv and go. The single Thompson ATSC tuner and hub design for the HDMI ports appear to have been done purely for cost cutting purposes in light of this. This is good news in that for most sources, be they dvd players, game systems, whatever the tv itself is probably going to be the superior scaler and deinterlacer. This is always a good thing to have since it offers component flexibility and you don't have to worry over needing to buy better equipment to "get the best performance" out of the tv. In fact for dvd players unless you have a Denon or other premium model I would output 480i or 480p rather than try to rely on the player's scaling abilities. The TV will most likely do a better job.

On the other side of the fence I am simply blown away at how badly Westinghouse has under-utilized this chipset. Especially the noise reduction and advanced color features. That calibration menu could have been fleshed out with cut and gain controls for individual R/G/B channels to let the inclined user truly dial in their set with great color accuracy, and why leave out any kind of noise reduction options when the processor has support for the functions built right into it?

I can only assume that it's a small engineering staff and they simply decided to take a lean approach to developing features in order to save time. Either that or they are planning to release a higher end model series that basically turns all of these features on in much the same way companies like Mitsubishi have multiple models of the same panel which merely add features for the added price.

At any rate, I wasn't expecting the Trident processor to be this high-end. In terms of pure video performance this makes the TX series a sleeper in terms of picture quality. I'd take this Trident chipset over the ATI Xilleon in the Sony XBR sets any day of the week.

Hopefully we can beg and plead Westinghouse for access to these on chip features in firmware updates, or if someone with enough skill can create a modified firmware, or hack the pro series firmware onto these ..........

I would LOVE to have a hackable TV. Imagine the possibilities.

Hopefully we can beg and plead Westinghouse for access to these on chip features in firmware updates, or if someone with enough skill can create a modified firmware, or hack the pro series firmware onto these ..........

I would LOVE to have a hackable TV. Imagine the possibilities.
i doubt westinghouse will willingly turn on these features. if they gave them away, why would anyone need the pro model (other than the advanced control option)? it's actually a smart business move for westy, it cuts down on production costs. it allows them to make simple changes to one set and have 2 product lines, rather than manufature two seperate sets. its also good for the consumer, because lower production costs equal lower prices. it does suck a bit for the true AV geek though.

Hey guys,
First of all - thank you for sharing your insights. As a newbie in this area I am completely amazed. Anyway (shouldn´t be too carried away), after looking at the 42” LVM for a few months and then reading this thread the last month or so, I went ahead and ordered my 42” TX three weeks ago from BB with the coupon and all that and got it delivered a week later (for free). I am truly happy with the set: At first glance it looks very nice and so on and the PQ is just jaw dropping based on what I am used to. Unfortunately I do have the purple-line-at-the-bottom-of-the-screen issue as many others have brought up. As far as I understand there is no reason to get the set replaced since they all share this issue? There are a few stuck pixels but obviously nothing noticeable unless I am an inch from the screen.

I have one question that is maybe a little bit off topic but seems that I have a hard time finding some straight answers elsewhere, and I guess some of you may know the answer:
I am moving back to Sweden in a few months and planning to bring the TX with me. There will be 100% digital broad casting in Sweden from this fall. Will it be possible to use the TX if connected to a digital TV box / HD box over there? Any concerns? I would really appreciate your advice.
Thanks!

What purple line problem at the bottom?

I'm getting this TV tomorrow at Best Buy!!

For anybody who was still mildly curious I was able to solve the mystery of exactly which scaler is in use for the TX series: http://www.betanews.com/newswire/pr/Tridents_HiDTVTM_Pro_Powers_Westinghouses_New_Family_of_Larg eScreen_1080p_LCD_TVs/68287

This brings up some pretty big questions my part. Let's start by going over a few things the HiDTV chipset is capable of doing: PIP/POP/Splitscreen capability, 3D adaptive noise reduction functions, full 16-bit OSD engine, extensive color/gamma/RGB controls...... I could go on. This is a SOC solution (system on chip) which means basically they should be able to toss it in the tv and go. The single Thompson ATSC tuner and hub design for the HDMI ports appear to have been done purely for cost cutting purposes in light of this. This is good news in that for most sources, be they dvd players, game systems, whatever the tv itself is probably going to be the superior scaler and deinterlacer. This is always a good thing to have since it offers component flexibility and you don't have to worry over needing to buy better equipment to "get the best performance" out of the tv. In fact for dvd players unless you have a Denon or other premium model I would output 480i or 480p rather than try to rely on the player's scaling abilities. The TV will most likely do a better job.

On the other side of the fence I am simply blown away at how badly Westinghouse has under-utilized this chipset. Especially the noise reduction and advanced color features. That calibration menu could have been fleshed out with cut and gain controls for individual R/G/B channels to let the inclined user truly dial in their set with great color accuracy, and why leave out any kind of noise reduction options when the processor has support for the functions built right into it?

I can only assume that it's a small engineering staff and they simply decided to take a lean approach to developing features in order to save time. Either that or they are planning to release a higher end model series that basically turns all of these features on in much the same way companies like Mitsubishi have multiple models of the same panel which merely add features for the added price.

At any rate, I wasn't expecting the Trident processor to be this high-end. In terms of pure video performance this makes the TX series a sleeper in terms of picture quality. I'd take this Trident chipset over the ATI Xilleon in the Sony XBR sets any day of the week.

I called it back in the "anticipation" thread. :)

What purple line problem at the bottom?

I'm getting this TV tomorrow at Best Buy!!

kentondb,
Check posts in the range of #750 - 760 for some more info on that issue.

Well, I was watching The Wedding Date tonight with the lady friend when it happened...

4 times, within a half hour. The picture just stops, I look, the 360 is still on...I cycle through HDMI inputs again and the picture re-appears with a small logo reading HDCP signal lost, and then recovered. Doesn't do it on games, but does it on movies. Also, painfully became aware of the lack of a "stretch" feature for full-screen DVD's. Is there any news of a firmware update to help with the handshakes?

Could some one review the 42 tx especially in comparison to the Vizio on sale at Costco. Does it have the usb port? does it have problems with the ps3 like the 47 inch?

Thanks

Hey,

I've been reading this thread for the past 15 days. I am so much interested in the TX-47F430S. I was going to buy it this week online through BestBuy.

I have seen a new 1080p set from Philips ( Philips 42" 1080p Widescreen LCD HDTV** (42PFL7422D/37) which is in the same price range of the TX-47F430S. This is what holding me off from buying the Westinghouse.

I stay in Canada and i am going to order the tv from bestbuy.ca

I am a student and stay in dorms. All i use the tv is just for gaming and movies. I wont be using it for HD channels. I don't watch tv. Its just for games and movies through my PS3 and my 360.

I can't figure out what tv to get from these.

1. Westinghouse 47" 1080p Widescreen LCD HDTV** (TX-47F430S)
2. Samsung 40" 1080p Widescreen LCD HDTV** (LNT4061)
3. Sharp Aquos 1080p 42" Widescreen LCD HDTV** (LC42D62U)
4. Philips 42" 1080p Widescreen LCD HDTV** (42PFL7422D/37)


Note that all these 4 tv's are exactly for the same price online either through FutureShop or BestBuy. I will also buy an extra 4 year if warranty when i get the tv so i am not really worried about any kind of problems in the future.

Could you please help me in choosing one so that i can place my order by the end of this week !!

Thanks guys !!!

Checked the 47 out at the Industry Hills, CA BB today. Very nice, and they had one in stock and I was really close to pulling the trigger, but hunger got the best of me. ;) The HD demo looked good, but one thing this forum has taught me is who knows what mystery calibrations are on a demo set and those around it. I'm still torn between this and the Samsung 4465, but that thing is $500 more and this is a bad time to be spending, what with anniversaries and BDays coming up.

BB has it listed higher than the Web site price, but said they would match. I wonder how many people don't know this and pay full price? 9 out of 10? BB is still playing those online-vs-B&M pricing games.

The Web site did not reflect that the store had one in stock, but I went anyway and they had one demo and one box. The Geek Squad guy showed me the closest warehouse had 79 of them, and that you can actually go to these warehouses and pick up stuff yourself.

So if you can't find something at BB that you want, ask them to check the closest warehouse.

Still wondering, why are people buying the 4-year extended plan when Consumer Reports says these are pure profit and usually unneeded?

Still wondering, why are people buying the 4-year extended plan when Consumer Reports says these are pure profit and usually unneeded?

I bought one with my previous Westinghouse, the LVM 42w2, and after some hassle with Best Buy customer service, I was able to upgrade to the TX-47 a year later for about $160.

I'd say it was worth it, but despite that, I'm still debating whether to get one for the new tv. :D

Well, I dropped by the store again and picked up the 4 yr psp for the tx47. It was $199 like other people mentioned. I picked up the psp (and likely other people) because there seem to be some issues, and this takes the hassle out of getting it fixed or replaced if need be. Westinghouse expects you to ship them the TV on your dime for repairs if there's a problem w/in the 1 yr warranty. The tx series definetly seems to have an issue w/ the HDMI signal losing sync w/ the TV (flickering), and sometimes having the picture drop out completely.

I am normally 100% against extended warranties since I think they're a complete rip-off, but some of these new technologies (HDMI) have problems and this is the only sure way to make sure it's covered. I figure as this set becomes more and more popular the issue w/ the hdmi flickering/dropouts will hopefully be identified. It's possible that I have a defective set, and if that's the case, it was worth it to me ($200) to sleep easy and have them come pick it up and deliver another if it needs to be replaced.

Bidzer:

Where did you get that AV stand, can you send me a link or a model number. Something like that is exactly what I'm looking for.

Edit: Nevermind I hadn't read past that post, lol.

To update the flickering issue.
I got home and did like the call center guy said and did a power shut down and un-pluged the unit. I also did a factory reset. Neither helped. I will be returning it tomorrow with my fingers crossed with hopes of getting one that works properly.

Thanks for all the info. Please let us know how the new set works out!

No.... my previous set was clearly defective. I've watched multiple movies/recorded Tivo shows and played video games with NO flickering or loss of signal. I don't understand why you wouldn't return it.

Is the build on ur new tv 5110_1.1.0? from 4/13/07? Thanks, just thinking of what it could be.. possibly a bad batch of chips made it into some tvs? :rolleyes:

I am no expert on AV stuff but my refurbed HD-A2 and the TX-42F430S produce just an exceptional and nearly three dimensional image -- really the best I have ever seen in HD (granted I have only seen Costco, Sams Club, Best Buy and Future Shop type HDTV retail displays. I know the A20 would be a bit better DVD player for a 1080p panel but I don't want to spend too much on HD playback devices until the whole format war is resolved in some manner.


Do you have the player connected via HDMI? My a20 still doesn't work even with the new 2.0 firmware update.

Any updates on the 47 inch West power problems? I am about to get either this set or the Philips PLF7432.... both seem to have a few issues (don't they all) - so I'm curious about teh power thing, becasue that seems liek a HUGE one.

Thanks

My set has to be unplugged almost exactly once per week. I've probaby unplugged it 5 or 6 times now.

I called it back in the "anticipation" thread. :)
Yes you did. I didn't know they were doing the integrated solution at the time. I would've guessed they were just marrying a Trident SVP-LX chip to other components. This turned out to be a nice surprise.

Couple questions, hoping you guys can help me out.

They got a deal going where people have said they've gotten this TV for under 1100 with tax. And I just recently purchased a Westinghouse 37w3 SE (monitor, 1080p, 1 hdmi, 1 dvi).

So my situation is this:

I got two PCs I want to send at least video to the set I decide to get, and I also want to have the HD TV option with future ability for dvds and what not. Now Im not sure how to handle audio from the computer to the monitor or TV. I've asked and people dont have an answer. Besides the possibility of some costly receiver that may or may not do the trick, and I have no knowledge of them myself.


So, I already have the 37", need to buy some cables. Think I might need an HDMI switch to pull it off effectively. So switch is like 50 bucks for a 4 port off monoprice. And a clear QAM tuner, I've seen for like 150 bucks. So basically Im up to about the same amount as the 42" once I add all those in.


Only benefit Im seeing right now for the 37" is that it's from Costco, and has their 1 year extra warranty...and a good exchange policy if something happens.


Just seeing if anyone here has any info I may not know or any options/opinions. Assuming the deal sticks around for the 42" while I get some feedback, might end up doing a return on the 37....42 just seems like a cleaner solution with 4 hdmi ports and tuner included.

Couple questions, hoping you guys can help me out.

They got a deal going where people have said they've gotten this TV for under 1100 with tax. And I just recently purchased a Westinghouse 37w3 SE (monitor, 1080p, 1 hdmi, 1 dvi).

So my situation is this:

I got two PCs I want to send at least video to the set I decide to get, and I also want to have the HD TV option with future ability for dvds and what not. Now Im not sure how to handle audio from the computer to the monitor or TV. I've asked and people dont have an answer. Besides the possibility of some costly receiver that may or may not do the trick, and I have no knowledge of them myself.


So, I already have the 37", need to buy some cables. Think I might need an HDMI switch to pull it off effectively. So switch is like 50 bucks for a 4 port off monoprice. And a clear QAM tuner, I've seen for like 150 bucks. So basically Im up to about the same amount as the 42" once I add all those in.


Only benefit Im seeing right now for the 37" is that it's from Costco, and has their 1 year extra warranty...and a good exchange policy if something happens.


Just seeing if anyone here has any info I may not know or any options/opinions. Assuming the deal sticks around for the 42" while I get some feedback, might end up doing a return on the 37....42 just seems like a cleaner solution with 4 hdmi ports and tuner included.

Costco's return policy is their warranty as well. Anyway, if you bought yours recently, you might as well return it and go for the TX series. They are a better build overall and also advanced in term of ports with an option of 4 HDMI ports as well.

If i were you i would return it and swap it for the newer one or buy the new one somehwere else after returning the current one you've got !!!

They got a deal going where people have said they've gotten this TV for under 1100 with tax.

How?

Costco's return policy is their warranty as well. Anyway, if you bought yours recently, you might as well return it and go for the TX series. They are a better build overall and also advanced in term of ports with an option of 4 HDMI ports as well.

If i were you i would return it and swap it for the newer one or buy the new one somehwere else after returning the current one you've got !!!

I'd go for the 42" as well.

Hey,


I can't figure out what tv to get from these.

1. Westinghouse 47" 1080p Widescreen LCD HDTV** (TX-47F430S)
2. Samsung 40" 1080p Widescreen LCD HDTV** (LNT4061)
3. Sharp Aquos 1080p 42" Widescreen LCD HDTV** (LC42D62U)
4. Philips 42" 1080p Widescreen LCD HDTV** (42PFL7422D/37)



Thanks guys !!!

I'd go with the Westy 47" at #1. The estra screen size makes a big difference. Of course, asking on this thread, you pretty much know what answer you are going to get, right?

Sorry to repost, but is anyone using this tv with Dishnetwork? I want to know if the Dish remote will control the tv.
Thanks,
Tom in TX

I got the standard grey/silver remotes with my ViP622. It worked out of the box with my LVM47. I imagine the TX is the same. I think someone had both side by side and said one remote was controlling both, so that should be correct. Keep in mind that I can only control power, volume, and channel up/down. The menu, PIP, and direct input buttons need the remote that comes with the monitor.

I'll try to remember to check what TV code the Dish remote is set for tonight.

I am moving back to Sweden in a few months and planning to bring the TX with me. There will be 100% digital broad casting in Sweden from this fall. Will it be possible to use the TX if connected to a digital TV box / HD box over there? Any concerns? I would really appreciate your advice.
Thanks!

It won't work - the TX has a built-in QAM (cable) and ATSC (over the air) tuner.... they use different formats in Europe. The 100% digital broadcasting in Sweden is most likely DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial). I believe digital cable is DVB-C (for cable).

You can still use the set of course - you'll just have to use some sort of tuner box and hook it up via hdmi or component.

Well, I dropped by the store again and picked up the 4 yr psp for the tx47. It was $199 like other people mentioned. I picked up the psp (and likely other people) because there seem to be some issues, and this takes the hassle out of getting it fixed or replaced if need be. Westinghouse expects you to ship them the TV on your dime for repairs if there's a problem w/in the 1 yr warranty. The tx series definetly seems to have an issue w/ the HDMI signal losing sync w/ the TV (flickering), and sometimes having the picture drop out completely.


I've always been against BB and especially their extended warranties too but I agree that it is a very wise purchase with this set. My first TX-47 died after 2 weeks - 2 more weeks and I would have been UPSing it to California on my dime.

I'm on my second one now and I will be buying the PSP from BB right before the 30 day window runs out.

I'd go with the Westy 47" at #1. The estra screen size makes a big difference. Of course, asking on this thread, you pretty much know what answer you are going to get, right?


Well i dont see any fanboys here. Everyone has an idea of how the tv's are or everyone try to help each other and that was the only reason why i asked my question here. I made a thread and got no replies yet.

I will be placing an order this weekend. People have asked me to go with the Samsung for their better displays overall !!!

I still can't figure it out. Hope i will recieve more responses and i can make a decision !

Well i dont see any fanboys here. Everyone has an idea of how the tv's are or everyone try to help each other and that was the only reason why i asked my question here. I made a thread and got no replies yet.

I will be placing an order this weekend. People have asked me to go with the Samsung for their better displays overall !!!

I still can't figure it out. Hope i will recieve more responses and i can make a decision !

The picture is mind-blowing on the westy, and SD is actually good. The only gripe I have is the lack of a stretch feature for my full-screen DVD's. Some of them were gifts and I don't want to return them just because I have to watch with black bars on either side.

Well, the other day I boxed up my TX 47 and took it down to my local BB to exchange it for another one due to the flickering issue I have. Once I got it down there, they gave me some BS answer that I'll have to come back July 8 because they're doing inventory and they can't order anything into the store until inventory is over, and they, of course, don't have any in stock.

So, of course, I'm a bit peeved, but I load the TV back up into my truck and cart it home. Lay it down flat on it's back, open the bottom, pick it back up and unbox it. Set it back on the TV stand, turn it on. First thing I notice is the VERY bright spot in the top right corner is no longer there. Although there is some slight mura along the other edges, it's almost as if it miraculously disappeared.

Don't know what it means, but just wanted to share the story. I'm still going back July 8 to get this set replaced, or I'll be driving an hour and a half north to the next closest BB tomorrow since they have stock.

I found it. Here is a link to a 10% off BB coupon. http://www.savefile.com/files/840675

Some people have been successful at getting their BB to take another 10% off the already discounted online price. This makes the price comparable to the Vizio 42" from Costco, which isn't looking as good as this Westy when it comes to clean 1080p.

:) I am very satisfied with this TV with no problems. Even my wife likes it.
We have the dish network (480i only), off air HDTV (terrific) , and a computer
running windows xp. My only difficulty has been having to replace the video card
to remedy the video "stutter" when playing a 1080p movie directly off the hard
drive. This seem to be a PC problem, not the TV. Everything up to 1080i plays
flawlessly, but 1080p with powerdvd software really taxes my pc. My processor
is a AMD X2 4200+ and a Nvida 8600gts video card with a dvi to hdmi cable.
The 1080p movies are watchable, but some certain action part of a movie do show
a little stutter or frame dropping. I do overclock the processor a bit, using the 3 hour Nvida pc tune program. Is the AMDX2 4200+ too slow for 1080p?

Another minor concern is the color red. It just does not seem a true red, close but
not quite red, red. I have heard that red is the most difficult color to display.
Could anyone share their calibration settings for this tv?

I think any calibration will only be a average setting, due to vastly different
source signals and would ideally be a different setting for each source but
you can't do that with guests in the room.

Thanks for any suggestions. :)

The picture is mind-blowing on the westy, and SD is actually good. The only gripe I have is the lack of a stretch feature for my full-screen DVD's. Some of them were gifts and I don't want to return them just because I have to watch with black bars on either side.

you can stretch if you input with component, i believe... but HDMI locks this aspect ratio.

Well i dont see any fanboys here. Everyone has an idea of how the tv's are or everyone try to help each other and that was the only reason why i asked my question here. I made a thread and got no replies yet.

I will be placing an order this weekend. People have asked me to go with the Samsung for their better displays overall !!!

I still can't figure it out. Hope i will recieve more responses and i can make a decision !

which samsung were you looking at?

Everyone's talking about the flickering issue with the PS3. Does anyone have some other 1080p sources like a different BD player, HD player, .... and test to see if they all give the TV the same flickers?

Everyone's talking about the flickering issue with the PS3. Does anyone have some other 1080p sources like a different BD player, HD player, .... and test to see if they all give the TV the same flickers?
1080p from my computer doesn't flicker, and my set is one of the ones with the ps3 flickering problem. I am exchanging it today or tomorrow.

I've always been against BB and especially their extended warranties too but I agree that it is a very wise purchase with this set. My first TX-47 died after 2 weeks - 2 more weeks and I would have been UPSing it to California on my dime.

I'm on my second one now and I will be buying the PSP from BB right before the 30 day window runs out.
Have you had any issues with your second one yet?

Is the flickering problem apparent in both the 42 and 47 inch models or just one of them?

Everyone's talking about the flickering issue with the PS3. Does anyone have some other 1080p sources like a different BD player, HD player, .... and test to see if they all give the TV the same flickers?

I posted earlier in the thread about apparent problems between my HD-A20 and the TX-47. The HDCP sync appeared to drop and it took powering both units off to fix it. Now that the player goes through my receiver I have had zero problems. Also, I had my Xbox Elite connected directly to the TV and that never lost signal.

Have you had any issues with your second one yet?

My first set was honestly perfect except for the fact that one day out of the blue it froze up and I wasn't able to get it out of standby.

My second one has been rock solid so far. I do have 6 dead pixels on this one (first set had none) but you have to put your face right up to the screen and hunt for them so I really don't care.

With both the TX-47s I've had, flickering with the PS3 only happens when I turn on the PS3 and sometimes during startup of a disc. I have never had a dropout during playback on either set. Not to say it won't happen, but there really doesn't appear to be any pattern to it from all the reports.

I just called Westinghouse to follow up on my inquiry about the lack of 5.1 audio via the internal tuner - still no response from "engineering". However, every person I have ever talked to over there seems convinced that the TX series DOES support 5.1 audio via the tuner when using ATSC. They were unable to verify if it is supposed to work with QAM as well.

I told the CSR that I tried with both QAM and ATSC and no go... he put me on hold for a bit and came back and told me to try this:

While watching a show that is supposed to be broadcasting in 5.1, enter the audio menu and try changing the digital audio option to the other choices - French and Spanish.

His explanation was that toggling through English, Spanish and French should just toggle through the different audio streams - the default English is obviously 2 channel stereo Englsh, while French or Spanish may actually select 5.1 English if available.

Certainly worth a shot!

My set is hooked up to QAM cable so I will test with that tonight. I don't feel like hooking up an antenna and rescanning so can someone who has an antenna hooked up try this test tonight?

Try it with CSI on CBS as CSI broadcasts in 5.1 in most areas.

While interested in HTPCs, I know little about them. But have you checked the processor load while doing this (right-click on taskbar and select processes tab and look under cpu)? If it regularly hits 100%, then that is a likely culprit. Your vid card is new so that shouldn't be it. Bandwidth is the only other suspect, and 1080p bandwidth is a lot higher (which is why OTA can't do it). Obviously, DVI-HDMI has the throughput for 1080p, but what of your HD? Older HDs may be too slow.

Thanks to all for the answers on the extended warranty.

:) I am very satisfied with this TV with no problems. Even my wife likes it.
We have the dish network (480i only), off air HDTV (terrific) , and a computer
running windows xp. My only difficulty has been having to replace the video card
to remedy the video "stutter" when playing a 1080p movie directly off the hard
drive. This seem to be a PC problem, not the TV. Everything up to 1080i plays
flawlessly, but 1080p with powerdvd software really taxes my pc. My processor
is a AMD X2 4200+ and a Nvida 8600gts video card with a dvi to hdmi cable.
The 1080p movies are watchable, but some certain action part of a movie do show
a little stutter or frame dropping. I do overclock the processor a bit, using the 3 hour Nvida pc tune program. Is the AMDX2 4200+ too slow for 1080p?

Another minor concern is the color red. It just does not seem a true red, close but
not quite red, red. I have heard that red is the most difficult color to display.
Could anyone share their calibration settings for this tv?

I think any calibration will only be a average setting, due to vastly different
source signals and would ideally be a different setting for each source but
you can't do that with guests in the room.

Thanks for any suggestions. :)

:) I am very satisfied with this TV with no problems. Even my wife likes it.
We have the dish network (480i only), off air HDTV (terrific) , and a computer
running windows xp. My only difficulty has been having to replace the video card
to remedy the video "stutter" when playing a 1080p movie directly off the hard
drive. This seem to be a PC problem, not the TV. Everything up to 1080i plays
flawlessly, but 1080p with powerdvd software really taxes my pc. My processor
is a AMD X2 4200+ and a Nvida 8600gts video card with a dvi to hdmi cable.
The 1080p movies are watchable, but some certain action part of a movie do show
a little stutter or frame dropping. I do overclock the processor a bit, using the 3 hour Nvida pc tune program. Is the AMDX2 4200+ too slow for 1080p?

Another minor concern is the color red. It just does not seem a true red, close but
not quite red, red. I have heard that red is the most difficult color to display.
Could anyone share their calibration settings for this tv?

I think any calibration will only be a average setting, due to vastly different
source signals and would ideally be a different setting for each source but
you can't do that with guests in the room.

Thanks for any suggestions. :)

Your question about 1080p and your AMD, no I don't think your CPU is too slow. I have that same model and granted I never hook it up to my tv, 1080p is never a problem on my monitor (for HD DVD that is). Not even close. I wish I knew more about the problem to help. You say this happens when your computer is hooked into your tv, but how about just the monitor? Also try with different ports, which I guess would only be your VGA port, which would have to be hooked into your monitor most likely.

I think all of you folks who are exchanging your sets because of the HDMI dropouts are putting yourselves through some unnecessary pain and suffering. Going through the thread nearly all of the issues reported are with the PS3 and since it's clearly a handshake problem I would point my finger squarely at the PS3. The device has trouble with dropouts on many other tvs, not just the TX series. I personally do not believe there is anything wrong with the TX sets in question. HDCP is a difficult thing to handle and the format is designed to kill a signal for even the slightest reasons.

side note: I'll finally be an owner in the owner's thread come Monday. Much to my amazement there still have been no DVE/Avia derived video settings shared (at least none that didn't seem suspect and none that included room lighting for reference), so anybody still interested in these numbers can get them from me next week.

I think all of you folks who are exchanging your sets because of the HDMI dropouts are putting yourselves through some unnecessary pain and suffering. Going through the thread nearly all of the issues reported are with the PS3 and since it's clearly a handshake problem I would point my finger squarely at the PS3. The device has trouble with dropouts on many other tvs, not just the TX series. I personally do not believe there is anything wrong with the TX sets in question. HDCP is a difficult thing to handle and the format is designed to kill a signal for even the slightest reasons.

side note: I'll finally be an owner in the owner's thread come Monday. Much to my amazement there still have been no DVE/Avia derived video settings shared (at least none that didn't seem suspect and none that included room lighting for reference), so anybody still interested in these numbers can get them from me next week.

I've also seen it happen while watching TV on a SA Explorer 8300HD hooked up to the HDMI port. It seems to me like it's a HDMI issue rather than a PS3 issue.

Can I suggest one thing? Anyone reading this thread that has the issue and is planning on taking the set back to BB or not - call Westinghouse and log the problem...even if you are going to return the set. I'm almost positive that the more people that report the problem, the quicker any of this will be addressed.

I'm actually on the fence as to whether or not to take my set back, or wait for a firmware upgrade from Westy. Hopefully they are going to make them available to the public for end users to install. It's sort of unnerving though that there are no instructions in the manual as to how one would go about installing an update. Possibly they would just include a Readme file with the update.

Anyone in Canada, check your mail for a new Best Buy credit card offer. I's offering 10% the first purchase.

For anyone that purchased anything there recently, you should be able to go and get it returned/transferred to the new card and get the 10% off. I called and they said I could do this.

It takes 10 business days to get the new card and the offer expires August 15th so you have to move now.

I didn't see any specific place to post stuff like this so I just did it here. Spread the word.

Your question about 1080p and your AMD, no I don't think your CPU is too slow. I have that same model and granted I never hook it up to my tv, 1080p is never a problem on my monitor (for HD DVD that is). Not even close. I wish I knew more about the problem to help. You say this happens when your computer is hooked into your tv, but how about just the monitor? Also try with different ports, which I guess would only be your VGA port, which would have to be hooked into your monitor most likely.

I don't yet have the drives or software for HD-DVD or BD, nor have I downloaded any native 1080p to try it, but I've done a bit of reading on it. I'm pretty sure you should be fine, but you might need to get some new drivers for your 8600. IIRC, Nvidia was supposed to release drivers that would allow 1080p processing to be offloaded to the card (thus reducing CPU load) under XP, earlier this month. (I may even have them, I can't recall now if they came out and I downloaded them or not - I've got way too much on my mind lately :( ) Anyway, I do remember they were out for Vista a while back and seemed to work well, at least in that regard.

I'm banking on this myself, as I bought a fanless 8500, I'm running a socket-939 based 3800 X2. Check the HTPC forum here, I'm sure there were some threads on this.

Ed

Went and dropped the cash on the 47". I haven't got it entirely up and running yet (only have a couple of sources hooked to it and neither are HD), but so far so good. I hadn't had time to even hook up the cable to it - though I hear that there are some channels available by default via ClearQAM here in Memphis. I'm picking up the HD box tomorrow, and have a TiVo Series3 on order.

Kids are watching the old TiVo right now, and it's not too bad.

Most likely, much to the dismay of Xcalibur, I bought it at BestBuy - and get the deal:
As Advertised Price: $1619
Ten percent off coupon: -161.90 (Thanks alysenne!)
$100 gift card for HD Comcast Cable Upgrade

Brings my total to $1357.10... Course smack the 9.25% Tennessee sales tax back on... But, all in all, still a heckuva deal if ya ask me. I did drop the cash on the PSP based on what I've seen here in these forums. I also bought the Logitech 880 (been eyeing those for a while too), funny thing is, a 2 year PSP on that (got it based on what I've heard from others) was $40!

Ah well. Kids pop a button off of it, I'll live.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank all of you early adopters - I appreciate all the info you've dumped into here, and helped me make my decision.

A quick reminder to the old timers and a note for the new folks. Specific price talk is not allowed on this board and can get a thread closed if you aren't careful. I believe it's OK to talk about percentages, but not specific prices.

Not a moderator, just trying to be neighborly. ;)

Is anyone going to answer whether the 42 inch has the same problem as the 47 inch w/ the ps3?

Is anyone going to answer whether the 42 inch has the same problem as the 47 inch w/ the ps3?

Not many people have the 42 to answer your question at this time. The 47 became available earlier than the 42 hence more dicussion on the specific model. But reading through the posts, the few members who own the 42 and have posted their experience with the set have not reported any power lock up problems.

I just bought the TX from best buy yesterday and then I found the 10% coupon. Does anyone know if Best Buy will price adjust with the 10% coupon after the sale.

I just bought the TX from best buy yesterday and then I found the 10% coupon. Does anyone know if Best Buy will price adjust with the 10% coupon after the sale.

I'm pretty sure it's okay. People have said BB will honor the coupon. Anyways, it's basically the same thing as you returning the item and buying it again with the coupon.

Thank you all for sharing the information on the TX. Would someone be kind enough to share the %10 coupon with me on PM? Thanks!

I posted earlier in the thread about apparent problems between my HD-A20 and the TX-47. The HDCP sync appeared to drop and it took powering both units off to fix it. Now that the player goes through my receiver I have had zero problems. Also, I had my Xbox Elite connected directly to the TV and that never lost signal.

My HDMI hasn't worked since I installed the 1.6 firmware for hte a20. It makes me think something else is going on here.

I posted earlier in the thread about apparent problems between my HD-A20 and the TX-47. The HDCP sync appeared to drop and it took powering both units off to fix it. Now that the player goes through my receiver I have had zero problems. Also, I had my Xbox Elite connected directly to the TV and that never lost signal.

I tried that just now and I saw the startup screen from the player but as soon as the movie started the sync was lost again. Now it is sitting there every 5-10 seconds saying 1080p like it got a signal but then vanishes again before I see any picture. ARRGHhh! :confused: :confused: :confused:

I have my motorola cable box connected via HDMI and before I got the a20 I had an upscaling dvd player and never had a single HDMI problem with either of them.

side note: I'll finally be an owner in the owner's thread come Monday. Much to my amazement there still have been no DVE/Avia derived video settings shared (at least none that didn't seem suspect and none that included room lighting for reference), so anybody still interested in these numbers can get them from me next week.

I'm surprised, but pleased - I thought you were too put off by the lack of individual settings. OTOH, your posts here and in a couple other threads have been quite educational, it can only benefit the rest of us for you to be an owner.

I started on the set, actually I think my first one, with DVE. I'm ashamed to say I had some issues, having never used it before. First, I was doing it from my HTPC and had to figure out navigation a bit - it was a bit more menu-jumping than I'd had to do with TheaterTek before. Second, I found the narration a bit confusing - I thought they were implying I should turn brightness and contrast all the way down before starting, but I wasn't sure. Third, one of my three kids was running around and generally not making it easy for me to hear/concentrate, so I gave up for the night.

After that, well, the past month or two have probably been the busiest time of my life, at least in a long, long time - like going back to my wedding maybe. Just unbelievable, and only starting to slow down now. And I think when my first set died, I was hesitant to invest too much effort into this one. So, I may or may not get myself a "round tuit" this weekend - but if not, I suspect your results may be more accurate than mine anyway. In the meantime, I've found that the settings posted earlier seem to be decent for HDMI (S3 TiVo and an HTPC), and I think I'm using them for QAM as well :

Brightness 40
Contrast 62
Saturation 40
Hue 45
Sharpness 0
Backlight 20-30
Color Temp Warm

Sharpness does nothing that I can see, and I think it was you who explained why I wouldn't want it to, anyway. Backlight at 0 seems a bit too dark to me. At these settings, I think the biggest issue I have is black crush, I'm sure that there is something better in that regard.

The defaults, IIRC, were way off for component, s-vid, and composite. Reds were pink. I'll have to look at what I'm using there, but I didn't spend much time on it yet, as that is my DVD player that was pretty much replaced by the HTPC, and a couple of older gaming systems (a PS-1 and one of those "76000-in-one" deals).

Room lighting varies greatly, but serious watching is usually at night with lights off.

Ed

hello everyone,

the TX is my first HDTV and i would like to thank everyone for all the information on this thread. i had a newbie question though. when i'm watching TV, when i flip through channels it seems to flicker a bit first then continues with the picture. Is this normal? thanks.

I would like to add that I went to three different best buys and they did not honor the 10% coupon. They did price match from the online price however. It seems that the coupon needs a manager approval and they have said no every time. Best Buy might have caught on?

-Ivan

Thank you all for sharing the information on the TX. Would someone be kind enough to share the %10 coupon with me on PM? Thanks!

Wee did this yesterday. We bought the tx42 the day before with the BB Online price match, and then went back the next day to get the 10% as we found a coupon to use. They said they normally don't do it but we were nice enough to do it for us. But its definitely YMMV. Then we ended up using the money we saved to buy a tv stand so they still got my money either way, it sure made for a really really good deal on the tx-42.

Wee did this yesterday. We bought the tx42 the day before with the BB Online price match, and then went back the next day to get the 10% as we found a coupon to use. They said they normally don't do it but we were nice enough to do it for us. But its definitely YMMV. Then we ended up using the money we saved to buy a tv stand so they still got my money either way, it sure made for a really really good deal on the tx-42.

I don't understand why they wouldn't do this. Alysenne made a great point. There is a 30 return policy, so it would be the same as returning the TV and buying it again wit the coupon. Even if they just give store credit it.

There is a bit of grey here because the online price is currently different from the brick&mortar price, due to an online sale. The B&M will match the online price. The question is whether or not they will accept a coupon on top of the match. Some do, some don't. The policy might not be crystal clear about how to handle situations where online prices different from B&M prices.

Does anyone know if I would have to go to the specific store where I bought the TV to try and redeem the coupon. I know the guy said the TV can be returned to any store. If it doesn't have to be brought back I'll just keep trying around until someone does. And BTW the in store price was the same as the online sale price at the store I bought from.

I almost got this TV today. I was standing in BB, watching the TV. I even saw the lone boxed unit on the floor that does not register on their Web site as "in-stock." (Weird how they just plop boxes in the middle of the store for someone to knock over). I had the Web price printed out and 10% coupon in-hand (thanks, whoever posted that). I was staring at the TV, as one of the BB monkeys ignored me and tried to upsell another guy. I was totally ready to buy the TV. But as the monkey was detailing the differences between plasma and LCD, the monkey started mentioning pixelation on LCDs.

I have to say it, but I see pixelation on this TV in fast action. At BB, look at the motocross action in their looping HD and you can see pixelation. The reality is, you can in every LCD. Even the 120Hz/4ms LCDs, I see it. I'm sorry, but I don't just stare at static or slow-moving images. I want my TV to be able to display rapidly-changing images without large square blocks. This is about high-definition, including moving images!

I refuse to spend nearly two grand on someting I am not totally in love with.

So I have decided to look at plasma 1080p's and wait for them to come down a little. Funny, but one guy on the TH-50PZ700U thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=843093&highlight=TH50PZ700U) says he returmed a Samsung 4665 - the Bentley of LCDs - for this TV.

Little does the BB monkey know that he talked me out of a purchase he would likely have gotten credit for by trying to upsell another customer.

BTW, I had the Geek Squad guy tell me last nite how "cheap" (as in crappy) the Monoprice cables are, LOL. BB rapists!

One more thing: I was looking at the Westy TX next to one of Sony's top 1080p's, and the Sony was clearly brighter and had more contrast. It was hard to ignore, especially on the golf footage of the BB HD loop. So I mentioned it to the BB monkey and he said it showed the difference in TVs. I said it could be the settings on each TV. He said 'no', settings come from the manufacturer at their brightest possible, knowing they will be displayed as demos (LOL, sounds like BS, as if they know in the factory what TV is going to be a demo unit?). So I said "well, let's see what each TV is set at." He balked, mumbled, and implied he didn't know how to access the menus. Yet 5 minutes later, he was blowing through the menus on another set (a $3K one) with ease.

I do think these bastards purposely make the cheaper TVs look bad, and torch-up the expensive models. They truly are crooks trying to separate you from your money by any means necessary, so I have no qualms about trying to rape them first!

How many ps3 owners have problems with the TX, especially the 42 inch?

which samsung were you looking at?

I was looking at the 61F series.... may be a 40' or a 46'. Trying to figure out still. Too many tv's out on market right now !

I have to say it, but I see pixelation on this TV in fast action. At BB, look at the motocross action in their looping HD and you can see pixelation. The reality is, you can in every LCD. Even the 120Hz/4ms LCDs, I see it. I'm sorry, but I don't just stare at static or slow-moving images. I want my TV to be able to display rapidly-changing images without large square blocks. This is about high-definition, including moving images!

Pixelation is more likely due to the picture source, not the monitor. Most HD channels use quite a lot of compression, which leads to problems for fast moving sequences (i.e. sports).

I can't say that pixelation happens in every LCD. I can't ever remember seeing pixelation on any of my computer LCD monitors, and some of mine are kinda old.

Then again...hmm...the plasmas on display was also showing the same source without any issue?

Then again...hmm...the plasmas on display was also showing the same source without any issue? The only close plasma was a 1080i, and those have their own issues. plus, by the time you can move your eyes to the other TV, the scene changes.

I was watching Best Buy's HD loop, which is run off of a hard drive.

Are people getting pixelation on live sporting events, like ESPN HD, etc, with this TV? Are people getting pixelation on plasmas?

I have to say it, but I see pixelation on this TV in fast action. At BB, look at the motocross action in their looping HD and you can see pixelation. The reality is, you can in every LCD. Even the 120Hz/4ms LCDs, I see it. I'm sorry, but I don't just stare at static or slow-moving images. I want my TV to be able to display rapidly-changing images without large square blocks. This is about high-definition, including moving images!

Ok, so you're judging a bunch of LCD's solely based on a Best Buy loop? :p

Come on man. I'm not sure how good the PQ is of their loop, but I'm willing to bet that that's the problem. It's quite clear that BB doesn't REALLY give a crap about really demoing the different tv's to show their highest potential.. At the Best Buy by me they use Directv HD as a feed for ALL the tv's. I must say, it does a disservice to all the high end large sets out there, and if I thought that that's how these sets really looked, I would pass alot of sets off as sub-par as well..

Directv HD has a more washed out look and has alot more artifacts/pixelation than
regular cable. The problem with larger sets is that the flaws in the source are much more apparent. I have verizon fios HD and can see some artifacts and even some pixelation at times, but that doesn't mean the TV's processor always displays pixelation or macroblocking. Heck, there are plenty of blu-ray movies out there that look horrible, and would be a disgrace if used as demo material for a tv.

I assure you that there's no huge pixelation issue w/ this tv. Perhaps you are 1 in 1Million people who is ultra sensitive to motion blur, but I've had many LCDs (some "older" pc lcd monitors I could see the effect of the slow response time) and this one exhibits none of those issues related to a panel w/ a slow response time.

My Best Buy wouldn't let me use the coupon because its off of the regular price, not the sale price or the matched price.

Also, I have the 42" and I'm having the flickering issues. I think I'm going to try to take it back Saturday when they get more in stock, even though there's a slim chance of getting one without the problem.

I read a lot of this thread, but I don't quite remember now. Was it definitively established that the flickering is caused by a problem with the TV and not something else? I thought I remember reading posts that suggested problems with the cable, or maybe using a different HDMI port, or maybe the problem was the PS3.

Well, what is my alternative? :p Drag a known HD source in there in a backpack and clandestinely hook it up? http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/images/smilies/rotf.gif

If it weren't such a hassle, I'd buy this TV and test it at home with known HD sources for 3 weeks. But Jesus H, it was like 95F here today and it ain't gettin' any cooler bro!

I'm inclined to wait for the plasma 1080p's to come down a bit.

Any sports fans out there with this set?

Ok, so you're judging a bunch of LCD's solely based on a Best Buy loop? :p

Come on man. I'm not sure how good the PQ is of their loop, but I'm willing to bet that that's the problem. It's quite clear that BB doesn't REALLY give a crap about really demoing the different tv's to show their highest potential.. At the Best Buy by me they use Directv HD as a feed for ALL the tv's. I must say, it does a disservice to all the high end large sets out there, and if I thought that that's how these sets really looked, I would pass alot of sets off as sub-par as well..

Directv HD has a more washed out look and has alot more artifacts/pixelation than
regular cable. The problem with larger sets is that the flaws in the source are much more apparent. I have verizon fios HD and can see some artifacts and even some pixelation at times, but that doesn't mean the TV's processor always displays pixelation or macroblocking. Heck, there are plenty of blu-ray movies out there that look horrible, and would be a disgrace if used as demo material for a tv.

I assure you that there's no huge pixelation issue w/ this tv. Perhaps you are 1 in 1Million people who is ultra sensitive to motion blur, but I've had many LCDs (some "older" pc lcd monitors I could see the effect of the slow response time) and this one exhibits none of those issues related to a panel w/ a slow response time.

The only close plasma was a 1080i, and those have their own issues. plus, by the time you can move your eyes to the other TV, the scene changes.

I was watching Best Buy's HD loop, which is run off of a hard drive.

Are people getting pixelation on live sporting events, like ESPN HD, etc, with this TV? Are people getting pixelation on plasmas?

I have seen the same demo of the motorcross bikers on the best buy loop quite a few times, and have noticed the "pixelation" you mention. However, I would say with about 99 percent certainty that the "pixelation" you're seeing is something called macroblocking, as well as other artifacts which come with heavily compressed signals. Best Buy's HD feed is simply atrocious, and so heavily compressed that in motion scenes the screen tears apart, showing massive blockiness and artifacts, such as when the riders do jumps over the ramps. These problems have nothing to do with the actual TV, and everything to do with the BB signal. Using QAM, Blu-Ray/HD, or most high quality HD cable channels at home you'll see almost no such artifacting.

The best way to see this b efore buying is to find one of the kiosks at BB where they have an Blu-ray/HD DVD player connected directly to the TV; most BBs usually have a Sony or Samsung 40" playing demo material for this purpose. On those setups, which are more representative of what most of us have at home, you should see no such "pixelation." The only time you do see this effect at home is if you are using an HD cable box on the occasional HD cable channel which hasn't been granted a great deal of bandwith by the cable companies. Right now, most cable providers simply don't have enough bandwidth on the coax line running into your house, and so certain HD channels aren't granted as much bandwidth as others; newer transmission technologies, like Verizon's FIOS, are not so bandwidth constrained, and can thus deliver HD signals without any compression whatsoever.

Personally, I see almost no compression artifacts on baseball, golf, or tennis when watching on ESPN, NESN or Versus. In any case, the occasional compression issues you see on a cable signal are incredibly minor compared to the mess you'll see on the BB signal. Finally, lowering the backlight, which most of us do at home, will make any such compression artifacts much, much more difficult to see.

In short, never trust the feeds or setup at BB; if you want to buy there, make sure a salesman, preferably a Magnolia one, hooks up an HD DVD or Blu Ray player to the set you are interested in via HDMI and plays an actual HD-DVD or Blu Ray disc. That's about the only way to see what the set is actually capable of.

so the flickering start happening with me. instead of it being on a HDMI input, it started happening to me over a component input when i was playing xbox360. I also get no input detection with my motorola set top box through component. When i try to connect to it, it gives me a brief moment of sound then nothing. After this happens, when i switch to another input, it doesn't detect anything. I have a PC connected through DVI -> HDMI and it seems that if i switch out of HDMI input and try to switch back, it won't pick up the signal.

I've read over most of this thread and it seems that i'm experiencing a lot of the same stuff as everyone else. Do i have a defective unit?

Thanks for the detailed reply. I guess I would have to get one of those Magnolia guys (never heard of them until I read this forum the last few days, BTW) to hook up an HD-DVD to it, since I couldn't even get one of the regular blueshirts to examine the menu settings for me.

Maybe the BB feed is the culprit as you say. I would love to see this TV with good settings and an HD-DVD source. Maybe I can get one of the Monkeys to hook up an HD source to it.

If I can get the Web price minus 10%, maybe I'll give this TV a shot.

Edit: From a review (http://ultimateavmag.com/flatpaneldisplays/1006westlvm47/index1.html) of the LVM-47w1, a closely-related model:

The motion smear associated with LCD displays was more objectionable. This is caused by a combination of slow liquid crystal twist times and what's known as a "sample and hold" image artifact, some of which is created in your brain! The effect is minimized when watching content with slower refresh rates, such as 24-fps film transferred to HD. Such content has its own motion blurring artifacts that mask, to a degree, the LC blur.

Switch to a live HD football or basketball game, however, and the smear is all too apparent. This artifact is further aggravated by excessive MPEG compression and picture interlacing, which can result in MPEG noise around fast-moving objects. Only the best video processors can begin to clean up MPEG noise, and the LVM-47w1 doesn't have that level of sophistication.

I have seen the same demo of the motorcross bikers on the best buy loop quite a few times, and have noticed the "pixelation" you mention. However, I would say with about 99 percent certainty that the "pixelation" you're seeing is something called macroblocking, as well as other artifacts which come with heavily compressed signals. Best Buy's HD feed is simply atrocious, and so heavily compressed that in motion scenes the screen tears apart, showing massive blockiness and artifacts, such as when the riders do jumps over the ramps. These problems have nothing to do with the actual TV, and everything to do with the BB signal. Using QAM, Blu-Ray/HD, or most high quality HD cable channels at home you'll see almost no such artifacting.

The best way to see this b efore buying is to find one of the kiosks at BB where they have an Blu-ray/HD DVD player connected directly to the TV; most BBs usually have a Sony or Samsung 40" playing demo material for this purpose. On those setups, which are more representative of what most of us have at home, you should see no such "pixelation." The only time you do see this effect at home is if you are using an HD cable box on the occasional HD cable channel which hasn't been granted a great deal of bandwith by the cable companies. Right now, most cable providers simply don't have enough bandwidth on the coax line running into your house, and so certain HD channels aren't granted as much bandwidth as others; newer transmission technologies, like Verizon's FIOS, are not so bandwidth constrained, and can thus deliver HD signals without any compression whatsoever.

Personally, I see almost no compression artifacts on baseball, golf, or tennis when watching on ESPN, NESN or Versus. In any case, the occasional compression issues you see on a cable signal are incredibly minor compared to the mess you'll see on the BB signal. Finally, lowering the backlight, which most of us do at home, will make any such compression artifacts much, much more difficult to see.

In short, never trust the feeds or setup at BB; if you want to buy there, make sure a salesman, preferably a Magnolia one, hooks up an HD DVD or Blu Ray player to the set you are interested in via HDMI and plays an actual HD-DVD or Blu Ray disc. That's about the only way to see what the set is actually capable of.

Pixelation is more likely due to the picture source, not the monitor. Most HD channels use quite a lot of compression, which leads to problems for fast moving sequences (i.e. sports).

I can't say that pixelation happens in every LCD. I can't ever remember seeing pixelation on any of my computer LCD monitors, and some of mine are kinda old.

Then again...hmm...the plasmas on display was also showing the same source without any issue?

I agree, some channels I get pixelation on some I don't. When gaming, the action is fast paced and I get no pixelation as well. I think comcast does some type of compression of their video so their dated network (coax) can handle all the bandwidth.

Edit: From a review (http://ultimateavmag.com/flatpaneldisplays/1006westlvm47/index1.html) of the LVM-47w1, a closely-related model:


And what does that have to do with this model? The new TX uses a different, apparently vastly superior, chipset as well as this year's panel technology. Using a review of a different model from a year or more ago is like saying you won't buy a redeisgned new model year car because the one from two years ago got bad reviews.

Everyone that is having the Flickering problem needs to call Westinghouse and report the problem. If enough people call they have to look into it. I had the flickering issue with my first set and returned it to Rex. My second set has NO problems. If you are having a problem with the flickering CALL WESTINGHOUSE.

I almost got this TV today. I was standing in BB, watching the TV. I even saw the lone boxed unit on the floor that does not register on their Web site as "in-stock." (Weird how they just plop boxes in the middle of the store for someone to knock over). I had the Web price printed out and 10% coupon in-hand (thanks, whoever posted that). I was staring at the TV, as one of the BB monkeys ignored me and tried to upsell another guy. I was totally ready to buy the TV. But as the monkey was detailing the differences between plasma and LCD, the monkey started mentioning pixelation on LCDs.

I have to say it, but I see pixelation on this TV in fast action. At BB, look at the motocross action in their looping HD and you can see pixelation. The reality is, you can in every LCD. Even the 120Hz/4ms LCDs, I see it. I'm sorry, but I don't just stare at static or slow-moving images. I want my TV to be able to display rapidly-changing images without large square blocks. This is about high-definition, including moving images!

I refuse to spend nearly two grand on someting I am not totally in love with.

So I have decided to look at plasma 1080p's and wait for them to come down a little. Funny, but one guy on the TH-50PZ700U thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=843093&highlight=TH50PZ700U) says he returmed a Samsung 4665 - the Bentley of LCDs - for this TV.

Little does the BB monkey know that he talked me out of a purchase he would likely have gotten credit for by trying to upsell another customer.

BTW, I had the Geek Squad guy tell me last nite how "cheap" (as in crappy) the Monoprice cables are, LOL. BB rapists!

One more thing: I was looking at the Westy TX next to one of Sony's top 1080p's, and the Sony was clearly brighter and had more contrast. It was hard to ignore, especially on the golf footage of the BB HD loop. So I mentioned it to the BB monkey and he said it showed the difference in TVs. I said it could be the settings on each TV. He said 'no', settings come from the manufacturer at their brightest possible, knowing they will be displayed as demos (LOL, sounds like BS, as if they know in the factory what TV is going to be a demo unit?). So I said "well, let's see what each TV is set at." He balked, mumbled, and implied he didn't know how to access the menus. Yet 5 minutes later, he was blowing through the menus on another set (a $3K one) with ease.

I do think these bastards purposely make the cheaper TVs look bad, and torch-up the expensive models. They truly are crooks trying to separate you from your money by any means necessary, so I have no qualms about trying to rape them first!

Dude, next time you're in BB (which you obviously hate, but still go there), why not pick up a copy of "Anger Management " on DVD. It's a great flick.

Everyone that is having the Flickering problem needs to call Westinghouse and report the problem. If enough people call they have to look into it. I had the flickering issue with my first set and returned it to Rex. My second set has NO problems. If you are having a problem with the flickering CALL WESTINGHOUSE.

I must have been one of the lucky ones, because I dont have any flickering issues whatsoever. It only happened once when I switched cables, and never again once I switched back on my PS3 and cable box.

I would suggest everyone with flickering try the $3 DVI Gear HDMI cables from Amazon. No probs with them for over 2 weeks now, but with monoprice ones i do get flickering sometimes for no reason. Its better to spend $3 and try than to have to return the set.

I also think its a firmware issue between certain devices and the TV, so anyone with extended warranties I would suggest holding off like Xcalibur said unless its really bad.

I also see no pixelation on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray on the tv, just an amazingly crisp picture. The "pixelation" comes from compression of HD over cable, just like you would see blocks in a divx movie, its not the TV. Motion blur is very minimal and only can be seen in some instances. Its more noticeable over component, but near non existant on HDMI. I would say VGA and HDMI output are superior than component on this TV, but thats true for just about any TV.

Well, what is my alternative? :p Drag a known HD source in there in a backpack and clandestinely hook it up?

I once called my local Best Buy and asked if I could bring in a laptop to test some LCD displays and they allowed me. When I went there they just tagged the laptop with a sticker and then we told the salespeople we wanted to hook up the laptop and they let us.

I'm sure some stores would not allow this, but you can ask.

Hi All,



With $300 off, I finally pulled the trigger on a TX-47! WOOT!
Actually, I bought the 2 yr PSP with the savings, at a reduced rate, so the LCD + 2 yr PSP was less than MSRP.


Now to crack open that Ultimate Matrix box set :)

p.

I must have been one of the lucky ones, because I dont have any flickering issues whatsoever. It only happened once when I switched cables, and never again once I switched back on my PS3 and cable box.

I would suggest everyone with flickering try the $3 DVI Gear HDMI cables from Amazon. No probs with them for over 2 weeks now, but with monoprice ones i do get flickering sometimes for no reason. Its better to spend $3 and try than to have to return the set.

I also think its a firmware issue between certain devices and the TV, so anyone with extended warranties I would suggest holding off like Xcalibur said unless its really bad.

I also see no pixelation on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray on the tv, just an amazingly crisp picture. The "pixelation" comes from compression of HD over cable, just like you would see blocks in a divx movie, its not the TV. Motion blur is very minimal and only can be seen in some instances. Its more noticeable over component, but near non existant on HDMI. I would say VGA and HDMI output are superior than component on this TV, but thats true for just about any TV.
I would just like to clarify that I wasn't suggesting that you return your set if it flickers with the PS3. I was just saying that EVERYONE that is having this issue needs to call Westinghouse if you want the problem to go away. As far as using different cables goes. I used 4 different cables from 4 different manufacturers and they all did the same thing on my first set. This new set hasn't given me a single problem.

I would just like to clarify that I wasn't suggesting that you return your set if it flickers with the PS3. I was just saying that EVERYONE that is having this issue needs to call Westinghouse if you want the problem to go away. As far as using different cables goes. I used 4 different cables from 4 different manufacturers and they all did the same thing on my first set. This new set hasn't given me a single problem.

Just wondering, is the firmware version/build date the same on the two TX 47's?

Just wondering, is the firmware version/build date the same on the two TX 47's?
No, actually the first set with the problem was built on the 14th. My new set (problem free) was built on the 13th. The firmware was the same.

What is the flickering issue people are having? Can you describe it in detail please?

I have to say it, but I see pixelation on this TV in fast action. At BB, look at the motocross action in their looping HD and you can see pixelation. The reality is, you can in every LCD. Even the 120Hz/4ms LCDs, I see it. I'm sorry, but I don't just stare at static or slow-moving images. I want my TV to be able to display rapidly-changing images without large square blocks. This is about high-definition, including moving images!


That motorcross scene is just encoded badly. It is a factor of the TV how it looks, but it's not a response time issue, it's a DSP issue. Look at the Pioneers for example, and you'll see it's very clean on the same scene. It's because they have a better DSP. More expensive TV usually are better than the cheap stuff.

So I have decided to look at plasma 1080p's and wait for them to come down a little. Funny, but one guy on TH-50PZ700U thread says he returmed a Samsung 4665 - the Bentley of LCDs - for this TV.

As far as accurate image reproduction, the Samsungs are among the worst in plasmas. As far as compressing the dynamic range to brighten the image but lose color detail, the Samsungs are the best.

Little does the BB monkey know that he talked me out of a purchase he would likely have gotten credit for by trying to upsell another customer.

They don't get any credit. BB is not on commission. I would think you'd be glad they were telling customers about the issues as well as benefits with the TVs though.

I'm surprised, but pleased - I thought you were too put off by the lack of individual settings. OTOH, your posts here and in a couple other threads have been quite educational, it can only benefit the rest of us for you to be an owner.

I started on the set, actually I think my first one, with DVE. I'm ashamed to say I had some issues, having never used it before. First, I was doing it from my HTPC and had to figure out navigation a bit - it was a bit more menu-jumping than I'd had to do with TheaterTek before. Second, I found the narration a bit confusing - I thought they were implying I should turn brightness and contrast all the way down before starting, but I wasn't sure. Third, one of my three kids was running around and generally not making it easy for me to hear/concentrate, so I gave up for the night.

After that, well, the past month or two have probably been the busiest time of my life, at least in a long, long time - like going back to my wedding maybe. Just unbelievable, and only starting to slow down now. And I think when my first set died, I was hesitant to invest too much effort into this one. So, I may or may not get myself a "round tuit" this weekend - but if not, I suspect your results may be more accurate than mine anyway. In the meantime, I've found that the settings posted earlier seem to be decent for HDMI (S3 TiVo and an HTPC), and I think I'm using them for QAM as well :

Brightness 40
Contrast 62
Saturation 40
Hue 45
Sharpness 0
Backlight 20-30
Color Temp Warm

Sharpness does nothing that I can see, and I think it was you who explained why I wouldn't want it to, anyway. Backlight at 0 seems a bit too dark to me. At these settings, I think the biggest issue I have is black crush, I'm sure that there is something better in that regard.

The defaults, IIRC, were way off for component, s-vid, and composite. Reds were pink. I'll have to look at what I'm using there, but I didn't spend much time on it yet, as that is my DVD player that was pretty much replaced by the HTPC, and a couple of older gaming systems (a PS-1 and one of those "76000-in-one" deals).

Room lighting varies greatly, but serious watching is usually at night with lights off.

Ed
I will definitely get back to you so we can compare settings. Normally to reveal your 1-2% pluge bars in DVE the brightness control needs to go up not down like you've done. That's only an assumption based on experience though.

I'm a bit surprised myself, but the HDMI being on a hub wasn't a total deal breaker. I will work around it. The excellence of the Trident processor pushed me over, and I prefer buying brands like this despite the risk because of the superior value. Lining Sony and friends' coffers isn't my style because I just know too much about those companies and their tactics. In truth I decided to buy because I didn't want to lay down all my cards here. I think people will be shocked by how fast OLED comes bursting onto the scene starting about 2 years from now. It's going to be huge and presents none of the flaws that plasma and lcd have now, so I figured if I fall in love with one in a few years I won't feel so guilty replacing this set because I don't 3 or 4 thousand into it.

That said, I'm proud to be an owner of this tv despite it's little flaws. I think the performance in a couple of areas is about as good as LCD gets which is a pretty good deal for a budget panel.

As far as accurate image reproduction, the Samsungs are among the worst in plasmas. As far as compressing the dynamic range to brighten the image but lose color detail, the Samsungs are the best.

Just wanted to counterpoint you here: that isn't really true anymore starting with the new models this year. The currrent 50" Samsung plasma has fantastic color accuracy and greyscale tracking performance, better than any set I've seen without being professionally calibrated. The user menu cut and drive controls in the advanced menu will get the greyscale to a flat 6,500K and the colorimetry is spot on. Gamma is smooth and even too with the user gamma control set at -2, so no black crush or loss of detail. They even compete with Panasonic on black levels now, though not quite as well still. I hate to see blanket statements like this applied to a whole brand just because they once had a bad model or two. Companies do improve and Samsung really took a big step forward this year with all their products.

Anyone have any opinions, expert or otherwise, on the ability of this TV to handle SD as compared to what appears to be the benchmark in LCD, the Olevia 747i? I'm really comparing these two sets (747i vs 47" Westy... and maybe 42" Westy) and wondering what their capabilities are. I'd guess it comes down to the Trident processor and its implementation vs the Realta in the 747i. Anyone had a chance to see both with HD signals as well?

I just don't believe contrast ratio numbers anymore, so it's tough to decide where my cash will go. I'm used to keeping TVs for a really long time, so I'd rather not blow my first HDTV purchase.

Heh, no it's not going to compete with the Realta HQV processor. Nothing does which is why Silicon Optix gets so much talk. Compared to other common solutions though the Trident comes much closer to matching the Realta/Reon. There are a few things the HQV processors do that are very next generation that no other solution can match right now. Mostly in the realm of very powerful adaptive interpolation for motion adaptive de-interlacing and very powerful noise reduction algorithms that require some horsepower to drive. Most motion adaptive video deinterlacing modes (which is good to begin with, lots of products are not motion adaptive at all) fill in the black spaces in interlaced video by dividing the image into quandrants and then performing analysis on a small macroblock of pixels (a cluster of say 4x4 or 16x16 pixels) to look for vectors or motion patterns. The HQV processors look at much larger clusters (64x64 at least if I remember right) so they can make more accurate guesses as to how to interpolate, and they also look further ahead and behind at other frames of video to get a better idea of object motion in the video.

From what I know of the Trident processor it covers the basics well and I'd take it's performance over Genesis, Pixelworks, ATI Xilleon, MTK MDDI (mediatek), and a couple of others, so we're sitting okay considering the price of these sets. That's not even mentioning other cheaper processors which just aren't very good. Aside from the Realta and Reon the Gemnum VXP is also a superior solution that's not often seen, but I can't really think of anything else out there that's superior. People praise the TX series as being above average at handling SD and that is a good indicator of the overall competency of the Trident chip, so I'd leave it at that and be satisfied personally.

For the lazy, here's Westy's #1 (866) 287-5555.

I called about the HDMI flickering/dropout and they are aware of it for the ps3. lol :confused: The woman was actually pretty knowledgeable that I spoke to (surprisingly) and suggested that there are likely handshake issues between the ps3/cable box and the tv. I would definetly strongly suggest calling and just giving them a heads up and exactly what's happening in your situation, so they're aware of it. I'm sure glad I picked up the psp, but I can live with the flickering for a little while. She said it's very new so obviously no firmware updates yet, but hopefully there will be a fix for it. It seems that Westy seems to think that this is a ps3 specific issue. I mentioned that it happens w/ my cable box as well, so maybe they'll look into this issue if more people call and log their issue.

What is the flickering issue people are having? Can you describe it in detail please?
When the PS3 is hooked up to the tv via any of the hdmi ports and set to 1080p during movie playback or while playing games, the screen flickers. Meaning the screen goes black, followed by the sound cutting out for about 1 second, then both coming back on. It happens very randomly during game play or movie playback. I watched a bunch of movies and played a bunch of games on my first set to try to isolate the problem but it happened with all of them. It was very annoying. I even tested my neighbors PS3 to see if it was a problem with my PS3. My new set doesn't do it though.

Some of you guys have some sick set ups.

I wish CNET or some home theater mags would get some reviews out already. This TV has lots of potential it seems.

So what's the deal with Bestbuy / Westinghouse warranty procedures?

After how long before we can no longer take it back to BestBuy but have to ship it to California to get it fixed?

The 47 is very tempting at $1700, just worried about repair/warranty hassles.

Last night I ordered Verizon FIOS TV and Internet (30/5!). Install date is 7/19. Comcast's SA 8300HD DVR is just crap.

Anyone else have fios tv with this set?

I left the house this morning planning to drop by Costco and BB to check out the Vizio and this TX-42. Halfway to Costco, I realized that the 1080p over DVI/HDMI/VGA from a PC issue that the Vizio is having would just kill me. So I went to BB and 15 minutes later, walked out with this Westinghouse.

I got both the online price match and an additional 10% coupon, woot! I think the trick is to find a manager who is really busy, so he'll authorize anything without really reading it. :)

I set up a makeshift desk/stand until I decide exactly how I'm going to arrange this TV and my computer. I'm planning to use this as a primary monitor. I'll probably set a desk back quite a ways from the wall and wall-mount the LCD. But I'm hoping I can find a mount that'll allow rotation.

Unfortunately, my DVI-HDMI cable and adapter is sitting in a UPS plane right now. So I'm running a 1080p signal over VGA. While I can see that it lacks crispness, it's still gorgeous. A Xbox360 would probably be really happy with this monitor. This one fact alone is making me very, very happy that I went with the Westinghouse and not the Vizio.

I was just playing Tomb Raider Anniversary. Very nice. Again, 1080p over VGA. No motion blur or any other problems that I could detect. If you didn't know, Tomb Raider Anniversary is a remake of the original Tomb Raider that came out on the PlayStation 1 in 1996. I think I played it back then on a 24" CRT at SDTV. :)

I've been trying out other games, and they all look so incredible at 1080p.

I can't do much non PC testing, though. I don't own any of the next gen consoles (I'm a PC gamer at the moment) and the couple standalone DVD players I own are junk. My living room is run by a HTPC.

In any case, I have absolutely no complaints (so far, anyways). I still have to fiddle with the calibration because the white Explorer backgrounds are blinding. I'll report further when I get see a real digital signal or if I run into any problems.

Hi All,



With $300 off, I finally pulled the trigger on a TX-47! WOOT!
Actually, I bought the 2 yr PSP with the savings, at a reduced rate, so the LCD + 2 yr PSP was less than MSRP.


Now to crack open that Ultimate Matrix box set :)

p.
i'm so jelous of you, i saw it $300 off last night and told myself "sweet, but its late (1:30 am) so i'll buy it later"... so later comes around and now its only $100 off (12:37pm) DAMN BEST BUY!

whats even stranger is that the 42" is saving $200, but the one i want is only $100 off

Just wanted to counterpoint you here: that isn't really true anymore starting with the new models this year. The currrent 50" Samsung plasma has fantastic color accuracy and greyscale tracking performance, better than any set I've seen without being professionally calibrated. The user menu cut and drive controls in the advanced menu will get the greyscale to a flat 6,500K and the colorimetry is spot on. Gamma is smooth and even too with the user gamma control set at -2, so no black crush or loss of detail. They even compete with Panasonic on black levels now, though not quite as well still. I hate to see blanket statements like this applied to a whole brand just because they once had a bad model or two. Companies do improve and Samsung really took a big step forward this year with all their products.

I would have to agree with you on the amount of image adjustable controls available on the new Samsung plasmas. My in-laws bought the Samsung 50" T5054 plasma which came out in Feb/Mar 07. After debating whether to go with the LVM-47W1, which they saw at my house, or the newly released Samsung plasmas, they ended up going with the plasma because at their seating distance of 12-15 feet 1080p does not make much of a difference. What does make a difference is the wide veiwing angle available on the plasma considering the layout of the room.

On my last trip there, I took my copy of AVIA and had them record calibration patterns off INHD through comcast hd dvr in preparation for some user calibration. I'm used to farily simple controls on my 47W1, but as soon as I dove into the picture menu on the Samsung plasma, I was flabbergasted at the amount of controls and fine tuning available. Every possible thing that one can think of to tinker with the color and greyscale is available to the end user without jumping into the service menu. On my old Sony hd crt, I had to go fairly deep into the serivice menu to adjust the cuts and gains on colors. For the purists, movies mode turned off most of the enhancements to give a more accurate image. After playing with AVIA on the set, the colors and skin tones were pretty spot on.

These Westinghouse sets are a great value for the money, but sometimes it leaves my desiring a bit more out of my set especially in the user calibration department. Last year, I paid a little over 2k (which was the MSRP on the lvm at the time), and I couldn't have gotten a better set. Playing 1080p content on this thing is pleasure to experience.

Last night I ordered Verizon FIOS TV and Internet (30/5!). Install date is 7/19. Comcast's SA 8300HD DVR is just crap.

Anyone else have fios tv with this set?

I have fios tv. PQ IMO is the best out of any cable/satellite subscriber. The DVR is nothing special, but it gets the job done. I guess I've just gotten used to fios. At first I thought it was spectacular, now I just think it's good. I think that could have to do with the fact that I came from directv. Directv has probably the worst pq out of any service provider. Their SD channels all look washed out, and their HD channels have artifacts galore.

I've never had comcast but it seems pretty decent the few times I've seen it.

After how long before we can no longer take it back to BestBuy but have to ship it to California to get it fixed?

30 days, which is why some of us picked up the psp..

Thanks for all the info. I will be buying the 42 inch version this weekend when bestbuy.ca has the no tps promotion. Sadly, it was 1399 this morning and it is now 1499 for some reasons...

30 days, which is why some of us picked up the psp..I just read on another forum, after posting the same question, that BestBuy got a memo that:

all Westinghouse house units purchased from Best Buy can be taken into best buy for warranty, regardless of whether PSP was purchased or not. Best Buy is the major service partner for Westinghouse in Canada. Can anybody confirm this?

What is the flickering issue people are having? Can you describe it in detail please?.

I'm a bit surprised myself, but the HDMI being on a hub wasn't a total deal breaker. I will work around it. The excellence of the Trident processor pushed me over, and I prefer buying brands like this despite the risk because of the superior value. Lining Sony and friends' coffers isn't my style because I just know too much about those companies and their tactics. In truth I decided to buy because I didn't want to lay down all my cards here. I think people will be shocked by how fast OLED comes bursting onto the scene starting about 2 years from now. It's going to be huge and presents none of the flaws that plasma and lcd have now, so I figured if I fall in love with one in a few years I won't feel so guilty replacing this set because I don't 3 or 4 thousand into it.


I thought along the same lines. Generally speaking, it seemed like all LCDs at this point in time have at least potential issues - mura on the Bravias and Samsungs, and 1080p issues on the new (supposedly very good, and not super-expensive) Samsungs, etc. Given that defect rates are still an issue, and all the brands seem to have their little quirks or weak areas, I can't see putting huge money down now, not with so many happy Westy owners (and happy Vizio and Olevia owners as well). I don't think prices have bottomed out yet, and I am sure that panel quality, black levels, feature sets, etc. will improve, OLED or no OLED.

My financial situation is not nearly as good as it was a year ago, so even a sub-$2K purchase I don't take lightly (not that I would've then, really). But as you said, by keeping it in that range, I won't have qualms about making it a secondary panel in a few years, nor will I lose much sleep in the meantime about any quirks or things this set may lack. It gets a heck of a lot right for the money, and I can stop putting it off and enjoy HD *now*. :D

Ed

kentondb, pauldarkjr answered your question several posts ago.

When the PS3 is hooked up to the tv via any of the hdmi ports and set to 1080p during movie playback or while playing games, the screen flickers. Meaning the screen goes black, followed by the sound cutting out for about 1 second, then both coming back on. It happens very randomly during game play or movie playback. I watched a bunch of movies and played a bunch of games on my first set to try to isolate the problem but it happened with all of them. It was very annoying. I even tested my neighbors PS3 to see if it was a problem with my PS3. My new set doesn't do it though.

In addition, for me, some of those random flickers would result in a total loss of signal. This would require changing inputs using the remote to regain picture and sound.

I'm also getting a bit frustrated by people who seem to act like the flickering is a universal problem. Clearly, some sets suffer from it, and some sets don't. I noticed the flickering on the first set on both my Tivo S3 and PS3 within the first hour of owning it. I have used the second set for 10 days(!) and have not had it happen once on either of my two HDMI devices.

Here is my system info for the second TX-47, same as the first:
5110_1.1.0
April 13 2007

Hey, can someone PM me a link to the BB 10% coupon?

I'm gonna try to get the pricematch and coupon to work.

Thanks!

i'm so jelous of you, i saw it $300 off last night and told myself "sweet, but its late (1:30 am) so i'll buy it later"

lol, that was what I did as well @ 12:30am last night.

I called BB customer support, to find out why the website was listing 2 different prices, $1699 for 40+" LCD index pg, but when you clicked on it to get details, it listed as $1999. He said he wasn't sure what was going on, but whatever price it was in my cart ($1699) would be the price I paid. I asked if it would be that price instore, and he said not necesarily, and then we had a 'discussion' about what price-matching instore actually means (his interpretation was f*cked).

I didn't want to buy online, so I went to BB @ 10am, confirmed the price was still $1699, and grabbed it, made a deal on the 2-yr psp with the savings.

I see that the price has gone up to $1899, wtf? I guess I got in during the price mistake(?).

p.

I thought along the same lines. Generally speaking, it seemed like all LCDs at this point in time have at least potential issues - mura on the Bravias and Samsungs, and 1080p issues on the new (supposedly very good, and not super-expensive) Samsungs, etc. Given that defect rates are still an issue, and all the brands seem to have their little quirks or weak areas, I can't see putting huge money down now, not with so many happy Westy owners (and happy Vizio and Olevia owners as well). I don't think prices have bottomed out yet, and I am sure that panel quality, black levels, feature sets, etc. will improve, OLED or no OLED.

My financial situation is not nearly as good as it was a year ago, so even a sub-$2K purchase I don't take lightly (not that I would've then, really). But as you said, by keeping it in that range, I won't have qualms about making it a secondary panel in a few years, nor will I lose much sleep in the meantime about any quirks or things this set may lack. It gets a heck of a lot right for the money, and I can stop putting it off and enjoy HD *now*. :D

Ed

I agree as well. I think the price/picture/performance point of this TV is very good, given the other LCD sets currently on the market. I decided that when this set was to come out, it was time for me to step into HD given that HD content was starting to come along a little better. I'm sure OLED will be expensive at first just like most new technology, so maybe in 4-5 years I'll be ready to make a change in technology. And, for me, 46" was the size I wanted. I just don't want a bigger set... at least yet. :)

I'm a little late in posting it this time... but here they are again.... the 10%/12% off coupons...

http://images.bestbuy.com/BestBuy_US/en_US/images/external/emailpdf/062607_4th_july_coupons.pdf

I just read on another forum, after posting the same question, that BestBuy got a memo that:

Can anybody confirm this?


I just called westy, and they confirmed that here in Canada, Best Buy is handling warranty work, and that I should call them to get the details. I guess that still means possibly being without an LCD while being mailed/repaired/etc, unless the work is done somewhere local(?).

hmm, to keep the psp or not...

I do not hate Best Buy. They are capitalists acting just as one would expect capitalists to do. But I, too, am a capitalist, and when on the consumer side I look out for myself (and hopefully others on this thread) to not be raped. This is not anger; it is conviction. The reason I go to BB is that besides Fry's and maybe CC, it is the only close place to actually look at TVs in-person, and they occasionally have good deals. The key is not to let them rape you when you are buying something well-priced. BB has even called such consciencious people "bad customers." (http://aneace.blogspot.com/2005/12/try-this-increase-profits-by-pampering.html) If looking out for myself and calling a pig a pig is wrong, I don't want to be right.

For the record, not even the fact that my colorful, opinionated writing ilicits unsolicited dimestore psychology makes me "angry." Besides, anger is better diffused by venting on message boards than by watching bad movies.

Dude, next time you're in BB (which you obviously hate, but still go there), why not pick up a copy of "Anger Management " on DVD. It's a great flick.

You say yourself this chipset upgrade is "apparent," as opposed to obvious. After a dozen posts by BENZONATE comparing the two, it seemed as if they were nearly identical TVs but for the tuner. Lesson learned.

But your logic that a bad earlier model should in no way influence one's future dealings with a product sure wouldn't apply to cars. If the Ford you bought two years ago was a PoS, you'd be a lot less likely to buy one now, no? I know I won't ever buy a Sceptre - regardless of how good their new models are - after reading that thread for two years. :eek:

BTW, I am not trying to take a side here; I am being devil's advocate to get to the truth about a huge purchase. ;)

And what does that have to do with this model? The new TX uses a different, apparently vastly superior, chipset as well as this year's panel technology. Using a review of a different model from a year or more ago is like saying you won't buy a redeisgned new model year car because the one from two years ago got bad reviews.

Sorry for multiple consecutive posts.

It appears that Westinghouse is in Santa Fe Springs, CA, which is a couple of miles away from my house. Knowing that, would you all still advise the extended service plan from BB? It seems that the main reason people were advocating this was the dread of mailing to Westinghouse for service. I could drive over in 10 minutes. :confused:

Are you sure that is their depot location?

Are you sure that is their depot location?

No, but it is the addy on their Web site. I will look into it further unless someone else knows.

Typically corporate HQ addresses are not the same as repair depots. Perhaps one of the users here who has had to return their set directly to Westinghouse could comment?

I didn't want to buy online, so I went to BB @ 10am, confirmed the price was still $1699, and grabbed it, made a deal on the 2-yr psp with the savings.

I see that the price has gone up to $1899, wtf? I guess I got in during the price mistake(?).
p.
protovision - I doubt this would work for price matching, but would you be willing to PM me a scanned copy of your receipt? May be worth a shot...
Did you also mentioned something about a "save the PST" event this weekend? Didn't see anything in the flyer - do you have more details?

I hate the Canadian BB PSP prices! $430 for the 4 year option on the TX47...

I purchased the TX-42F430S this week and also found that the SPDIF optical outputs only 2 channel PCM stereo even though the ATSC/QAM broadcast audio is clearly in Dolby Digital 5.1. My other, older, ATSC TV receiver has no problem sending 5.1 AC-3 streams from it's optical output to the same 5.1 receiver for the same ATSC/QAM broadcasts. And as other have observed, there is no setup option to tell the ATSC/QAM tuner decoder to pass the AC-3 5.1 bitstream to the SPDIF output.

This Westinghouse 1080p LCD ATSC/QAM TV is advertised as "State of the Art" but some seems to have forgotten to send the tuner's Digital 5.1 audio to it's optical output, which is clearly unacceptable. This is a bug or design flaw that Westinghouse should fix ASAP
with a firmware update (hopefully customer installable), or a cross-ship swap for a working version, at no charge to customers. If this digital audio issue isn't fixed, this set is just another high resolution 1080p LCD monitor.

I do not recommend buying one of these new 1080p LCD TV's until the ATSC/QAM tuner SPDIF output digital 5.1 audio stream flaw is fixed.

I know someone mentioned it before but i have a serious pink line on the bottom of my 42" TX that i picked up the other day. I dont have an hdmi cable yet so i dont know if it is on that too but, it is over the ypbpr1 and 2 cable. Plugging the coax cable in i have no lines. Anyone have any solutions?

Owners,

I've been considering the TX47 since I want a 1080P set. I started reading the thread but too many pages!

- How does this new model compare to the LVM series in terms of picture quality overall?
- Which one suffers from technical issues the most?

Thanks.

I'm also getting a bit frustrated by people who seem to act like the flickering is a universal problem. Clearly, some sets suffer from it, and some sets don't. I noticed the flickering on the first set on both my Tivo S3 and PS3 within the first hour of owning it. I have used the second set for 10 days(!) and have not had it happen once on either of my two HDMI devices.

Here is my system info for the second TX-47, same as the first:
5110_1.1.0
April 13 2007

I never meant to say that the tx seems to have a universal problem regarding flickering/losing signal, but it seem to be a widespread problem. I'm glad to hear that you aren't in fact experiencing the same flickering problem anymore. I'm now past the 30 day return period for the set so I'm not sure how replacing it with best buy would work.. at least I got the psp. I might wait a little while to see if people purchasing this set over the next month or so are still experiencing these hdmi flickering problems. Maybe there are some issues with alot of the first production run sets, and it will be noticed and fixed in the next "batch"...?

What's strange is how widespread this issue is. It would be interesting I guess to take a poll who's experienced these issues amongst all the tx owners. I'm wondering if it's possible some defective chips made their way into some sets or what else it could be. It's VERY odd because I would think that the hdmi flickering or chips that are used would either largely work or not work at all, but I'm not familiar w/ the hdcp specs or how the handshaking works. Maybe it's not even an hdcp issue..?

At this point I'll be keeping an eye on this thread as people buy these. If it seems like later purchasers don't have this issue then I'll try and swap mine out for another one. I'm thinking it will be "fun" trying to explain this issue to bestbuy, and actually getting it to flicker or drop out if they want "proof" so that I can do an exchange or something with the psp. I imagine it's not too common that a set is exchange w/in a few months of the purchase date.

I just called westy, and they confirmed that here in Canada, Best Buy is handling warranty work, and that I should call them to get the details. I guess that still means possibly being without an LCD while being mailed/repaired/etc, unless the work is done somewhere local(?).

hmm, to keep the psp or not...

I think you're missing an important aspect of this...regardless of who is handling the work and where, the PSP means that you have 4 years of not paying for said work, as opposed to one (maybe two if you wanted to go through your credit card company, many will double the warranty, but of course you have to find your agreement and check...). For me, this was a no-brainer. These are very sophisticated TVs, circuit boards, ROMs, etc, and a repair could be expensive. I am not a big believer in PSPs/extended warranties for many things, but in this case, I paid $250, and I believe it was well worth it compared to the price of the TV (the 47") and potential repairs.

Ed

Search this thread under "BENZONATE" and he does what is surely the world's most detailed comparison of the two sets. The LVM is a monitor (no tuner) and according to at least one review (http://ultimateavmag.com/flatpaneldisplays/1006westlvm47/index1.html), suffers from motion blur. According to some in this thread, the TX has a superior processor and does not suffer this problem. I do not know this for a fact.

As for myself, after spending my third consecutive day looking at this set in-person at BB, I have decided to wait for the prices on other sets to come down. BTW, at my Industry, CA BB, the blueshirt I was dealing with would not 10% the Web price. Had he done that, I would have bought it. On this occasion I did get to fiddle with the menus quite a bit, and just couldn't get it to match the surrounding sets to my satisfaction. Yes, I know those sets will not be in my bedroom, but I want to be in love, not just in like with a $2K purchase. MUST RESIST INSTANT GRATIFICATION. ;)

BTW, how many in this thread would consider the Samsung LN-S4696D for a little more at Fry's online? Yes, a year older, but a much better model (just under $5K MSRP when it first shipped last June!). Haven't seen it in person though.

Thanks for a great thread, but I am going to wait until August and see what the Panasonic TH-50PZ700U 50" plasmas are going for. Got some money coming in then anyway.

Owners,

I've been considering the TX47 since I want a 1080P set. I started reading the thread but too many pages!

- How does this new model compare to the LVM series in terms of picture quality overall?
- Which one suffers from technical issues the most?

Thanks.

In the meantime, I've found that the settings posted earlier seem to be decent for HDMI (S3 TiVo and an HTPC), and I think I'm using them for QAM as well :

Brightness 40
Contrast 62
Saturation 40
Hue 45
Sharpness 0
Backlight 20-30
Color Temp Warm

Ed

Well, worked late tonight, came home and found stuff not done that should have been, so I ended up sitting down about 10. Briefly considered playing with DVE, decided to relax instead. After about an hour and a half, I couldn't take it anymore. Brightness is now at 55, backlight at 20. Things were just too dark otherwise, I put on CSI: Miami which is a show I used to watch but started to annoy me. Maybe it's filmed darker or something, but it just was not right, despite looking much better in HD than when I used to watch it before. It looks a lot better now, and I think I may be able to stop my constant backlight tweaking as well - we'll see.

I mentioned black crush before, but equally as annoying was that on a lot of shows, people's faces seemed to be dark or in shadow quite often. I would get annoyed, but then watch another show that was fine or a commercial would come on that was all brightly lit and I'd forget for a while. But I've noticed it on Sopranos off the HTPC, CSI:Miami tonight off Tivo, and Law and Order off TiVo to a lesser extent, as well as similar shows before.

Ed

I just got my TX-47 and it looks great!

I also picked up a new HD-DVR box from Comcast and specifically requested one with HDMI since my other DVR box didn't have that connection. They gave me the Motorola DCT-6412 III.

The TX is not picking up the HDMI signal though. I can't say if its the TX or if its the DVR since this is my only HDMI source. I have a Blu-Ray player coming on Tuesday that I can test.

I checked the DVR setup menu that is accessed by turning it off and selecting menu. I read other users seeing HDMI settings in that menu but I only see YPbPr settings. Maybe the DVR is not sending the HDMI signal?

Any other ideas?

Picked up the TX-42 and looks great. Connected to my Vista Media Center PC to a Nvidia 8800GT at 1080p was no issue at all. HD-DVD playback from the PC looks great!

Xbox 360 at 1080p works great as well.

HD through comcast does not look bad either, I actually really like this picture compared to my old 42" Philips Plasma. I'm slowly getting used to the difference of Plasma to LCD.

My only gripe is the remote not having seperate commands/functions for each HDMI connection. Instead you have to scroll through, kind of a pain, especially since I have a Harmony 880 that I use. Is there any way around this or do I just need to drop another $50 on a Monoprice HDMI switcher with remote?

Thanks,
Marcus

Heres my newly finished setup with my TX42 after a new TV stand (Bush VS74952) and floating shelf.

http://www.layddly.com/gallery/d/18734-2/DSC_1260.JPG

Layd Dly- Looks cozy. How is the tv hooked up to your cable box? Do you have a pink line at the bottom of your screen?

today is just my bad day, really bad day. I drove 1.5 hours to the nearest bestbuy to buy the lovely 47f430s, suppose to be lovely and drove 1.5 hours back. After lifted the 8x pound monster to the third floor with my girlfriend and connected to the ps2, ps3, and computer, the HDTV just don't show anything, even the OSD. I tried both remote and on TV buttom. No luck at all. Only the power buttom is working. =_=" By the way, there is a dead pixel around the middle of the TV.

Sigh, I will have to drive 3 hours to get an exchange.
I am so depressed and disappointed.

Wish all of you get a prefect set.

Layd Dly- Looks cozy. How is the tv hooked up to your cable box? Do you have a pink line at the bottom of your screen?

STB is using HDMI and is plugged into HDMI 1, and i have no pink line at the bottom.

Layd Dly- Looks cozy. How is the tv hooked up to your cable box? Do you have a pink line at the bottom of your screen?

Atomz, what type of sources (DVD, Cable, etc.) are you hooking up that are generating the pink line? There is a good chance that the problem lies with your sources, and so hooking up a different source to the component inputs might give you a better idea where the problem is coming from. Also, you might want to try playing with the de-interlace setting in the user calibration menu and see if setting it to on or off changes the position of the line or eliminates it.

This information will also give the rest of us a better chance of helping you to figure out where the problem is coming from, though I would suspect a source issue without knowing more.

today is just my bad day, really bad day. I drove 1.5 hours to the nearest bestbuy to buy the lovely 47f430s, suppose to be lovely and drove 1.5 hours back. After lifted the 8x pound monster to the third floor with my girlfriend and connected to the ps2, ps3, and computer, the HDTV just don't show anything, even the OSD. I tried both remote and on TV buttom. No luck at all. Only the power buttom is working. =_=" By the way, there is a dead pixel around the middle of the TV.

Sigh, I will have to drive 3 hours to get an exchange.
I am so depressed and disappointed.

Wish all of you get a prefect set.

Sorry to hear about that, I'd be upset to say the least. When the TV powers on, do you ever see the Westinghouse logo? And is the light below the screen orange or blue when you turn it on? One other thing you might want to try before lugging it back to BB is to remove all of your physical inputs, then unplug the TV, and repower it without any inputs in whatsoever. For others who experinced similar lockups this sometimes worked. Even without any inputs, the TX should still show the OSD when it is powered on.

Well, worked late tonight, came home and found stuff not done that should have been, so I ended up sitting down about 10. Briefly considered playing with DVE, decided to relax instead. After about an hour and a half, I couldn't take it anymore. Brightness is now at 55, backlight at 20. Things were just too dark otherwise, I put on CSI: Miami which is a show I used to watch but started to annoy me. Maybe it's filmed darker or something, but it just was not right, despite looking much better in HD than when I used to watch it before. It looks a lot better now, and I think I may be able to stop my constant backlight tweaking as well - we'll see.

I mentioned black crush before, but equally as annoying was that on a lot of shows, people's faces seemed to be dark or in shadow quite often. I would get annoyed, but then watch another show that was fine or a commercial would come on that was all brightly lit and I'd forget for a while. But I've noticed it on Sopranos off the HTPC, CSI:Miami tonight off Tivo, and Law and Order off TiVo to a lesser extent, as well as similar shows before.

Ed

After yet more fiddling with the new test patterns, I still have brightness at 60, as that is simply the lowest level that will alow the full blacker than black range of the grayscale to display properly. However, I have altered the color balance slightly to take out some red push, and I also dropped saturation down to 38. I am very much looking forward to Xcalibur's numbers in a couple of days; the more I watch, the more I realize the colors are off , but in way I can't yet properly correct.

I just called westy, and they confirmed that here in Canada, Best Buy is handling warranty work, and that I should call them to get the details. I guess that still means possibly being without an LCD while being mailed/repaired/etc, unless the work is done somewhere local(?).

hmm, to keep the psp or not...
Yeah, I highly doubt the techs at BestBuy are capable of fixing LCD TV's of any OTHER brand let alone Westinghouse... As long as I don't have the hassle of finding a box and shipping it out to cali myself, then it's reasonable as that's probably what they do with repairs of LCD-TV's of other brands rather than fixing it in-house.

Midway the de-interlace worked in removing the line, however a static line appears on top of channels that come in STD TV. some HD channels that play STD when not playing HD dont have it others do So channel 11 (WPIX) has the line but 711 (WPIXHD) doesnt, even though they are both the same STD show. So it is a little better because some channels look perfect now. Now i will only go crazy watching the Yankees play instead of watching them with a pink line on the bottom. I am using TWCNYC SA8300HD DVR box. I am going to try and get some other device or cables and test, i guess i am half way their now. Thanks.

When I turn the set "off", the blue light turns orange, but stays on. Is this normal, or should there be no light when the set is off?

Tom in TX

i take back what i said in my last post when i shut the tv off and put it back on the pink line comes back. I have to hook some other stuff up to do some more tests. I new i didnt like the color pink for a reason!!!

Tom - when the tv is off it should be gone. The orange light i think means its still in standby. Are you sure you are shutting the tv off not just the cable box or whatever is sending the signal to the tv. The westinghouse remote you really have to be a sharp shooter sometime to shut it off.

When I turn the set "off", the blue light turns orange, but stays on. Is this normal, or should there be no light when the set is off?

Tom in TX

Your TV automatically is set to shut down in standby, so unless you turn the option off in the menu, your light will be orange and in standby mode when the tv is off.

Just got back from Best Buy, now a little pissed. My first 42 had the flickering problem but mostly only when the PS3 changed resolution. I took it back, did price match while I was there and saved a whole $30. Now the 2nd 42 flickers all the time, changing resolutions, during gameplay, and sometimes the sound drops out even while watching cable. I also have a dead pixel now. I have to be focusing on that one spot to notice it though. I noticed someone posted something on here earlier to help get rid of dead pixels, does anyone know if it works?

Help! It's probably a stupid question, but those of you using a PC, are you using a DVI-to-HDMI cable and actually getting 1080p? I have tried just about everything possible to get it to work but I can not get the TV to display anything beyond 1280x1024 resolution (using HDMI). Things I have tried:
1. Two different DVI-to-HDMI cables purchased from different vendors (one 6ft, one 10ft).
2. Two different computers (one using ATI 9700Pro video, the other using an ATI X850XT)
3. A full "clean" uninstall reinstall of ATI video drivers including older versions and newest. Latest attempt included only installing driver and then using ATI Tool Bar utility instead of Catalyst Control panel.
4. Tried every resolution and refresh rate known to man (well maybe not, but at least 640x400 through 1920x1080 and everything inbetween). Once I go beyond 1280x1024 resolution I get a blank screen and "No input signal". The ATI Tool Bar allows you to force refresh rates which I set all to 60Hz (but also tried other rates including 30Hz where available).
5. Used dual monitor so I could see what I was doing as every time I reinstalled the ATI drivers, the reboot would cause the Westinghouse to not display anything (probably trying to default to native-res). Dual-monitors (extended desktop) also simplified testing all the resolutions.
6. The VGA port works perfectly and will sync right up to 1920x1080p and many others.

From what I can tell, when hooked via HDMI, the video cards don't retrieve any specs from the display and default to Plug-and-play monitor or just Default-Monitor, but this may be normal. When plugged-in using VGA port, the ATI Tool Bar app reports back that it is a Westinghouse monitor and displays the correct maximum resolution. In HDMI, it doesn't see any info. So what am I overlooking or could it be that the TV is defective?

So, after seeing the 12% coupon again from jbradg (Thanks by the way, you freakin' rock!) and the TV dropping price by 100 bucks since I bought it I figured I'd try my hand at the price match game.

I actually "bought" the TV 5 weeks ago so the last day to return the TV was June 26th and my coupon clearly said this, so I was thinking they would just shoot me down. However, it took them 3 weeks to get the TV delivered to the store so I plead my case saying that I've really only had it for a week and a half.

The girl at the return desk said, "There isn't anything I can do about it because the computer won't let me."

I acted depressed and let silence pass (never underestimate the power of silence). I then said, "Is there a manager that can authorize it or anything?"

She started to get defensive and said, "Oh, I have the power to authorize it" (never underestimate pride).

I again, let silence pass. She said, "We just need to figure out a way to do it. Do you have money left on your credit card to cover the cost if we return the set and then you buy it again?"

I said, "Shouldn't be a problem."

So, she returned the set and credited my card and then she rang up the set again. She said, "This is more than you paid for it originally."

I said, "Oh yeah... I have this 12% off coupon" (never underestimate the power of feigned ignorance).

She rang that up and it was a GREAT deal cheaper than I paid. I figured I might as well get the 4 year PSP while I was at it since everyone else here seems to be getting the peace of mind.

So, she rang that up and it was $179... but this was for TVs in the $1250-1500 range which I was clearly not paying for this TV. I hassled her some more and she claimed there was no way to do it because the PSP was tied to the original price of the TV. I was again silent (man, I love this tactic). She called someone else over to see if he knew a way to trick the computer into allowing it. Luckily he did, and I got the lowered price for the PSP on $1000-1250 priced TVs.

At the end of the day I paid 30 bucks more than I originally did 5 weeks ago and got the 4 year PSP included this time. I don't care what anyone says. For this price and the performance that this TV provides it is an absolute steal.

Now, I have to take a shower to get the stink of manipulation off of me.

Help! It's probably a stupid question, but those of you using a PC, are you using a DVI-to-HDMI cable and actually getting 1080p? I have tried just about everything possible to get it to work but I can not get the TV to display anything beyond 1280x1024 resolution (using HDMI). Things I have tried:
1. Two different DVI-to-HDMI cables purchased from different vendors (one 6ft, one 10ft).
2. Two different computers (one using ATI 9700Pro video, the other using an ATI X850XT)
3. A full "clean" uninstall reinstall of ATI video drivers including older versions and newest. Latest attempt included only installing driver and then using ATI Tool Bar utility instead of Catalyst Control panel.
4. Tried every resolution and refresh rate known to man (well maybe not, but at least 640x400 through 1920x1080 and everything inbetween). Once I go beyond 1280x1024 resolution I get a blank screen and "No input signal". The ATI Tool Bar allows you to force refresh rates which I set all to 60Hz (but also tried other rates including 30Hz where available).
5. Used dual monitor so I could see what I was doing as every time I reinstalled the ATI drivers, the reboot would cause the Westinghouse to not display anything (probably trying to default to native-res). Dual-monitors (extended desktop) also simplified testing all the resolutions.
6. The VGA port works perfectly and will sync right up to 1920x1080p and many others.

From what I can tell, when hooked via HDMI, the video cards don't retrieve any specs from the display and default to Plug-and-play monitor or just Default-Monitor, but this may be normal. When plugged-in using VGA port, the ATI Tool Bar app reports back that it is a Westinghouse monitor and displays the correct maximum resolution. In HDMI, it doesn't see any info. So what am I overlooking or could it be that the TV is defective?

I believe I read earlier that forcing a 75 Hz refresh rate fixes this problem with the ATI cards. It is an acknowledged issue by AMD.

Since I am now back from my vacation I thought I would post the pictures I promised earlier about my light leakage.

They can be viewed here:

Look in Top Left Corner (http://lhelan.org/images/leakage00.jpg)

and here:

Zoomed in Look of Top Left Corner (http://lhelan.org/images/leakage1.jpg)

Please ignore anything else in the image as it is just picking up light reflections. Other than this "C shape" light leakage the panel looks great. This is with 100% backlight. At the ~30 backlight that I typically use I can still see it but it is not noticeable except during scene changes.

Do you guys think I should exchange the set and take the risk of getting a worse panel?

Just a quick edit: I decided to press against the panel lightly in the top left corner and the "C" disappears completely. It seems just like what x_Caliber said that when they were attaching the panel to the rest of the TV they tightened it too much causing this weird "Bend"in the panel. I'm thinking I'm going to have to taker 'er back.

So, after seeing the 12% coupon again from jbradg (Thanks by the way, you freakin' rock!) and the TV dropping price by 100 bucks since I bought it I figured I'd try my hand at the price match game.

I actually "bought" the TV 5 weeks ago so the last day to return the TV was June 26th and my coupon clearly said this, so I was thinking they would just shoot me down. However, it took them 3 weeks to get the TV delivered to the store so I plead my case saying that I've really only had it for a week and a half.

The girl at the return desk said, "There isn't anything I can do about it because the computer won't let me."

I acted depressed and let silence pass (never underestimate the power of silence). I then said, "Is there a manager that can authorize it or anything?"

She started to get defensive and said, "Oh, I have the power to authorize it" (never underestimate pride).

I again, let silence pass. She said, "We just need to figure out a way to do it. Do you have money left on your credit card to cover the cost if we return the set and then you buy it again?"

I said, "Shouldn't be a problem."

So, she returned the set and credited my card and then she rang up the set again. She said, "This is more than you paid for it originally."

I said, "Oh yeah... I have this 12% off coupon" (never underestimate the power of feigned ignorance).

She rang that up and it was a GREAT deal cheaper than I paid. I figured I might as well get the 4 year PSP while I was at it since everyone else here seems to be getting the peace of mind.

So, she rang that up and it was $179... but this was for TVs in the $1250-1500 range which I was clearly not paying for this TV. I hassled her some more and she claimed there was no way to do it because the PSP was tied to the original price of the TV. I was again silent (man, I love this tactic). She called someone else over to see if he knew a way to trick the computer into allowing it. Luckily he did, and I got the lowered price for the PSP on $1000-1250 priced TVs.

At the end of the day I paid 30 bucks more than I originally did 5 weeks ago and got the 4 year PSP included this time. I don't care what anyone says. For this price and the performance that this TV provides it is an absolute steal.

Now, I have to take a shower to get the stink of manipulation off of me.


Want to come work your magic at my store?

I had to have them price match it because in store it was different than online, and then it wouldn't take the 12% coupon. One of the ladies said it was okay, and then she disappeared, so they had to call someone else over. He denied it, so I sat there confused, and then just left :(

GF got a 47" TX set last week from BestBuy for stellar deal of $1617 + tax.

Wonderful pix from off-the-air HD over direct analog cable connection. SD upconversion is very nice.

We left set burn in, continually on approx 1 week to burn out infant mortality issues - left screen on (reduced brightness) and audio on at

Absolutely no image quality or behavioral issues when set is on, but we've noticed some power-up anomalies esp w/remote control.


Firmware revision: 2007 Apr 13 ver. 5110-1.1.0 ....


Zero hot pixels and no noticeable dead pixels (whee!).


Direct Comcast analog cable input. Even though GF has a digital cable
box, we're so pleased with off-the-air HD that we'd rather put up with
TV upscaling SD cable channels,and leave digital box disconnected til we
get HD cable box.


No other devices connected via alternate video ports, nothing else
hooked up - just "F"-connector cable input and 110VAC power in.


Set had following system-related (i.e, not image-quality, OSD or
channel- related, etc.) settings that were slightly jimmied with in the
first hour of set operation (hey, gotta explore <bseg>):



DPMS mode for 5 min (dunno why, default is prob 1 min.)
Sleep = Off;
Power On plug = On;
Power mode = Normal;
Power LED = On;
Autosource = On;




A few times when we power down w/remote and try to power back up
later, set does not come up. This is usu after an extended time - i.e, we
went out shopping and came back, not just power down/power up cycle
in under a ~1 min span.


Once, the "W" logo came up and just stayed. No response to remote.
Had to manually cycle power switch on set. Set came back up thru Big 'W'
display and back into normal operation.


Another time after powering up TV, it came up w/audio only but no
picture, with no response to remote control. Again, manual power cycle
on TV power switch did the trick.


It appears that one time I was manually powering up the TV with the
TV's switch and I was playing with the Remote control, the TV may also
have 'gotten lost'. Again, manual power cycle on TV set power switch
(with no pressing of remote buttons during 'W' display) seems to do
the trick.


As I mentioned in previous post a few days ago, I occasionally see,
from OTA HD broadcasts, the flickering line or two at top of screen for
some but not all HD channels, and not for all HD broadcasts. Since
there are wide reports some broadcasters appear to be using out-of-
spec extra closed captioning, I won't blame Westy - best for them to
follow a spec. Depending on the nature of the HW/FW partitioning,
that line or so may or may not be able to be blanked, erased, etc.
Sometimes FW can't fix everything, especially if a lot of video processing
is done in a hardware pipeline.

However I suspect a kludge FW update could be fashioned so that the
first line or two of the appropriate area of video RAM could be zeroed
out in timed relation to a top-of-screen interrupt.



I have since changed the configuration of the set to:
DPMS mode = Off;
Autosource = Off;
Power On Plug = Off;


This way I seem to have 'instant on' without 'Big W boot screen'.

I'll report later if I have any anomalies in this setup. I'll also try the set configured with Energy Saver mode (which will go thru W boot screen) and see if the problem is related to attempting to autodetect input source and the firmware is somehow 'getting lost' due to this.

I'm confident these issues are firmware-related and are not hardware issues and that alternate paths around them exist suitable enough for my use (autosorce is not a real hot item for me, I'm not that lazy I can't select a new input source myself).

I will report these observations to Westy, and would encourage others to do the same. This may codge a firmware update out of them even though they'd like to regard the product as "finished".

[I do firmware for a living and can forgive Westy for bugs because I create them myself, esp when under tight release schedules and last-minute changes come down from marketing...]




Bill Wiese
San Jose CA

I believe I read earlier that forcing a 75 Hz refresh rate fixes this problem with the ATI cards. It is an acknowledged issue by AMD.
Thanks, flabioh. I have not figured out a way to test this yet as I am not offered any higher refresh rates than 60Hz at 1920x1080 (and the "Hide modes that this monitor cannot display" is greyed out). Anyways, if this is an ATI/AMD issue, then my previous Westinghouse LVM-42 model must have been able to handle sub-60Hz rates better as it worked perfectly with my X850 card.

Thanks, flabioh. I have not figured out a way to test this yet as I am not offered any higher refresh rates than 60Hz at 1920x1080 (and the "Hide modes that this monitor cannot display" is greyed out). Anyways, if this is an ATI/AMD issue, then my previous Westinghouse LVM-42 model must have been able to handle sub-60Hz rates better as it worked perfectly with my X850 card.

I believe most people achieve the higher refresh rate using Power Strip. Hopefully that points you in the right direction. You could search this thread for 75 Hz and you'd probably find what I am remembering.

By the way, I'm using VGA at 1920x1080 and it is very good. Aside from some ghosting caused by cheap cables it would probably do well enough for you.

Looooooong time lurker, first time poster....
Please indulge me... I bought a Westy lvm42w2 last june @ BB (one day online sale :D ), picked up the PSP two weeks later. Set was great except for three things - power lockups (i had v1.16 and it happened approx. once every couple weeks), 1080p sparklies (tried with a friend's equipment), and most annoying the uneven backlight banding (really bothersome). I called Westinghouse re: three issues, waited months for a call, called West. again, waited months for a call, figured when the time was right I would cash in on my BB PSP. Last month, when I noticed that the TX series was showing up and the LVM series was all but gone (from BB), I decided to call Westinghouse one more time, two weeks before the manufacturers warranty ran out (why use PSP, when Westy should cover the defects?). To my surprise, Westinghouse gave BB a "number" in their system, allowing me to do whatever I chose (refund, exchange, etc..).
So I head on over to BB w/ the wife (WAF is very important and sometimes it's better to act a little dumb). Long story short (haha), we end up ordering the TX47, and we are told it will be in store in a few days.... returning LVM42W2, returning PSP on same (prorated refund) and picking up new TX47....in total BB paying us approx. $40 for the whole transaction (even longer story, don't ask :D ). So now, we've gone from a 42" 1080p monitor only (great value set) to a 47" 1080p HDTV w/tuners (terrific value).
We have now had the set for two weeks and it is great. Who would have ever thought that when I had originally wanted a 37" (LVM37W3), and got a 42" W2 only because the price was so good that one day last year, that I would now have a 47" hanging from the wall, like it was always there?!?! Go figure!
Now, the new TX47 is head and shoulders above the LVM42. Not only is the picture bigger (and better), the sound is significantly better, and the user controls are much better, too. There have been no power lockup issues, no probs w/ 1080p, and best of all...100% even backlight, no banding whatsoever.

I probably would have continued to be an AV voyeur forever (I love these forums and have been reading and educating myself for almost three years here w/o a post), but I actually have a few questions regarding this new set that I have not seen discussed and I have read this entire thread since inception.

My connections so far are simple...Cablevision SA8300 HD DVR connected HDMI to HDMI 1 on TV (box outputting 1080i always), and a Panny upconverting DVD/VCR connected HDMI to HDMI 2 on TV (also set to output 1080i). I plan on running cable directly to TV so that I can record two programs and still watch a third different channel live.
Now, for my questions: 1) Has anyone noticed that on channels with a ticker (ESPN, CNN, MSNBC, etc...) that there is a noticeable stutter, or a jittery movement in the ticker; not just a smooth scroll, like it should be??!! Note that this judder is on all stations with a "ticker" along the bottom, and does not impact regular viewing as far as I can tell.
2) Almost every time I turn on the TV (power save on normal, set powers on immediately and I never turn off the cable box) the audio and video are out of synch, with the audio lagging behind; the solution is switching sources to any other input and back to HDMI 1 and the audio and video resynch. However, I have to do this nearly every time I power on the TV. This never happened with the LVM nor did the ticker stutter.
I have not noticed anyone discuss any kind of audio lag or a/v synch problem. I also do not think that I should have to switch away and back with the source virtually everytime I power up the TV. What do you guys think???

Lastly, can anyone recommend user settings (calibrated, preferably) that include R,G,B levels for HDMI in very low light setting.

I apologize in advance for the LONG post, but I guess it has been building up for a long time and I needed to finally pull the trigger.... Thanks in advance for any help, comments, suggestions, and if anybody has any questions for me, please feel free to ask .... I would love to be able to give back something to these boards from which I have taken and learned so much.

Thanks again.
KBW

Looooooong time lurker, first time poster....

Now, for my questions: 1) Has anyone noticed that on channels with a ticker (ESPN, CNN, MSNBC, etc...) that there is a noticeable stutter, or a jittery movement in the ticker; not just a smooth scroll, like it should be??!! Note that this judder is on all stations with a "ticker" along the bottom, and does not impact regular viewing as far as I can tell.
2) Almost every time I turn on the TV (power save on normal, set powers on immediately and I never turn off the cable box) the audio and video are out of synch, with the audio lagging behind; the solution is switching sources to any other input and back to HDMI 1 and the audio and video resynch. However, I have to do this nearly every time I power on the TV. This never happened with the LVM nor did the ticker stutter.
I have not noticed anyone discuss any kind of audio lag or a/v synch problem. I also do not think that I should have to switch away and back with the source virtually everytime I power up the TV. What do you guys think???

Lastly, can anyone recommend user settings (calibrated, preferably) that include R,G,B levels for HDMI in very low light setting.

Thanks again.
KB

I notice the "stutter" (I think its more of a slight blur) also on scrolling text. I thought that it was probably just from the 8ms response of the lcd, but maybe it isnt since you say the old model didnt do this. It is very slight to me though.

I notice the "stutter" (I think its more of a slight blur) also on scrolling text. I thought that it was probably just from the 8ms response of the lcd, but maybe it isnt since you say the old model didnt do this. It is very slight to me though.

Anything re: the a/v synch issue???

My connections so far are simple...Cablevision SA8300 HD DVR connected HDMI to HDMI 1 on TV (box outputting 1080i always), and a Panny upconverting DVD/VCR connected HDMI to HDMI 2 on TV (also set to output 1080i). I plan on running cable directly to TV so that I can record two programs and still watch a third different channel live.
Now, for my questions: 1) Has anyone noticed that on channels with a ticker (ESPN, CNN, MSNBC, etc...) that there is a noticeable stutter, or a jittery movement in the ticker; not just a smooth scroll, like it should be??!! Note that this judder is on all stations with a "ticker" along the bottom, and does not impact regular viewing as far as I can tell.KBW

I haven't noticed this at all. In fact I just checked ESPN 1 and 2 HD and SD and CNN SD and none of them stuttering at all.

Has anyone found a way to go directly to each HDMI input aside from scrolling through all 4 HDMI connections?

Thanks,
M

Could anyone post their best xbox360 settings for this TV?

Thanks!

Looks like the price on the 42 incher went back up. So guess Im stickin with my 37 SE at this point, unless someone has figured out some way to get the 42 back down in price via rebates.

UPDATE: After further investigation.... 47" TX 47F473s with 4/13/07 firmware version 5110-1.1.0....

Important settings, tweaked after Factory Reset:
DPMS mode = OFF;
Sleep = OFF;
Power on Plug = ON; (will check with this set to Off next test cycle)
Power mode = Energy Saver;
Power LED = ON;
Autosource = OFF;


... it appears that if the TX47's power mode is set to Energy Saver (i.e, full boot of TV on power up, and full shutdown on power down) and one waits several hours after shutdown, there can sometimes be power up problems using remote -- the TX47 comes up into 'Big W' display and just hangs. Powering down with main power button on TV and then powering up with either TV power button or via remote power butten seems to fix things back to normal.

Now, for some more fun:

Playing with the remote during a full-boot power-up cycle (from 'Big W') and pressing power key multiple times during boot allows the set to come up OK but I often get video with or without audio channel, and a small window at top that says "No Input Signal" - even though a quite nice TV channel is being displayed.
Switching to another channel and returning alleviates this situation: the 'No Input Signal" window disappears and sound returns (if absent).

Will let y'all know more when I find out more...


Bill Wiese
San Jose CA





Wonderful pix from off-the-air HD over direct analog cable connection. SD upconversion is very nice.

We left set burn in, continually on approx 1 week to burn out infant mortality issues - left screen on (reduced brightness) and audio on at

Absolutely no image quality or behavioral issues when set is on, but we've noticed some power-up anomalies esp w/remote control.


Firmware revision: 2007 Apr 13 ver. 5110-1.1.0 ....


Zero hot pixels and no noticeable dead pixels (whee!).


Direct Comcast analog cable input. Even though GF has a digital cable
box, we're so pleased with off-the-air HD that we'd rather put up with
TV upscaling SD cable channels,and leave digital box disconnected til we
get HD cable box.


No other devices connected via alternate video ports, nothing else
hooked up - just "F"-connector cable input and 110VAC power in.


Set had following system-related (i.e, not image-quality, OSD or
channel- related, etc.) settings that were slightly jimmied with in the
first hour of set operation (hey, gotta explore <bseg>):



DPMS mode for 5 min (dunno why, default is prob 1 min.)
Sleep = Off;
Power On plug = On;
Power mode = Normal;
Power LED = On;
Autosource = On;




A few times when we power down w/remote and try to power back up
later, set does not come up. This is usu after an extended time - i.e, we
went out shopping and came back, not just power down/power up cycle
in under a ~1 min span.


Once, the "W" logo came up and just stayed. No response to remote.
Had to manually cycle power switch on set. Set came back up thru Big 'W'
display and back into normal operation.


Another time after powering up TV, it came up w/audio only but no
picture, with no response to remote control. Again, manual power cycle
on TV power switch did the trick.


It appears that one time I was manually powering up the TV with the
TV's switch and I was playing with the Remote control, the TV may also
have 'gotten lost'. Again, manual power cycle on TV set power switch
(with no pressing of remote buttons during 'W' display) seems to do
the trick.


As I mentioned in previous post a few days ago, I occasionally see,
from OTA HD broadcasts, the flickering line or two at top of screen for
some but not all HD channels, and not for all HD broadcasts. Since
there are wide reports some broadcasters appear to be using out-of-
spec extra closed captioning, I won't blame Westy - best for them to
follow a spec. Depending on the nature of the HW/FW partitioning,
that line or so may or may not be able to be blanked, erased, etc.
Sometimes FW can't fix everything, especially if a lot of video processing
is done in a hardware pipeline.

However I suspect a kludge FW update could be fashioned so that the
first line or two of the appropriate area of video RAM could be zeroed
out in timed relation to a top-of-screen interrupt.



I have since changed the configuration of the set to:
DPMS mode = Off;
Autosource = Off;
Power On Plug = Off;


This way I seem to have 'instant on' without 'Big W boot screen'.

I'll report later if I have any anomalies in this setup. I'll also try the set configured with Energy Saver mode (which will go thru W boot screen) and see if the problem is related to attempting to autodetect input source and the firmware is somehow 'getting lost' due to this.

I'm confident these issues are firmware-related and are not hardware issues and that alternate paths around them exist suitable enough for my use (autosorce is not a real hot item for me, I'm not that lazy I can't select a new input source myself).

I will report these observations to Westy, and would encourage others to do the same. This may codge a firmware update out of them even though they'd like to regard the product as "finished".

[I do firmware for a living and can forgive Westy for bugs because I create them myself, esp when under tight release schedules and last-minute changes come down from marketing...]

For those of us who don't have a PC hooked up to their TX and are looking for some good color reproduction, I found some awesome HD photo galleries on Comcast On-Demand yesterday. Once you're in On Demand, Goto

1. HD On Demand
2. Gallery Player
3. Then choose which gallery you want to look at.

I'm amazed on how sharp some of these pics are.

Hope you all enjoy!!!

Happy 4th Everyone!!!

Looks like the price on the 42 incher went back up. So guess Im stickin with my 37 SE at this point, unless someone has figured out some way to get the 42 back down in price via rebates.

Just use the 10-12% off coupon posted a couple pages back by jbradg and the price will be lower than the online price was yesterday.

Has anyone compared the 42 inch westinghouse to the 42 inch Vizio which is on sale at costco? I'm curious as to how they compare. THanks.

Has anyone compared the 42 inch westinghouse to the 42 inch Vizio which is on sale at costco? I'm curious as to how they compare. THanks.

I considered the Vizio at one point, but the Westy has better PC support and a better image processor. Plus, I think the frame actually looks better.

Has anyone done any testing or comparisons (to known tv's & chips) on these sets' ability to properly deinterlace 1080i to 1080p? I know many have said 1080i "looks great" but has anyone done any tests (like with a HQV test disc or something?) Also curious about scaling of 720p to 1080p.

Not so concerned about SD performance....

Thanks!

Picked up my TX42 on 6/29 from Best Buy in Santa Clarita. They matched the web price for PSP and applied a discount onto the web price. They had two in stock; one demo (unconnected) and one boxed. I didn't bother to check it out at BB... just bought it.

Checked it out with the following sources.

PC through VGA/HD15. Ran through Displaymate calibration screens to check it out for dead/stuck pixels, backlight bleed/consistency on black screen, banding, etc. Noticed some minor vertical banding with gradients; no other obvious PQ dings observed on my set (yet, knocking wood). . I have a DVI-D/HDMI adapter on order for long term use.
SA 3250HD cable box (Time Warner) through component outputs.


Noticed these things mentioned in earlier threads; no surprises.


White noise line at top border for some stations. "Fill" clears it, but I just left it on Standard to avoid overall edge cutoffs.
Pink/purple line at bottom of screen. Set deinterlace "off" to clear it.
PIP disabled


I'm happy with the set so far.

Can anyone tell me how I get HD through this TV? I have my HD box and go to my hd channels but they llook like crap - it's running through coax from the hd box to the tv...

Can anyone tell me how I get HD through this TV? I have my HD box and go to my hd channels but they llook like crap - it's running through coax from the hd box to the tv...


you can not get HD via coax, you need to run it at least through component cables from the box, if its a good HD box there should be HDMI or you may need to trade your box in to that model, most cable companies will do this no problem.

Skane - I have the same problems i find them to be rather annoying and am not pleased. White noise line at top if there is no way to get rid of it but to lose some of the picture than that is a defect. This is 2007 their should be no static line on this tv. The Pink/purple line at bottom of screen the deinterlace works for me but when i shut the tv and cable box off and than turn it back on it comes back. The only way i have found to get rid of it is by switching from 1080i - 720p on the cable box. I still need to try different cables and a dvd player to see what happens. If nothing improves i think this is going back to best buy.

Skane - I have the same problems i find them to be rather annoying and am not pleased. White noise line at top if there is no way to get rid of it but to lose some of the picture than that is a defect. This is 2007 their should be no static line on this tv. The Pink/purple line at bottom of screen the deinterlace works for me but when i shut the tv and cable box off and than turn it back on it comes back. The only way i have found to get rid of it is by switching from 1080i - 720p on the cable box. I still need to try different cables and a dvd player to see what happens. If nothing improves i think this is going back to best buy.

I believe this is the cable box causing this issue. I have the same problem with my 3 year old Olevia as well. Some channels have it some don't so I think it has something to do with the broadcast. I don't believe it's the TV. I get it on my TX as well.

Skane - I have the same problems i find them to be rather annoying and am not pleased. White noise line at top if there is no way to get rid of it but to lose some of the picture than that is a defect. This is 2007 their should be no static line on this tv. The Pink/purple line at bottom of screen the deinterlace works for me but when i shut the tv and cable box off and than turn it back on it comes back. The only way i have found to get rid of it is by switching from 1080i - 720p on the cable box. I still need to try different cables and a dvd player to see what happens. If nothing improves i think this is going back to best buy.

This was stated before, it is not the TV, but the broadcast being sent to you. Every 1080p TV that displays 1:1 will show that upper closed caption data line. I never have had the purple line though.

If you have NBC-HD, most likely you'll see a white line down the left side of the screen, same reason, its the broadcast being sent by NBC.

I was wandering if anyone had played Halo on the TX47 and if you have is the ghosting really bad or does it look fine? I play the Halo games more than anything and was wandering how good it looked on the tv. Maybe someone has some pictures to post. Thanks.

Sorry for multiple consecutive posts.

It appears that Westinghouse is in Santa Fe Springs, CA, which is a couple of miles away from my house. Knowing that, would you all still advise the extended service plan from BB? It seems that the main reason people were advocating this was the dread of mailing to Westinghouse for service. I could drive over in 10 minutes. :confused:

My reason was not just fear of mailing the unit, but to be covered for four years rather than one or maybe 2.

Ed

My only gripe is the remote not having seperate commands/functions for each HDMI connection. Instead you have to scroll through, kind of a pain, especially since I have a Harmony 880 that I use. Is there any way around this or do I just need to drop another $50 on a Monoprice HDMI switcher with remote?


Well, there are two ways to scroll through, the HDMI button or the input button. Using one of these two, I would think you could set up a macro on the Harmony. That's what I did on my HTM LX-500. I would recommend using the "Input" button to do it - that brings up a list of all inputs, you scroll through them, but the TV doesn't actually *change* inputs until you hit select or pause for a few seconds - better than using the HDMI button which, IIRC, changes inputs with each press.

Ed

Skane - I have the same problems i find them to be rather annoying and am not pleased. White noise line at top if there is no way to get rid of it but to lose some of the picture than that is a defect. This is 2007 their should be no static line on this tv. The Pink/purple line at bottom of screen the deinterlace works for me but when i shut the tv and cable box off and than turn it back on it comes back. The only way i have found to get rid of it is by switching from 1080i - 720p on the cable box. I still need to try different cables and a dvd player to see what happens. If nothing improves i think this is going back to best buy.

Atomz, as others have mentioned, most of these lines are closed captioning or other information that is embedded in the signal at the source, much as audio tracks are embedded optically in each individual film frame of a 35 mm film. They will therefore show up on any hdtv you are watching in 1:1 mode. Unfortunately, until content providers upgrade their transmission equipment pipeline, this will remain the case for many channels.

This was stated before, it is not the TV, but the broadcast being sent to you. Every 1080p TV that displays 1:1 will show that upper closed caption data line. I never have had the purple line though.

If you have NBC-HD, most likely you'll see a white line down the left side of the screen, same reason, its the broadcast being sent by NBC.

My first foray into HD was Westinghouses first 1080P cant remember the # but it didnt have hdmi but 2 DVI. I miss that tv now i gave it to to my parents. My ati card worked beautifully with that, now everytime i load it up i have to change from 60 - 75 hertz and than when i shut it off and turn it back on i have to change back from 75 - 60 hertz for it too work. Same process everytime. This is all over the VGA cable, i will get a dvi/hdmi cable and maybe it will change or maybe i need to look for some updates for my GCard.

Why would that line being on top be something that is acceptable? Never noticed that line before on NBC -HD why do they have it i havent noticed it on the other HD channels? If i want the purple line gone i will have to live with 720p.

Atomz, as others have mentioned, most of these lines are closed captioning or other information that is embedded in the signal at the source, much as audio tracks are embedded optically in each individual film frame of a 35 mm film. They will therefore show up on any hdtv you are watching in 1:1 mode. Unfortunately, until content providers upgrade their transmission equipment pipeline, this will remain the case for many channels.

I guess i was spoiled with my old 1080p because it wasnt 1080p on the component cables so there was no lines on top and no purple lines on bottom. It was great, there is some credence to "you really dont know what you have until its gone". I guess i will have to use the fill feature.

It's funny, Consumer Reports says don't get extended plans except for DLPs. But reading through this forum, it seems there are people with all types of TVs who are happy they did.

My reason was not just fear of mailing the unit, but to be covered for four years rather than one or maybe 2.

Ed

... I have the same problems i find them to be rather annoying and am not pleased. White noise line at top if there is no way to get rid of it but to lose some of the picture than that is a defect. This is 2007 their should be no static line on this tv.

That is not 'white noise', that is out-of-spec closed captioning misused by certain broadcasters.

Westinghouse played by the rules in the set design; they can't necessarily account for wild-ased broadcasters doing nonstandard things. [Hell, Philips was losing TV sets into 'bricks' because Cox cable was rapidly renaming PSIP channels numbers on the fly, filling the memory.] This is why standards exist, and why they shouldn't be violated.

This happens to other sets too. That being said, I imagine some brands' firmware updates may eventually be able to wipe the first couple of lines of video RAM buffer to zero in timed relation to every frame-sync interrupt.




I still need to try different cables and a dvd player to see what happens. If nothing improves i think this is going back to best buy.

Useless. You will likely see this on other brands of sets too - it depends on the broadcaster, the broadcast in particular and/or your cable service.


Bill Wiese
San Jose CA

I never saw the close captioning on non 1080p HD tv's. I have to assume that many people who buy a new tv and saw that CC would be incredibly disappointed. I would trade down if i didnt want the resolution for other things. My cable box is also having channel problems so maybe i have a defective box or signal that is causing the purple lines at the bottom. I have to wait until friday for someone to check out my cable.

I never saw the close captioning on non 1080p HD tv's. I have to assume that many people who buy a new tv and saw that CC would be incredibly disappointed. I would trade down if i didnt want the resolution for other things. My cable box is also having channel problems so maybe i have a defective box or signal that is causing the purple lines at the bottom. I have to wait until friday for someone to check out my cable.

I would imagine that most 720p TVs simply overscan the image so you don't see it. If you don't want to see it use the overscan option of the TX. Granted the TX does overscan just a little too much in my opinion, but I would much rather have 1 to 1 pixel mapping than be forced to use overscan any day.

The purple line is clearly a problem with how the TX is handling 1080i deinterlacing and is definitely a bug that needs to be addressed via a firmware update, and I imagine with enough complaining from us it will be.

I would imagine that most 720p TVs simply overscan the image so you don't see it. If you don't want to see it use the overscan option of the TX. Granted the TX does overscan just a little too much in my opinion, but I would much rather have 1 to 1 pixel mapping than be forced to use overscan any day.

The purple line is clearly a problem with how the TX is handling 1080i deinterlacing and is definitely a bug that needs to be addressed via a firmware update, and I imagine with enough complaining from us it will be.

If it automatically filled it there is a good chance i would not have noticed.
The fill feature works fine i just find it annoying that i have to get it off when i switch from a STD channel to a HD channel, i like to do a little channel surfing sometimes. If it turns out the purple line is not any signal problems on my end i will complain to westinghouse. I am also waiting for an ATI update to fix that issue too.

I would imagine that most 720p TVs simply overscan the image so you don't see it. If you don't want to see it use the overscan option of the TX. Granted the TX does overscan just a little too much in my opinion, but I would much rather have 1 to 1 pixel mapping than be forced to use overscan any day.

The purple line is clearly a problem with how the TX is handling 1080i deinterlacing and is definitely a bug that needs to be addressed via a firmware update, and I imagine with enough complaining from us it will be.

I was getting the purple line down the left side of the screen during NBC's HD broadcast of Finding Nemo. It wasn't there during the whole movie but just some scenes. I'm sending 1080i to the TV via the Comcast STB. I've been able to tune out the CC line whenever it appears. 1:1 for me is worth it as well.

OK - just bought the 47inch.. wow. BB was super easy, gave me the % off ontop of the $100 off - for a total of $1594!!! then tax, PSP (4 year service plan - not PlayStation), HDMI and sooo on till I'm back over $2K... oh well. Last week there were about 12 of these at the Burbank BB- today there was 1 in box & 1 on display, someone was looking at it, so I just said I'll take it as soon as i walked in.

So far all I have is an SD signal... working on that... but its nice to fianlly see my HDV home movies from my SONY HC3 camcorder via HDMI... AMAZING!!!

There are at least 9 stuck pix.. only 1 is a very bright green that I can see from 6ft away... the rest are red or blue and are not a problem.... no light leak and only as tiny bit of maura (sp? i forget) even when brightness & backlight are up at 100.. at normal levels no way to see it.....

.... BUT!!!! There is a huge 1.5 inch square of solid green with a blue underline in the upper right corner. It was not there at first, then next time I check it was about 7 inches by 1.5, then 20 minutes later it is just a 1.5 X 1.5 square.... Its there with all imputs, power down and back up... its there.... hmmm have to see whats up with that.

I have to go out for BBQ now... bummer, but I'll be back. Thanks to all on these boards who have helped me.

Sorry to post again but has no one played any of the halo games on the tx sets? Specifically the 47 inch. Thanks if anyone has any info.

Sorry to post again but has no one played any of the halo games on the tx sets? Specifically the 47 inch. Thanks if anyone has any info.

Sorry, I thought someone else might respond. I don't have an Xbox or 360 so I can't comment on how Halo might look from those consoles but I do have the Halo PC version that I could probably test out if you really want to know.

I have played a bunch of other games on the TX 42 all at 1080p and they look beautiful through VGA. There is no discernible "ghosting" or trailing of the image typically found on older LCDs. If you were to really look for it I'm sure you'd see some, but I've been playing on LCDs for years and while I used to notice it all the time, I hardly ever notice it anymore.

Hi long time looker.I also pulled the trigger on friday.I got the 42.The set is amazing.I did have problems with ps3 on hdmi 2,hdmi 1 is being used py my pc which looks unreal on 1080p i'm running a 8800gts.Well the way i got rid of the flickering was i moved the ps3 to hdmi 3 my xbox elite to hdmi4 and all works great.The only thing i hate about the tv is that there is no way to get the damm pip enabled i have tried it all and nothing.anybody got this problem also?

Hi guys. I would really really really appreciate a response on this. I just got both the 37se and the TX-42 over the past few days to test them out. I noticed something funny. I'm using a dvi-hdmi cable for the tx-42, and 1080p for my PC isn't completely working. The desktop has a black border all around it. If I switch to a refresh rate of 30Hz (1080i), then it fills the screen completely.

1080p through the DVI works perfectly on my 37se, so I decided to try and use the same setup. DVI-HDMI. The exact same issue comes up! 1080p does not work correctly through the 37se's HDMI port! There are black bars around the desktop. It does not fill the screen. Switching to 1080i fixes this.

I'm using a ATI 1800gto. Do you guys have any suggestions? Thanks!

They said on ATI cards you need to force a 75Hz refresh rate

Right click desktop -> Properties -> Settings -> Advanced -> Monitor


Try it and let me know PLEASE. I have an ATI card too

Hi all,

On my 42" TX, all fonts and colors look perfectly except for red. Any bold text with red color is very blurry and out-of-focus. Example is this thread. Any post in this thread which having red bold text always look very blurry.

Is there anyone having the same issue as mine? I connect computer to HDMI-1 using DVI-HDMI cable. My video card is Geforce 6600. Resolution shows up correctly as 1920x1080p. Is there any way to fix this?

I never saw the close captioning on non 1080p HD tv's. I have to assume that many people who buy a new tv and saw that CC would be incredibly disappointed. I would trade down if i didnt want the resolution for other things. My cable box is also having channel problems so maybe i have a defective box or signal that is causing the purple lines at the bottom. I have to wait until friday for someone to check out my cable.


atomz, who's your provider and what cable box do you have?

I was wandering if anyone had played Halo on the TX47 and if you have is the ghosting really bad or does it look fine? I play the Halo games more than anything and was wandering how good it looked on the tv. Maybe someone has some pictures to post. Thanks.

Since Halo and Halo 2 are xbox1 games that run at 480p, they wont look nearly as good compared to an xbox360 or PS3 game running at 1080p. The tv does do a good job scaling, so it will look as good as a Wii game does. I took a pic awhile back of the wii on the tv, and it was suprisingly decent. Ghosting isnt much of an issue, but it occurs more on component than over vga or hdmi.

Well, I was waiting for the 52" but it wasn't meant to be.

My Toshiba 50H71 (CRT projection) blew out yesterday (the red convergence board I suspect) and with the sale at Best Buy I went ahead and bought the 47". I think the 47" is plenty for our room.

I am very happy with the set so far. Have used it with my SA8300, Xbox 360(Oblivion) and xbox (XBMC). No noticeable dead pixels and since I am a bit OCD I am not going to go out of my way to look for them :)

A couple of interesting things I noticed:

- once after a power cycle I had a weird line at the bottom of the screen, I ran 'video reset' and the problem went away. I suspect maybe the overscan setting changed, but I didn't check.

- I am using component video switching from my receiver to the TV and noticed that it was keeping different settings between my XBOX and SA8300. I was very confused by this at first (how did it know the difference?) but then I figured out it keeps separate setting on the component inputs for each resolution. The SA8300 is 1080i always and the XBOX 480p always. That is a neat feature.

Now to the picture - coming from a RP CRT I saw about what I would expect. The resolution looks much much sharper on the Westy - while my old TV was 1080i and should be just as sharp, it simply wasn't. Calibration of RP CRTs can only go so far and cannot match having real individual pixels. Now the black levels... Watching some dark stuff last night, I really will miss the ultra-black of CRT. Turning the backlight to 0, contrast ~60, brightness ~40 looks pretty good - but it doesn't compare to CRT really.

I mounted the TV on the wall with a mount from Sam's Club - I am afraid I may have to redo it though, as it seems a tad high. Going to see if we just get used to it - it looks really cool!

Also - I programmed my JP1 remote to control the guy - TV code 0000 seems to work pretty well. If anyone has mapped a full EFC list, please let me know.

I need to go back to Best Buy today - in the excitement I didn't realize they overcharged me by $80 vs. the web price. I did buy the protection plan - a first for me - but the TV was under budget so I had to :)

Sorry for the somewhat rambling post!

xnappo

My connections so far are simple...Cablevision SA8300 HD DVR connected HDMI to HDMI 1 on TV (box outputting 1080i always), and a Panny upconverting DVD/VCR connected HDMI to HDMI 2 on TV (also set to output 1080i). I plan on running cable directly to TV so that I can record two programs and still watch a third different channel live.
Now, for my questions: 1) Has anyone noticed that on channels with a ticker (ESPN, CNN, MSNBC, etc...) that there is a noticeable stutter, or a jittery movement in the ticker; not just a smooth scroll, like it should be??!! Note that this judder is on all stations with a "ticker" along the bottom, and does not impact regular viewing as far as I can tell.
2) Almost every time I turn on the TV (power save on normal, set powers on immediately and I never turn off the cable box) the audio and video are out of synch, with the audio lagging behind; the solution is switching sources to any other input and back to HDMI 1 and the audio and video resynch. However, I have to do this nearly every time I power on the TV. This never happened with the LVM nor did the ticker stutter.
I have not noticed anyone discuss any kind of audio lag or a/v synch problem. I also do not think that I should have to switch away and back with the source virtually everytime I power up the TV. What do you guys think???

Lastly, can anyone recommend user settings (calibrated, preferably) that include R,G,B levels for HDMI in very low light setting.

I apologize in advance for the LONG post, but I guess it has been building up for a long time and I needed to finally pull the trigger.... Thanks in advance for any help, comments, suggestions, and if anybody has any questions for me, please feel free to ask .... I would love to be able to give back something to these boards from which I have taken and learned so much.

Thanks again.
KBW

Thanks in advance for any help, comments, suggestions, and if anybody has any questions for me, please feel free to ask .... I would love to be able to give back something to these boards from which I have taken and learned so much.

Thanks again.
KBW

Can you hook up component from your SA8300 and see if your two issues persist? And also comment on picture quality with component vs. HDMI?

Thanks,
xnappo

Can you hook up component from your SA8300 and see if your two issues persist? And also comment on picture quality with component vs. HDMI?

Thanks,
xnappo

I'll try tonite if I get some time (2 youngs kids & a wife, you understand :D ); and I was thinking about doing that myself. In the meantime, has anybody else had anything like what I described?

& calibrated settings (w/RGB)???

Thanks,
KBW

there seems to be a lot of people asking about the PC DVI-HDMI signals.

I have an ATI (x850) system as well as a Nvidia (7900GTX) system and they both dislpayed just fine in 1080p when i hooked them into the TV through HDMI 1. I am running vista on both machines, so there might be a difference.

The only thing i can recommend to people to get the resolution running correctly is to make sure to upgrade your drivers and if all else fails and you really really really want to try and get the resolution right, install a clean build and try again.

The only other thing that i can recommend is, use a Nvidia graphics card. They seem to work better with this TV in general in my experience, if you're going for DVI-HDMI that is. I've never tested my PC through VGA and never intend to. :P

They said on ATI cards you need to force a 75Hz refresh rate

Right click desktop -> Properties -> Settings -> Advanced -> Monitor


Try it and let me know PLEASE. I have an ATI card too


I tried these steps (I have a x1300 pci card) I tried to set it as 75hz but the box is grayed out below where you can select to have all the refresh rates shown and the only 2 choices are 30i and 60

I installed new drivers for my card also

The plug and play monitor in the device manager is showing a conflict (yellow circle with black exclamation mark) and I havent been able to make that go away either

Check the integrity of your Westy's power cable connection at the IEC power entry connector on back of TV. Ensure it's fully seated and not loose!!! Perhaps try another IEC power cord to see if it seats better, and/or *ever-so-slightly* spring TV IEC connector pins inward for more spring tension/better contact. .


As y'all know from my prior posts, my GF's Westy 47" TX has had some odd power-up behavior in 'Energy Saver' mode (i.e, longer boot time thru Big W logo instead of 'instant-on'). Otherwise she's highly satisfied with stunning picture quality, set appearance, etc.

Sometimes the set just wouldn't come up, would freeze in Big W logo, etc.

As a precursor to further investiagations I decided to not use an outlet bar (which indeed does have enough capacity) to power set, and to run the set directly from wall - just to preclude any backchat from Westy tech support phone staff.

After moving the Westy's power cord to the wall outlet about 5" away, the power cord was a bit taut. TV didn't come up afterwards; I had thought maybe GF's outlet position was switched or dead [as her (newer) home has at least one other outlet with that problem.]

After ruling that out I noticed that the back end of the Westy's power cord - where its 3-prong connector fits into the IEC connector on the set - was loose. Trying to tighten it I noticed it was always pretty loose, it did not seat deeply, etc. I retensioned pins on TV's power entry connector by springing them in slightly (and GENTLY) w/needlenose pliers seem to hold the cord connector more firmly/better. I will try another cord when I find one

So far set seems fine now but I have not left set in power-off 'Energy saver' mode for several hours, which seems to be the necessary/sufficient condition for these issues to recur. It remains to be seen if this is a 'fix' for what I believed were firmware issues.

Several notes:
I may be all wet, but the slight relay click I can hear at power up seems to happen much sooner - almost immediately - after remote's Power button pressed. I seem to recall at least a ~1 sec delay before I jimmied w/power cord.


Pressing Power button on side of set seems to get things going much more quickly as well. It seems I used to have to hold it down a bit for it to 'register'.


I do note Westy has blamed power strips for problems and this could really be a manifestation instead of 'wiggling the cord interface to TV power connector' instead.


I also note that the behaviors I wrote of before [regarding boot issues from complete power-down 'Energy Saver' mode] could rationally easily be affected by inability to get enough current onrush current surge from a cold-start, as opposed to warm start. (Switching power supplies often drain current in 'spikes' and not continually over the cycle. For weight savings and cost reduction they're designed to a nominal spec and 'out of band' conditions like "not enough juice coming thru connector" are outside the spec.) So, not enough juice at right time when various higher-current items in the set receive power? The electronics gets lost, firmware flow changes inappropriately and goes into a weird state.


Finally, I remark that in the automotive world, engine control electronics frequently gets blamed for what are really flaws with connectors, wires, switches and sensors. After all, these devices are more exposed to the 'outside world' heat, vibration, dirt/oil, etc. In fact, things were so bad in the 80s many car mfgrs were refusing to reimburse dealers for computer replacement without a documented diagnostic tree and preapproval from service center - because the computers almost never were the culprit!


I will monitor the set now - leaving it powered down for as long as possible - and see if "boot thru Big W" issues recur, and report accordingly.

Gonna talk to Westy and ask 'em about the cord entry...

I tell ya, it's always the simplest crap that bites one in the arse...

Bill Wiese
San Jose, CA

there seems to be a lot of people asking about the PC DVI-HDMI signals.

I have an ATI (x850) system as well as a Nvidia (7900GTX) system and they both dislpayed just fine in 1080p when i hooked them into the TV through HDMI 1. I am running vista on both machines, so there might be a difference.

The only thing i can recommend to people to get the resolution running correctly is to make sure to upgrade your drivers and if all else fails and you really really really want to try and get the resolution right, install a clean build and try again.

The only other thing that i can recommend is, use a Nvidia graphics card. They seem to work better with this TV in general in my experience, if you're going for DVI-HDMI that is. I've never tested my PC through VGA and never intend to. :P

I'm using VGA through a modded Radeon 9500 Pro and it displays 1080p perfectly fine. I'm working on scrounging up a higher quality cable to remove some cable artifacts, but unless I'm less than 3 feet away I can't see the artifacts anyway. The VGA port was actually one of the main reasons why I ended up sticking with this TV instead of getting another brand I was considering. There are just too many wacked things that happen with HDMI that I simply don't have to worry about using high quality Analog VGA.

DVI-HDMI from the PC with an Nvidia graphics card is outstanding.

BUT, im tempted to look at the new ATI radeon 2900xt's with HDMI and built in 5.1 sound

billweise, thanks for the heads up. I am going to wall mount my TV in the next couple of days, so this is something to be aware of when I move it.

Since, I mentioned it, anything else I should keep in mind when wall mounting this TV? I bought the cheapo monoprice mount and have some cable racers that I will use to hide the cables from the TV.

I've never wall mounted a TV before, but it seems pretty straight forward. Just any pointers would be great.

I'm using VGA through a modded Radeon 9500 Pro and it displays 1080p perfectly fine. I'm working on scrounging up a higher quality cable to remove some cable artifacts, but unless I'm less than 3 feet away I can't see the artifacts anyway. The VGA port was actually one of the main reasons why I ended up sticking with this TV instead of getting another brand I was considering. There are just too many wacked things that happen with HDMI that I simply don't have to worry about using high quality Analog VGA.

the fact that there is a VGA port is great. I'm actually going to use it for a xbox360 though. i'm just on the all digital bandwagon. I got my setup working w/o any issues and that's all we can hope for.

billweise, thanks for the heads up. I am going to wall mount my TV in the next couple of days, so this is something to be aware of when I move it.


Other connectors don't seem to be an issue - I have an HDMI cable from DVD player and you can tell that connection is firm/ "solid".



Late-breaking news... boot problem recurred again. Took another
look at interconnection btwn power cable/IEC connector and it was loose
again. This time I wedged in a wooden matchstick to firm things up (until
I can find another cable to try...)


Late-breaking news #2 boot problem recurred again even with a
wooden matchstick wedged in IEC power connector in attempt to optimize/
maintain contact. TV's relay contacts seem to close quickly on power-up
but Big W boot logo remains 'stuck'. Gonna try some more contact bend
and try to find another IEC cord.

I still really do think this this is a major issue relating to the power-up hang
and is why the firmware is going south.



I did talk to Westy phone tech and he did report they'd noticed a couple of loose cords in their offices but I don't think they thought too much of it.



Bill Wiese
San Jose CA

Two things I hope someone can help me with:

1.) Earlier I mentioned a problem using the 42 TX with my ATI 1800gto. 1080p and 720p modes don't scale right, and there are black bars all around the desktop. I forgot to specifically mention that I'm using a DVI-HDMI adapter from Best Buy and a DVI-D cable. Do you think this might be causing the issue to only correctly display 1080i and not 720p/1080p?

2.) Currently, I have the coaxial cable from comcast going directly into the 42 TX. We don't have a cable box. Is this negatively impacting the picture quality? I read somewhere that any connection (even composite) is better than a coaxial cable. For HDTV, I am guessing that this is the one exception though....because it has to come through the coax (at least for cable companies and not OTA). Let me know what you think? Thanks!

Two things I hope someone can help me with:

1.) Earlier I mentioned a problem using the 42 TX with my ATI 1800gto. 1080p and 720p modes don't scale right, and there are black bars all around the desktop. I forgot to specifically mention that I'm using a DVI-HDMI adapter from Best Buy and a DVI-D cable. Do you think this might be causing the issue to only correctly display 1080i and not 720p/1080p?

2.) Currently, I have the coaxial cable from comcast going directly into the 42 TX. We don't have a cable box. Is this negatively impacting the picture quality? I read somewhere that any connection (even composite) is better than a coaxial cable. For HDTV, I am guessing that this is the one exception though....because it has to come through the coax (at least for cable companies and not OTA). Let me know what you think? Thanks!

Nerdcore I had to take back that adapter and dvi cable from besbuy because they werent 1080p compatible.

Also in your device manager is your plug and play monitor showing up with a conflict? Im having a hell of a time with this trying just to get that part resolved.

the yellow i icon might not be affecting you that much. Although it does say that your display isn't installed correctly, as long as you display a 1080p (1920x1080) resolution it doesn't really matter. My computer recognizes that its a Westinghouse display, but it doesn't give any specific information about it. i'm sure that will make it difficult for your video card that it will recognize 1080p res as a usable resolution, but you can try to force it with a program called powerstrip (http://entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm) .

As for the DVI HDMI converter box, i think that might be the problem. see if you can get a DVI->HDMI cable to test with.

I'm having a problem with VGA input from my pc as well.

The VGA input looks perfect when fed by my xbox360, but when I hooked up to my p5b-vm based pc, with intel x3000 graphics, I get the desktop about 10 inches to the right, but still within the screen, the right side stops in the right place, like its scaling and flush right.

If I use the auto correct in the westy menu, it moves the screen over to the left edge, but I get a 10" repeated/dead area of my desktop on the right side.

The westy reports that its getting a 1920x1080 signal. Any ideas??

p.

Other connectors don't seem to be an issue - I have an HDMI cable from DVD player and you can tell that connection is firm/ "solid".



Late-breaking news... boot problem recurred again. Took another
look at interconnection btwn power cable/IEC connector and it was loose
again. This time I wedged in a wooden matchstick to firm things up (until
I can find another cable to try...)


Late-breaking news #2 boot problem recurred again even with a
wooden matchstick wedged in IEC power connector in attempt to optimize/
maintain contact. TV's relay contacts seem to close quickly on power-up
but Big W boot logo remains 'stuck'. Gonna try some more contact bend
and try to find another IEC cord.

I still really do think this this is a major issue relating to the power-up hang
and is why the firmware is going south.



I did talk to Westy phone tech and he did report they'd noticed a couple of loose cords in their offices but I don't think they thought too much of it.



Bill Wiese
San Jose CA

Bill, the original lock up problem with the LVM-42W2 was initially blamed on faulty or loose power connectors, power supply, line noise and a host of other power related issues by most owners of the set. The set would lock up and the only thing to get it back on was to unplug and and then plug it back in.

It turns out that the power lock up was caused by a corrupt/faulty code libraries in the Genesis video processing chip being used by the set. The lock up had nothing to do with power issues. Westinghouse issued a a firmware upgrade to remedy the problem by upgrading the firmware from 1.16 to 1.19.

Am I correct in surmising that this TV does not have zoom picture settings, only stretch mode for 4:3 content?

I almost have my friend sold on one, but he's afraid of standard-def widescreen shows. He has a Series 3 TiVo, but wants to preserve the option to record in standard def for disk space reasons. I told him he'd change his mind when he saw HD, but he still wants the zoom feature just in case.

Are there other 47 inch LCDs that have a zoom mode?

I'm having a problem with VGA input from my pc as well.

The VGA input looks perfect when fed by my xbox360, but when I hooked up to my p5b-vm based pc, with intel x3000 graphics, I get the desktop about 10 inches to the right, but still within the screen, the right side stops in the right place, like its scaling and flush right.

If I use the auto correct in the westy menu, it moves the screen over to the left edge, but I get a 10" repeated/dead area of my desktop on the right side.

The westy reports that its getting a 1920x1080 signal. Any ideas??

p.

Im pretty sure that intel graphics card cannot handle the resolution. You'll probably crash the machine trying to run a game on it.

Bill, the original lock up problem with the LVM-42W2 was initially blamed on faulty or loose power connectors, power supply, line noise and a host of other power related issues by most owners of the set. The set would lock up and the only thing to get it back on was to unplug and and then plug it back in.

It turns out that the power lock up was caused by a corrupt/faulty code libraries in the Genesis video processing chip being used by the set. The lock up had nothing to do with power issues. Westinghouse issued a a firmware upgrade to remedy the problem by upgrading the firmware from 1.16 to 1.19.

Cav,

Thanks for info, yes - but the issues surrounding boot up in my GF's set appear to indeed have at least *some* relation to the physical quality of how solid the cable is connected to the IEC power connector on the set.

I don't doubt there may be other areas of firmware instability. My symptoms are far less likely to be tied to any video-processing code, as this is in the area of "getting the set off the ground" booting.

But this was "low-hanging fruit", so to speak, and I seem to be seeing some measure cause/effect relationship at least with the speed of "acknowledgement of power up" by how fast the relay clicks after power button on side or on remote is pressed and some minimization of the effect (time span has increased between the last power-down and the onset of symptoms.)

And even if this is not the problem, it is a problem on our incarnation of this set.

IMHO, the IEC connector needs change/improvement in future production to allow deeper seating and wider contact width - or a selected cable needs to be found that has a particularly favorable seating relationship with the TX 47's IEC power connector.


Bill Wiese
San Jose CA

Am I correct in surmising that this TV does not have zoom picture settings, only stretch mode for 4:3 content?

I almost have my friend sold on one, but he's afraid of standard-def widescreen shows. He has a Series 3 TiVo, but wants to preserve the option to record in standard def for disk space reasons. I told him he'd change his mind when he saw HD, but he still wants the zoom feature just in case.

Are there other 47 inch LCDs that have a zoom mode?

The Tivo itself doesn't have a zoom mode? My crappy SA8300 has that.. Anyway, it does have a zoom mode called 'overscan' that *may* work for this task.

xnappo

the yellow i icon might not be affecting you that much. Although it does say that your display isn't installed correctly, as long as you display a 1080p (1920x1080) resolution it doesn't really matter. My computer recognizes that its a Westinghouse display, but it doesn't give any specific information about it. i'm sure that will make it difficult for your video card that it will recognize 1080p res as a usable resolution, but you can try to force it with a program called

As for the DVI HDMI converter box, i think that might be the problem. see if you can get a DVI->HDMI cable to test with.

Ah thx for the response

as for my setup I have a dvi to hdmi cable brand new that i got today and I have tried to bump my x1300 ATI card to run at 75hz and still no go

Am I correct in surmising that this TV does not have zoom picture settings, only stretch mode for 4:3 content?

I almost have my friend sold on one, but he's afraid of standard-def widescreen shows. He has a Series 3 TiVo, but wants to preserve the option to record in standard def for disk space reasons. I told him he'd change his mind when he saw HD, but he still wants the zoom feature just in case.

Are there other 47 inch LCDs that have a zoom mode?

Aindik, unlike the old LVM series, the TX has three aspect ratio settings, one of which is a "zoom" mode. The first, standard, maintains the original aspect ratio, and if the source is 1080, a 1:1 pixel map as well. The second, fill, is a 4:3 to 16:9 stretch mode. The third, overscan, which did not exist on the LVM series, will zoom in while maintaining the aspect ratio of the original source. This should allow your friend to see a 4:3 widescreen image which originally had black borders on both the side as well as top and bottom fill the TX's screen, albeit with some minor top and bottom image clipping depending on the source.

Ah thx for the response

as for my setup I have a dvi to hdmi cable brand new that i got today and I have tried to bump my x1300 ATI card to run at 75hz and still no go

okay, you should have no trouble outputting to 1080p resolutions. try going through the catalyst setup menu to make your ATI drivers recognize your display as a HDTV. There is a "Force TV" options somewhere in the ATI catalyst "advanced" menu. That might help. If that doesn't work then try to use the windows display properties to change the resolution.

I can't think of much else that might be hindering you from getting a 1080p res. Only other things that might prove to help is updating chipset drivers, and BIOS drivers.

okay, you should have no trouble outputting to 1080p resolutions. try going through the catalyst setup menu to make your ATI drivers recognize your display as a HDTV. There is a "Force TV" options somewhere in the ATI catalyst "advanced" menu. That might help. If that doesn't work then try to use the windows display properties to change the resolution.

I can't think of much else that might be hindering you from getting a 1080p res. Only other things that might prove to help is updating chipset drivers, and BIOS drivers.

lemme try that and I will report back.. I need to reinstall the catalyst control center anyway.

I tried power strip and I couldnt get it to recognize the monitor as being able to output 1920x1080

Cav,

Thanks for info, yes - but the issues surrounding boot up in my GF's set appear to indeed have at least *some* relation to the physical quality of how solid the cable is connected to the IEC power connector on the set.

I don't doubt there may be other areas of firmware instability. My symptoms are far less likely to be tied to any video-processing code, as this is in the area of "getting the set off the ground" booting.

But this was "low-hanging fruit", so to speak, and I seem to be seeing some measure cause/effect relationship at least with the speed of "acknowledgement of power up" by how fast the relay clicks after power button on side or on remote is pressed and some minimization of the effect (time span has increased between the last power-down and the onset of symptoms.)

And even if this is not the problem, it is [i]a[/b] problem on our incarnation of this set.

IMHO, the IEC connector needs change/improvement in future production to allow deeper seating and wider contact width - or a selected cable needs to be found that has a particularly favorable seating relationship with the TX 47's IEC power connector.


Bill Wiese
San Jose CA

The power connectors are in fact quite loose on the older lvm models and on the new TX series judging by your display. I have found there to be too much wiggle room. It is quite possible that it could be blamed as the culprit to some extent. Keep us updated with your tests.

Aindik, unlike the old LVM series, the TX has three aspect ratio settings, one of which is a "zoom" mode. The first, standard, maintains the original aspect ratio, and if the source is 1080, a 1:1 pixel map as well. The second, fill, is a 4:3 to 16:9 stretch mode. The third, overscan, which did not exist on the LVM series, will zoom in while maintaining the aspect ratio of the original source. This should allow your friend to see a 4:3 widescreen image which originally had black borders on both the side as well as top and bottom fill the TX's screen, albeit with some minor top and bottom image clipping depending on the source.

So, if you use the "overscan" mode with a 480i source, it overscans away the full black bars on the left and right? It's that much of an overscan? The name is a bit confusing. I'd expect a mode called "overscan" to be much slighter. Kind of like, with my 32w6, using the "fill" mode on an HD source just overscans a small portion of the content away.

okay, you should have no trouble outputting to 1080p resolutions. try going through the catalyst setup menu to make your ATI drivers recognize your display as a HDTV. There is a "Force TV" options somewhere in the ATI catalyst "advanced" menu. That might help. If that doesn't work then try to use the windows display properties to change the resolution.

I can't think of much else that might be hindering you from getting a 1080p res. Only other things that might prove to help is updating chipset drivers, and BIOS drivers.

Ok I forced tv in there... it even picked up my Westinghouse and said that it was capable of 1920x1080 and 75hz ... I set it to that and forced it and it STILL has the black frame around the picture and the screen still looks really bad

For anybody who was still mildly curious I was able to solve the mystery of exactly which scaler is in use for the TX series: http://www.betanews.com/newswire/pr/Tridents_HiDTVTM_Pro_Powers_Westinghouses_New_Family_of_Larg eScreen_1080p_LCD_TVs/68287

This brings up some pretty big questions my part. Let's start by going over a few things the HiDTV chipset is capable of doing: PIP/POP/Splitscreen capability, 3D adaptive noise reduction functions, full 16-bit OSD engine, extensive color/gamma/RGB controls...... I could go on. This is a SOC solution (system on chip) which means basically they should be able to toss it in the tv and go. The single Thompson ATSC tuner and hub design for the HDMI ports appear to have been done purely for cost cutting purposes in light of this.

On the other side of the fence I am simply blown away at how badly Westinghouse has under-utilized this chipset. Especially the noise reduction and advanced color features....



Y'all should understand that in complex multifunction chips like these, there may be subsystems on the chip that are buggy/defective and that are not/cannot be used until a silicon revision is in place.

Also, Westy may well have decided that they don't like Trident's 3D noise reduction scheme - that it perhaps introduces a different 'noise' of its own or somehow reduces video quality and/or may have chosen their own method.
There could be philosophical differences btwn what Trident thinks needs to be done and what Westy's in-house picture quality folks think needs to be done. Decisions like this are made all the time in consumer electronics design.

I can't comment about the PIP operation or lack thereof and am wondering about that. I recall seeing PIP stuff on the menus, haven't tried to play with it.

The OSD engine seems to be very nice from what I'm seeing of OSD behavior/quality/speed on the TV. I wish I had an OSD engine as good on the non-TV hardware I'm programming right now :)


simply blown away at how badly Westinghouse has under-utilized this chipset. Especially the noise reduction and advanced color features. That calibration menu could have been fleshed out with cut and gain controls for individual R/G/B channels to let the inclined user truly dial in their set with great color accuracy, and why leave out any kind of noise reduction options when the processor has support for the functions built right into it?

As far as additional color mgmt control, that may well have been determined by marketing group, who think people in this price slot are not sensitive to niceties of control details. Combine this with a short engineering development cycle and stuff like advance color mgmt menus may go out the window... or they're leaving room at the high end.

I can only assume that it's a small engineering staff and they simply decided to take a lean approach to developing features in order to save time. Either that or they are planning to release a higher end model series that basically turns all of these features on in much the same way companies like Mitsubishi have multiple models of the same panel which merely add features for the added price.

Either or both of these assumptions could have validity.

I'm betting that a bunch of the firmware was written by Trident to get the video flows right and getting the chip operating in all the major modes. Additional stuff on "how to be a full TV and not a monitor", the user intefrace, etc. was added by Westy. Otherwise, for a Westy firmware team to know & understand a new chip at register-level detail - a chip from a country whose products are not well-known for exhaustive documentation ;-) - and to get the chip up & running from scratch would be prohibitive in terms of product-cycle timing.



Bill Wiese
San Jose CA

It is also quite possible that the 52" model being released this fall by Westinghouse may incorporate some of the features missing in the current 42" and 47" sets. The 52" model seem to have a different model number compared to both the 42 and 47 indicating a possibility of added premium feature at a higher price point. Maybe the reason the 52" has been delayed to fall launch is to give Westinghouse Digital some much needed R&D time with the Trident chip and evaluate how effectively they can incorporate it into the new set.

Considering how aggresively the 42 and 47 are being priced, I wouldn't complain about the lack of features on these sets. I can only go by the lvm-47w1 since that is what I own, these sets have exceptional picture quality.

The power connectors are in fact quite loose on the older lvm models and on the new TX series judging by your display. I have found there to be too much wiggle room. It is quite possible that it could be blamed as the culprit to some extent. Keep us updated with your tests.

I agree. The names seem just plain wrong. I would call 'fill' overscan and 'overscan' zoom. Fill, using component anyway, just seems to do about a 3-5% zoom... Which is what I would call overscan :)

xnappo

billweise, thanks for the heads up. I am going to wall mount my TV in the next couple of days, so this is something to be aware of when I move it.

Since, I mentioned it, anything else I should keep in mind when wall mounting this TV? I bought the cheapo monoprice mount and have some cable racers that I will use to hide the cables from the TV.

I've never wall mounted a TV before, but it seems pretty straight forward. Just any pointers would be great.

The wallmount that I got from Monoprice came with M6-30mm bolts to be used on the back of TVs. DO NOT USE THOSE BOLTS - they are too long. Either use a wide spacer or buy <16mm bolts from any hardware store.

I found that out the hard way. It is still bizarre to me how hard it was. For those who care I will retell the story in the next 2 paragraphs.

So, I got my TX47 home - was extremely happy with lack of any apparent defects, especially when some issues have started to be reported in this thread. (I've only had that set for a week, so I might have overlooked some mura, but I don't believe it had any at all). When my wallmount arrived at the end of the following week I was ready to install. So first thing first, I checked the user manual for any useful information - the paragraph that it has related to wallmounting is not very informative, as I am sure you can agree, then again, what's the big deal ... So next, before I headed off to HomeDepot to buy some toggle bolts (I have metal studs - regular screws do not work) I wanted to make sure the bolts that came with the mount kit would work on the set, if they didn't I could pick some up when I was at the store. I turn off the TV and proceed to take the M6-30mm (just over an inch in length) bolt and screw it into the top left mount opening on the back of the TV. Having been playing with computers and electronics in general since my preteen years (I'm 30 now), it has never even crossed my mind that if a bolt is too long it would do anything but hit an end of the opening or a stopper of sorts. So I keep screwing in the bolt, about 3/4 of the way into it I thought I sensed a muffled flash from the back of the TV. It was barely perceptible, I've only realised it after. So I screwed the bolt all the way in - it did not physically hit anything. However an uneasy feeling came over me and I've decided to turn the TV on, just to be sure. Low and behold it would not turn on at all - no signs of life.

Clearly suspecting that I have managed to short circuit it, yet still in disbelief that it was even possible from doing something that I thought was well within the realm of appropriate use, I decided to call Westinghouse to see if they have a way to restart it or reset some circuit breaker inside or some other useful advice. After no wait at all I was speaking with a CSR. After doing what appeared to be an involuntary registration and after basically telling him what I told you he replied, I paraphrase, "You broke it, you own it", "We recommend to use 12mm bolts (1/2 inch)", "We recommend you use professional installers to shift liability". I couldn't get out of him exactly where they recommend using 12mm bolts, but by that time it was abundantly clear to me that any further conversation with him was pointless. So after about 1 min of silence I said my goodbye. I called BestBuy, they had 1 TX47 in stock (not sure about other stores, but that one appears to have only 1 of each TV in the box and restock them as they are being sold), I took a minivan cab there and back for 50$, and returned home with a new TX47 and 4 year PSP. The new set almost immediately seemed worse to me - after having it now for 3 weeks it seems better and better, but it does have slight mura in the top left corner and 1 dead (green) and 2-3 stuck (? blue) pixels. Granted I've read the Mura Demo post after the first set was fried, so it might have had some too, but in my mind the first set was perfect :) I know that if I would have had the set that I have now first I would have been 100% satisfied as I was with my original set. As time goes on I get more and more content with the set I have now. So this is my wall mounting story.

If someone thinks I am clearly in the wrong here, please let me know - I am curious if I am being completely not objective. I have not actually read TV's warranty, but if Westinghouse decides to come after me to collect for the brick (I gave them all the information - sometimes being honest is stupid), I am convinced enough that I did not do anything out of realm of reasonable that I will take them to court (even though it could potentially cost me more than a cost of a TV, although I believe any judge would see it my way).

PS If you are wall mounting to metal studs, I am convinced that 1/2" toggle bolts that I've used were an overkill (and were a pain in the butt to insert, having only a 1/2" drill bit - they are actually wider than that). Now I will have 4 huge holes in the wall (and I am renting:S), but it seems absolutely solid on the wall. If anything, my concern would be with 16mm bolts holding the TV against the wall mount, but they seem to work fine too.


On a side note, I do not have a PS3 or an Xbox360, but I do have, what appears to be, an HDMI handshake issue with the TV and the Motorola 6412 III DVR c-box. When I turn on the TV and the cable box at the same time (one right after another) I usually get audio and a full-screen Green, sometimes "No Signal" black screen. It also seems to happen when the cable box has been on for some time and I turn the TV on. There are 2 simple workarounds. 1) Turn cable box off and on again. 2) Switch to a different input on the TV and then back to Cable input.

So as you can see, a minor annoyance, but is a potentially related issue to other HDMI connected devices (which I don't have at this time). For me the TV is small - I think I would be more satisfied with a 52". When they come out, I will most likely try to see if I can exchange what I have now for a 52"+price difference.

PS I as well have the same White Noise Line at the top of the screen as well as the other, described in this thread, Broadcast related issues. I have hooked up my PC (6800GT card) using DVI>HDMI cable from Monoprice - both XP and Vistal looked and worked great. I am still satisfied with the TV (about 88% satisfied and rising slowly).

PSS I can't wait to see your settings Xcalibur. I've Netflixed (no color filters) a DVE and played with it a little, adjusted the settings (they are not too far off what has been posted so far - notable exception are Brightness (60+) and Contrast (65+) that I've decided on for now), feel comfortable with what I have, but would still like to see what a professional comes up with. A side question - wouldn't settings for a Component feed from a DVD be different from HDMI feed from a Cable box? Would they be close enough or would using DVE settings achieved over component be pointless for an HDMI input?

Okay, so I have read every post since this thread had started and was wandering with all the people who own the TX-47 is it a thumbs up for video games and watching sdtv and hdtv. Thanks for all your help. I'm fixing to purchase one on line.

Wow! Thank you very much for the heads up. Why they would even make it possible to screw the wall mount in too much is WAY beyond me. That seems ridiculous!

I will be VERY cautious when mounting mine.

Thank you again!

I just bought the TX-47F430S for my in-laws as a gift.

The closed captioning is a POS. I tried changing the settings to CC1, CC2 and CC3. On CC1 the captioning text is partially there but there are huge gaps in the captioning text. Entire sentences missed or no captioning at all.

The TV is connected to a DirecTV DVR (non-HD) via the S-Video connection. I tried connecting it via the co-ax tuner connection and the CC s_cks just as bad.

The very same Direct TV DVR connected to their old 10+ year old set the closed captioning worked absolutely flawlessly. They are about to order DirecTV's HD-DVR which will be connected via HDMI - not sure if it will make any difference on the Closed Captioning.

The CC functionality - or lack of it - is a major issue for them.... Is anyone else having this issue or can you test to see if CC works better or the same?

If this is not resolved the sets going back to BB.....

Thanks in advance for any help.

I was also wandering if anyone could tell me how wide the base is. I found a cool stand but wanted to see how wide the base is for the 47 incher.

The Tivo itself doesn't have a zoom mode? My crappy SA8300 has that.. Anyway, it does have a zoom mode called 'overscan' that *may* work for this task.

The Series 3 does. It has Zoom as well as linear stretch. Zoom is for stuff that is widescreen 4:3 (i.e. like Stargate on Sci-Fi).

I tried another VGA cable with pretty much the same result. There is slight VGA ghosting along the right edge of static images. I am considering getting a very high quality VGA cable. I have heard good things about these: http://www.blackbox.com/Catalog/Detail.aspx?cid=45,85,1407&mid=3223.

I guess the other option is to just do DVI>HDMI.

What do you guys think?

I tried another VGA cable with pretty much the same result. There is slight VGA ghosting along the right edge of static images. I am considering getting a very high quality VGA cable. I have heard good things about these: http://www.blackbox.com/Catalog/Detail.aspx?cid=45,85,1407&mid=3223.

I guess the other option is to just do DVI>HDMI.

What do you guys think?

Dvi to Hdmi isnt working too well for me at the moment hehe

VGA has been working good for me minus watching DVDs where there are artifacts and just all around crappy pictureness

Okay, so I have read every post since this thread had started and was wandering with all the people who own the TX-47 is it a thumbs up for video games and watching sdtv and hdtv. Thanks for all your help. I'm fixing to purchase one on line.

Big thumbs up on this TV for video games, sdtv, and hdtv. My xbox360 and PS3 have never looked better

Dvi to Hdmi isnt working too well for me at the moment hehe

VGA has been working good for me minus watching DVDs where there are artifacts and just all around crappy pictureness

Are you using any upscaling on your DVDs? Using FFDShow I have been able to get pretty remarkable results.

Are you using any upscaling on your DVDs? Using FFDShow I have been able to get pretty remarkable results.


I could try that but I really wanted to just get the dvi to hdmi cable to work properly

I cant get it to show without a whack black frame and the poor quality, that is just on my desktop not even when I am using dvds

Lastly, can anyone recommend user settings (calibrated, preferably) that include R,G,B levels for HDMI in very low light setting.

The following aren't true "calibrated" numbers, but they work well on my set with PC connected to HDMI port 1. I used an older copy of Video Essentials as my starting point but its' video calibration on digital sets seems somewhat lacking. I used it for Hue, Contrast and Brightness settings before switching over to the color and grey-scale charts found at http://www.pbase.com/jackcnd/1080p_tests. My two primary goals were to find the maximum values for each color prior to clipping (or crushing) and to make the yellow color bar (from video-essentials color graph) to actually be yellow instead of orange. My biggest unknown was the true RGB values for neutral grey. I had to make a best guess at what seemed right and then re-adjusted everything else to fit within the limits. I couldn't get yellow to be quite as bright as I wanted because the other primary colors started clipping at the high end. Over all, I am pleased with the results although whites seem to be a little less "warm" than I've been used to. Give these numbers a try and see what you think:
Dynamic Contrast: Off
Color Temp: Neutral
Red: 142 (started clipping beyond 142)
Green: 142 (started clipping beyond 154)
Blue: 130 (started clipping beyond 130)
Brightness: 57
Contrast: 46
Saturation: 36
Hue: 49
Sharpness: 25 (or whatever as it made no difference on my set)
Backlight: Anywhere from 0 - 30 (or more if needed but not recommended). 10-20 is best in darkened room)

I'm not sure why blue is so far off from Red & Green but I couldn't go higher without clipping and lowering the R & G messed up both yellow and grey.

Sorry if these values look horrendous on your set, they are very good on mine but I have not tested them with a non-PC source. Make sure you save your values prior to trying new ones.

Ok I forced tv in there... it even picked up my Westinghouse and said that it was capable of 1920x1080 and 75hz ... I set it to that and forced it and it STILL has the black frame around the picture and the screen still looks really bad

I would try a different version of the driver, that could do it. With my NVIDIA card I was using the leaked 160.03 <i think> driver and it was doing the same thing you mentioned. I ended up going into device manager and doing a driver rollback. As soon as I did that the border went away and I had full screen at 1080p.

-M

I feel terrible to say this to the people who are waiting for my input on calibration, but after spending most of the day working with mine I honestly don't have anything I feel confident sharing. I've never had so much trouble dialing in a tv, and LCD sets are usually extremely straightforward. It takes me 30 seconds flat to perfectly dial in the black and white points and saturation level on my father's Sony V40XBR1. The contrast control interacts with brightness in an odd manner on the TX. It seems to RAISE the black floor when contrast is raised. This is just odd and not the behavior one would expect. Normally when you ramp up your white level you have to increase your black level a bit to maintain shadow detail, but here I found myself actually turning the brightness down after turning contrast up.

The problem is that DVE tells me pretty clearly what numbers are needed to get the black level correct, but in real world viewing the setting proves to be terrible. In fact other DVE test patterns show very heavy black clipping when the APL (average picture level) is high. In other words a bright image versus one with lots of black on it. The fluctuation is reminiscent of a DC restoration problem like you'd see on a cheap CRT, only it simply shouldn't happen on an LCD set. I found myself having to heavily favor either picture contrast or shadow detail depending upon the brightness of the content. The pluge test on DVE will call for a very low brightness setting of around 40, but other patterns will call for something radically different. For example at the first resolution test pattern in order to reveal the 5 IRE inlay within the 0 IRE box on that test pattern (which should be perfectly visible after setting the brightness at the pluge screen like I already did), I had to ramp the brightness up to well over 75 before it would start showing up. Of course the picture was badly washed out at that point. I just don't know what the deal is.

I'm also sad to say that the set is indeed crushing shadow detail. The gamma is poorly calibrated and drops off extremely fast at about the 15 IRE point. The range from 0-10 is all black which means 10% of your picture detail is simply being lost to total black. The only way to bring it back is to punch the brightness and compromise the overall contrast far beyond what's acceptable. I struggled to set the white level too. There is a large range between 55-70 on the scale which seems to raise the brightness of the overall image without actually moving the white point much, again very strange and just a PITA to work with.

For whatever it's worth the compromise setting I decided on which favors contrast at the expense of shadow detail is below. This is for an Oppo 971H connect via a DVI to HDMI cable and set to output 1080i. The ambient light in the room was dim, I'd say just barely enough to read but not enough to read comfortable if that gives you an idea. Light level in the room plays a big part in where you park your brightness control.

So:
Brightness - 41
Contrast - 69
Saturation - 43
Sharpness - 0
Backlight - 0 or 10
Color Temp - Warm (this looks quite good, I don't see a need to experiment with the RGB controls really)
Dynamic Contrast - Off (as far as this feature goes it's actually not too bad, but it messes with the overall gamma curve and makes the balance of the image look unnatural. If I could turn it on only for SD cable viewing I would, but it does more harm than good for anything else and tends to further crush blacks.)
Deinterlace - On (of course, this is indeed a film mode toggle and this should never be turned off under any circumstances. It could be safely turned off if you were feeding it a progressive source 100% of the time, but the setting is ignored for progressive input anyway.)
Comb Filter - On (it cleans up a bit of dot crawl and cross coloration on the SD stuff just like it should, again this should not be turned off as there is simply no reason to ever do so. I have to wonder why the option is even there. Nobody else does even though all these sets have them.)

That brightness value is what DVE's pluge pattern says should be correct, but I find it crushes black to an unacceptable degree when viewing movie content. I'm going through a bit of buyer's remorse in general because I'm just having a hard time getting a decent looking picture out of the thing. Setting black and white should not be hard. I can go buy a $69 Emerson tube set from Walmart and set this just fine, so why is it impossible to do on this expensive HD set? I'm disappointed in Westinghouse's work here. To be fair they've gotten some things right though. The colors look quite good, and those of you complaining about red push I would suggest you revisit your contrast control. Having it set too low pushes all the color values down slightly to darker hues which would make skintones look muddier. Again I'm still working on finding a sweet spot for this myself but signs point to parking it at at least 65. You could probably push 70-72 before crushing whites, but the DVE pattern I usually use to guage this wasn't being very helpful this time.

Some other random thoughts: the viewing angles on the set are godawful. This definitely isn't an A-MVA panel. It's particularly bad in the vertical plane like all MVA matrices. I'm pleased to see they managed to combat the color washout, but the black floor washes out to such a light grey at angle that the picture practically disappears in certain circumstances. Like a traditional MVA matrix 45 degree angles seem to be especially problematic. Viewing the set from above at 45 degrees of each axis is a great way to see both viewing angle problems collide with amusing results. I'm not criticizing here per se because this is a budget panel and I really didn't expect performance better than this, but it would have been nice. Starting at 8ft if you set perfectly centered in front of it at least the corners do not appear too much lighter, which is enough for me. The scaling is indeed good as people have said. I find SD is average, maybe a bit above average. HD is good, not great. The panel suffers from an overall lack of contrast, but I've been spoiled with Samsung PVA panels and it's not a very fair comparison. If I had started with this tv maybe I would be more impressed. I find that subjectively I like the scaling of the Oppo dvd player slightly better. It's noisier, has more jagged edges, more artifacts, and there's always our friend the macroblocking bug, but it also brings out more fine detail and keeps the image sharper without making it look unnatural. These are early thoughts though, and the Trident chip provides and smooth image that still looks detailed and is nothing to scoff at. I'm really pleased overall with the performance of DVDs, I only wish I could get my damn black and white levels right, but it may never be possible.

Finally, a quality report. I feel kind of bad being bummed about the tv in general because I got pretty darn lucky with the panel itself. Absolutely no banding and no mura of any kind. It produces a perfectly uniform picture on any color including the grey screens the Sharp people use to check for banding. When displaying a black screen there are no coulds, no mura, no bright defects and no backlight bleed in the corners. If you are close to the screen the corners appear brighter but this is simply the limited viewing angle of the panel and not a defect of any kind. I have a single dead red subpixel, which is pretty darn good and I consider myself lucky. I experienced a syncing issue with HDMI the very first time I tried to use it. It's peculiar because the Oppo does not request an HDCP handshake so there should not have been any trouble on that front. All I got was a green screen with static running through it. I had given up and was performing calibration using my old Sony player ouputting 480i on component, but when I checked the Oppo again in the evening I got a picture much to my surprise and relief.

I also have to report that I concur with the power issues Bill Wiese is talking about. The very second time I turned mine on it failed to boot. When I turned the set off the speakers produced a loud crackle and pop, so I turned it back on out of concern. It displayed the logo, blanked out for about 20 seconds, then displayed the boot logo a second time on it's own then finally did come back after another 20 seconds, with the speakers popping loudly a second time. This is with the set set to E. Saver mode. Turning the power mode to normal prevents it and makes the set turn on much faster, but it also eats up 50W of power even when turned off. That's absurd and is the equivalent of leaving a bedroom light on 24 hours a day. I guess its the price one pays to have a tv that will actually turn back on I suppose.

So overall the picture quality has met my expecatations from a color and detail point of view, but the set's poorly written firmware is making proper calibration very hard. Black and white levels are absolutely essential to have a decent picture and I find it hard to watch a set that cannot arrive at this simple level of calibration. It's disappointing but not terrible and doesn't utterly wreck the enjoyment of the set. I guess we'll see if my opinion changes with time.

Wow that was long. Sorry guys. :)

Just a side note: I'm curious about all you guys who are arriving at contast settings below 50. When viewing test patterns don't you find you can go much higher before the 95-100 IRE range begins to be crushed? It didn't crush for me until it was set over 70, but it also gives the colors a more washed out appearance (which may be right for all I know) and tends to make noisy images look worse. It definitely helps keep the picture from looking flat due to the contrast performance of the panel.

Oh, and for all the commenters on the sharpness control doing nothing I think it does. It's quite noticeable. The effect is very mild from 0-25, then steadily introduces edge enhancement above that. Once it gets above 50 the effect is very easy to spot and when set near 100 the appearance reminds me of the scan velocity modulation options that used to be on CRTs. It works like a typical sharpness control in other words, though when you nudge it from 99 to 100 there is a very large shift in the appearance of the image that I don't think is intentional. Yet another little thing the Westy guys missed I would imagine.

The following aren't true "calibrated" numbers, but they work well on my set with PC connected to HDMI port 1. I used an older copy of Video Essentials as my starting point but its' video calibration on digital sets seems somewhat lacking. I used it for Hue, Contrast and Brightness settings before switching over to the color and grey-scale charts found at http://www.pbase.com/jackcnd/1080p_tests. My two primary goals were to find the maximum values for each color prior to clipping (or crushing) and to make the yellow color bar (from video-essentials color graph) to actually be yellow instead of orange. My biggest unknown was the true RGB values for neutral grey. I had to make a best guess at what seemed right and then re-adjusted everything else to fit within the limits. I couldn't get yellow to be quite as bright as I wanted because the other primary colors started clipping at the high end. Over all, I am pleased with the results although whites seem to be a little less "warm" than I've been used to. Give these numbers a try and see what you think:
Dynamic Contrast: Off
Color Temp: Neutral
Red: 142 (started clipping beyond 142)
Green: 142 (started clipping beyond 154)
Blue: 130 (started clipping beyond 130)
Brightness: 57
Contrast: 46
Saturation: 36
Hue: 49
Sharpness: 25 (or whatever as it made no difference on my set)
Backlight: Anywhere from 0 - 30 (or more if needed but not recommended). 10-20 is best in darkened room)

I'm not sure why blue is so far off from Red & Green but I couldn't go higher without clipping and lowering the R & G messed up both yellow and grey.

Sorry if these values look horrendous on your set, they are very good on mine but I have not tested them with a non-PC source. Make sure you save your values prior to trying new ones.
I just want to quickly note for people that there can be a pretty considerable amount of panel to panel variation even within the exact same model type of LCD set. These numbers may look great for one person and be considerably off for another. Just a heads up. I think the default warm temp setting is close enough for most people honestly.

Xcalibur, does your Oppo use the full RGB colorspace? I noticed a big difference using "full" RGB HDMI on my PS3 and "expanded" 0-255 signal black levels over xbox360 VGA. I think the panel uses PC values, maybe you'll get a better reading using them?

I tried another VGA cable with pretty much the same result. There is slight VGA ghosting along the right edge of static images. I am considering getting a very high quality VGA cable. I have heard good things about these: http://www.blackbox.com/Catalog/Detail.aspx?cid=45,85,1407&mid=3223.

I guess the other option is to just do DVI>HDMI.

What do you guys think?

A DVI-HDMI cable will certainly cure the slight ghosting. I have also experienced ghosting on longer vga cable runs. On my dual monitor setup, DVI gives extremely sharp text whereas on the second monitor through VGA, even with good quality and less than 6 feet cable run, text seems to be slightly fuzzy.

A DVI-HDMI cable will certainly cure the slight ghosting. I have also experienced ghosting on longer vga cable runs. On my dual monitor setup, DVI gives extremely sharp text whereas on the second monitor through VGA, even with good quality and less than 6 feet cable run, text seems to be slightly fuzzy.

Any recommendations on where to buy? Others in this thread have complained about the Monoprice cables causing issues for them.

I would imagine that most 720p TVs simply overscan the image so you don't see it. If you don't want to see it use the overscan option of the TX. Granted the TX does overscan just a little too much in my opinion, but I would much rather have 1 to 1 pixel mapping than be forced to use overscan any day.

The purple line is clearly a problem with how the TX is handling 1080i deinterlacing and is definitely a bug that needs to be addressed via a firmware update, and I imagine with enough complaining from us it will be.

I don't get it - I have never seen this. Under what circumstances do you guys get this purple line?

Also, atomz and others - I would recommend using standard mode and trying to ignore the CC data. You may find that you get used to it. Yes, it sucks that the broadcasters won't get off their asses and fix this already, but to me, it's not worth losing 1:1 for...I'm more annoyed by the missing part of the picture, certainly on this set anyway. As someone else pointed out, "overscan" on this set is really intended (or seems to be anyway) for material that is letterboxed and pillarboxed, like a movie that was filmed widescreen but is being broadcast 4:3 or something...not sure of the exact circumstances, but I've seen it work, and in those cases, the "overscan" mode is perfect.

Ed

Ed

I looked at the power plug into the set last night for the tx47 and I tried jiggling it, and there's no movement. It's very snug. I never have any issues turning the set on, and it would go straight back if I had to leave the power save mode to off. 50 watts of energy for doing nothing is a complete waste to me and is unacceptable.

I experienced some of the same issues recently when trying to calibrate my set. I originally had brightness set to ~45, but after trying ~62 which was suggested on the forum here, I see that <60 crushes blacks considerably and alot of dark detail is lost. Unfortunately, this seems to considerably bring up the black floor like you mentioned, so the true black level is compromised..

I also noticed the same thing you mentioned with the contrast when using the THX optimizer. I had to turn it up very high before the white's "crushed" as well. Maybe I'll tinker with it some tonight or tomorrow and see if I can tweak the picture a little better. I am a little disappointed now in the black levels of the panel. When the brightness is raised so that blacks aren't crushed, it raises the black floor considerably, and is too bright for a dark room. Like you said, it seems like you can either have crushed blacks or deeper black levels.. :rolleyes:

I don't get it - I have never seen this. Under what circumstances do you guys get this purple line?

Also, atomz and others - I would recommend using standard mode and trying to ignore the CC data. You may find that you get used to it. Yes, it sucks that the broadcasters won't get off their asses and fix this already, but to me, it's not worth losing 1:1 for...I'm more annoyed by the missing part of the picture, certainly on this set anyway. As someone else pointed out, "overscan" on this set is really intended (or seems to be anyway) for material that is letterboxed and pillarboxed, like a movie that was filmed widescreen but is being broadcast 4:3 or something...not sure of the exact circumstances, but I've seen it work, and in those cases, the "overscan" mode is perfect.

Ed

Ed

I see lines all the time using 'standard' which doesn't surprise me at all because from what I can tell:

'standard' = NO overscan at all
'fill' = standard overscan (3-5%) (confirmed by cable box menu placement on Westy vs. normal TV)
'overscan' = zoom

No time in the near future are all broadcasters going to cleanly broadcast without using overscan. I do wish it were adjustable though. If you are not seeing the lines, it is quite possible your source is taking care of it by always blacking 2% or something.

I will use 'fill' for TV and 'standard' for XBOX360/PC etc.

xnappo

The Tivo itself doesn't have a zoom mode? My crappy SA8300 has that.. Anyway, it does have a zoom mode called 'overscan' that *may* work for this task.

xnappo

The Tivo *does* have zoom/aspect control. I'm not sure exactly what it is that the OP's friend is looking for, or I would respond further.

Ed

I see lines all the time using 'standard' which doesn't surprise me at all because from what I can tell:

'standard' = NO overscan at all
'fill' = standard overscan (3-5%) (confirmed by cable box menu placement on Westy vs. normal TV)
'overscan' = zoom

No time in the near future are all broadcasters going to cleanly broadcast without using overscan. I do wish it were adjustable though. If you are not seeing the lines, it is quite possible your source is taking care of it by always blacking 2% or something.

I will use 'fill' for TV and 'standard' for XBOX360/PC etc.

xnappo

Oh, I see the black and white CC lines at the top of the picture for sure using standard - when I said "I've never seen this", I was referring to the purple line that some are complaining about - a possible deinterlacing issue?

Ed

Are you using any upscaling on your DVDs? Using FFDShow I have been able to get pretty remarkable results.


Okay, I have to ask. I'm relatively new to the HTPC world. My understanding is, if you set your video card to output 1920 x 1080, then the card is, in effect, upscaling SD DVD for you. So, what does FFDShow do in this case that my 8500GT can't?

Ed

Oh, I see the black and white CC lines at the top of the picture for sure using standard - when I said "I've never seen this", I was referring to the purple line that some are complaining about - a possible deinterlacing issue?

Ed

Sorry - should have been more clear - the purple line appears at either the top of the bottom - however it is in the source overscan area of my SA8300. I know it is in the source because I have seen it when adjusting overscan on my old set. Simply put, the cable box is not expecting you to be viewing the overscan area. This varys between looking like CC data and the purple line thing. It is never there on DVD or game sources.

xnappo

I feel terrible to say this to the people who are waiting for my input on calibration, but after spending most of the day working with mine I honestly don't have anything I feel confident sharing.


Well, that's disappointing, but your efforts are certainly appreciated. Glad to hear you got a decent panel anyway. Mine has more stuck pixels and some mura, but neither seem to be an issue 99% of the time. Really I thought they would be as I'm somewhat of a perfectionist, but I'm going to wait and see at this point.

I am surprised at your observations on viewing angle, though - I thought the viewing angles on this set were quite good. Maybe I'm just not picky enough, but both my main viewing positions are probably 30 degrees off center, and I've looked at it from the kitchen which has got to be 45 or more, and only noticed a slight washout, less than I expected actually. I do have 1 or 2 corners that seem bright and I think they really are bright (flashlighting I guess), but it is true that this is more or less noticeable depending on viewing position/angle.

I'm glad I didn't go through the whole DVE now, as I would certainly have thought that I was doing something wrong. Maybe if we can get the service menu code, there might be a gamma adjustment that could help?

Ed

Sorry - should have been more clear - the purple line appears at either the top of the bottom - however it is in the source overscan area of my SA8300. I know it is in the source because I have seen it when adjusting overscan on my old set. Simply put, the cable box is not expecting you to be viewing the overscan area. This varys between looking like CC data and the purple line thing. It is never there on DVD or game sources.

xnappo

Okay, so if I understand you correctly, then the purple line is definitely not a deinterlacing issue with the TX?

Ed

Okay, so if I understand you correctly, then the purple line is definitely not a deinterlacing issue with the TX?

Ed

I don't believe so. I can try turning off the deinterlacing when I get home. Though is that menu item really for deinterlacing or 3:2 pulldown?

xnappo