Westinghouse LTV-32w1 discussion thread

Good timing on this thread. I'll continue my commentary started in this thread
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=498013

I looked over the new Westinghouse 32" LCD panel at Best Buy yesterday. Here is my mini-review.

It looks like the 27"-37" size range is the battle ground this year. The number of LCD panels in this range on display at my local Best Buy was amazing.

The Westinghouse is currently on sale at my local BB. There is a current sale on all HDTV's. BB periodically has special days where they hand out 10% off anything coupons, which would potentially lower the price even more. I was told that holders of the Best Buy in house credit card get notified of these events.

The unit looks very nice from an industrial design perspective, with the speakers on the bottom rather than the sides, saving valuable width for tight spaces. The slight "V" shape of the speakers gives it a distinctive look. The speakers are not removable.

Yes, its silver, but my wife has grown used to the silver look. The color bezel options make this a moot point. I did not ask if the color bezel add ons were available in the store.

Though I didn't see the remote first hand, judging from the manual, the remote looks identical to the remote for the myHD and WinTV type tuner cards for PC's, which means they may share codes. Be aware of this if you use a Pronto or other programmable remote, and plan to use a PC in the same room with one of these tuner cards installed.

EDIT: I took my myHD remote to the store andtried it on the 32" Westinghouse. It didn't do squat. Looks like the codes are different, even though the physical design is the same.

The unit is very thin, with only a narrow bulge down the center rear, where the input connections are located along the sides of the bulge. The unit has a standard IEC power connector (like a PC power supply), so it appears it has a built in power supply- i.e. no brick, but I couldn't see the entire length of the power cord to the power socket to confirm.

The unit I saw apppeared to not have any dead/stuck pixels, which I am sensitive to.

I was able to easily lift the unit with both hands- one hand would probably be enough. This is important to me, being sick and tired of lugging 32" SD CRT's around. As I approach the big 4-0, I vow to never own a display device I cannot carry by myself with one arm . EDIT: One hand *is* sufficient to lift it .

I confirmed all the inputs shown in the manual- DB15 analog, DVI digital, Svideo, 2x composite, and 2x component, all with their own audio inputs.

One of the composite inputs is located behind the lower right bezel, convenient for quick camera/ video game hookups while remaining unseen. Nice touch.

The unit was fed via component analog input from what I assume was an analog HD distribution amp feeding all the displays the same signal for comparison. The signal appeared relatively noise free.

The demo loop looked like a mix of SD and HD material.

During a space sequence, showing a CG Earth in a field of stars, the blacks looked very, very good. Bright outdoor scenes of a rain forest were very punchy and sharp. Some indoor scenes could have had better contrast and punch, but this could be source related and/or mitigated somewhat by simple image adjustments.

EDIT: White field uniformity was excellent- "perfect" to my eyes. There happened to be a lot of mostly white scenes during logos. No yellowish tints or corner to corner issues.

It was difficult to assess deinterlacing, as the signal source was reported as 1920 x 540 by the Westinghouse, read from the menu option called "System Info". The firmware was reported as 0.37 in this menu. Don't know if this means the signal was 1080i or actually 540p, as the timings would be similar and possibly confuse the display.

Screen door was not objectionable to me at normal den/living room viewing distances, which tend to be farther than front projection viewing distances, measured in screen widths. Rather than "not objectionable", I believe "not noticable" to most people would be a more appropriate description. The high 1366 x 768 resolution makes the pixels and gaps relatively small.

The sharpness and clarity of the raw panel was excellent, judging from the graphics of the on screen menus, which I played with using the side mounted menu and +/- buttons. The built in menus were clearly 1:1 pixel mapped, of course.

I watched closely how fast moving objects and edges appeared, trying to assess the pixel response rate- i.e. ghosting, smearing, etc. It appears that manufacturers might be stretching their pixel response numbers, as I could detect some image smearing occasionally. Based on the reported pixel response rating on this unit, I expected to see none. This could be the image source- i.e. the scaler/deinterlacer used by Best Buy feeding the distribution amp. It wasn't enough to drop this unit off my potential buy list, however.

EDIT: Today, my impression was that there was basically NO smearing, and pixel response was excellent. I closely watched a lot of fast moving network logos (Showtime HD, etc) during the demo loops.

Viewing angle appeared to be a bona-fide 170 degress per specs. I shifted around to the extreme viewing angles, and did not notice significant brightness or color shifts. I was worried I might see color or brightness shifts, as my Westinghouse 17" PC LCD monitor has noticable off-axis color and brightness shifts, though it doesn't matter to me, based on normal PC usage viewing angles.

EDIT: Today I did notice some off axis brightness shift- it was BRIGHTER off to the sides than straight on! I assume this is some polarization effect. The caveat is that the contrast is somewhat lower 50-60 degrees off axis, but not a deal breaker for me.

EDIT: I played around with the Picture Parameter menu. The backlight control is very coarse, changing in discrete steps, I really didn't notice lower brightness until the control was 60-80% lowered from the default max (all the way to the right). I found that the black levels were excellent at 30-40 on the backlight scale.

EDIT: The three color temp settings were COLOR1 = warm/reddish, COLOR2= bluish, COLOR3= very blue. I prefered COLOR1 and COLOR2. Those who've read my AE700 reviews know I don't like D65 on digital displays .

I have been using the current Westinghouse 17" PC LCD panel for about two months now, and have been *very* happy with its black levels and pixel response, and its general build quality for the price. When I bought the 17" monitor, it set a new low price ($249) for a 17" with 1280x1024 resolution and 16ms or better response- it is rated at 14ms, which I tend to believe based on its visual performance. In the past several days, I've seen new lows on 1280x1024 16ms 17" LCD's, like the LG at newegg for $XXX straight up and $XXX after rebates. I don't count any display higher than 16ms.

While the prices of the 30"-something panels are better than ever, I feel they need to go down even more. Scaling by any reasonable metric- weight, screen surface area, or resolution, a 32" panel, for example, should street for around $900-$1000, based on the resolution and screen surface area of a current 16ms or better 17" diag LCD panel. I know there are other manufacturing issues involved, but I just don't understand how HUGE, HEAVY 32" CRT TV's can get shipped from half way around the world and sold here for $280 - a recent BB price on a Phillips 32" SDTV with compnent inputs! The shipping cost savings alone should bring the cost of LCD panels down .

Anyways, my $0.02

Rgb,
Did you get a chance to play with the color menu and the backlight menu?

Boy, my review wasn't enough?

But you're right, I should have played with the Picture Parameters menu, but I didn't. Maybe I'll stop by again over the weekend.

You might want to see if the thread title can be changed. I thought maybe you were making an editorial comment about Westinghouse.

Is the speaker detachable?

I'd like to hear what you think of this price/performance piece.

I edited the review to include more off axis image observations and comparisons, plus screen door comments.

I cannot be 100% certian, but judging by how I lifted the unit, with my hands under the speaker on the left/right sides, it didn't look or feel like it was removable. I beleive the back bezel was a one piece affair. Check the manual linked above for any clues.

I went to BB at lunch and saw that the speakers were not detachable on this unit. And up close, I doubt it'd look good with them removed anyway.

Would they be the first LCD maker to achieve the 8 ms response time?

I went back after work today.

The speakers are definately not removable on the 32" Westinghouse.

I will update my review with new observations on viewing angle sensitivity, pixel response rate, remote control, etc.

I see the moderator edited out the prices- I should have known better, being on these boards so long. Sorry!

I know prices fly around here at times, especially for the low ball stuff. I guess I was thinking about the Pioneer 1014 receiver threads, where prices were quoted every other post. Perhaps there are different rules for receivers and/or an exception was made for that receiver, due to its mass market target?

Anywho, I won't post prices here again, per forum rules.

Best Buy had all three new Westinghouse LCDs on display- 27", 30" and the 32" reviewed here.

The funny thing is, today I confirmed what I noticed yesterday- I think I like the new 30" better! The LTV-30v2 model, not listed yet on the westinghousedigital product page (its in the press relese from January 2005 on their site), seemed to have better colors to my eyes.

I really only need an LCD panel that matches the image width of a run of the mill 32" SD 4:3 CRT. According to my calculations, a 30" diagonal 16:9 LCD should be the same image width (actually slightly wider) as a 32" 4:3 SDTV.

The LTV-30v2 has the same inputs, menus, and controls as the LTV-32w1, including backlight and color temp. It is 1280x768 rather than 1366x768, which makes PC use easy- most video cards now have 1280x768 as standard.

As I darted my eyes probably a hundred times between the two units, the screen sizes looked basically the same- probably an optical illusion due to the speaker placement differences. The 30v2 has the "wing" speakers on the sides. While I initially didn't want this arrangement, I think the slightly smaller 30" screen will fit where I need it even with the side speakers.

I need to confirm that the 30" unit also has the Faroudja processing...

I just returned from Best Buy for a third trip to evaluate all three Westinghouse LCD's. This time, I was armed with a tape measure to take some hard numbers as I home in on what I need and want.

The 27" model looks exactly like the 32" model- same industrial design, color and speaker arrangment, down to the V-shaped speaker. I don't know why they didn't go with the same look for the 30" model.

All three units have the same control buttons and on screen menus.

I played with the Color Temps, brightness, contrast and backlight controls this morning.

While my tweaking was far from exhaustive, I couldn't get these sets to match the image contast and colorimetry of a much more expensive 26" Toshiba setting next to them.

Even with the backlight set to about 40 on the on screen scale, the black level of a black field was fairly gray. This was with a black -only field, nothing else on the screen.

As mentioned inn my inital review, black star fields looked great when there was a bright planet or ship in the scene- a known contrast perception effect.

I tried COLOR2 and Color3 settings. I think I liked COLOR2 the best.

I boosted the color saturation on the units to try and make the image look like the Toshiba 26" panel, but only ended up making fleshtones too red. This doesn't mean more tweaking couldn't achieve very good colorimetry.

I think these units really need the backlight turned almost all the way down, maybe to 20 on the scale, plus contrast and brightness tweaks to get all black fields where they need to be.

I set the Sharpness scale to zero. Any Sharpness higher than maybe 5 on the scale made the image noisy. I think a little Sharpness control is needed, though.

My tape measure confirmed the image width issue. I measured nearly every 4:3 32" CRT tube set, and they all were 25"-25.5" wide in the viewable image area, whether flat screen or not. The 30" Westinghouse was about 25.5" wide viewable image. The 32" was about 28" wide viewable., a definate upgrade in image width for those replacing a 32" 4:3 CRT.

The 32" unit is actually narrower than the 30" unit, due to speaker placement. The 30" unit is 34" wide, and the 32" unit is about 31" wide.
"

Can the picture settings be saved individually for each input?

Paul

I didn't try this.

Has anybody purchased one yet?

I was very tempted to pull the trigger on one after seeing it at my local BB store last night. The picture looked very good from the HD BB source.

Here's a pic of the 27" my friend picked up..


that's a std def stretched.

Guess no one else can schlep over to a Best Buy and do another in store review?

Haven't been to BB lately but the site indicates "unavilable" in my area.

Paul

The spec sheet for the 30" Westinghouse confirms Faroudja processing.

The sheet is at westinghousedigital.com/

support/ downloads/dSheets/tvs/30w2dSheet.pdf

Argh! Just noticed that to turn the CC on and off, you have to go through the on-screen display setup - no button on the remote. Since my wife and I use the captions extensively, this is a potentially a deal-killer. I could set up a macro on my universal remote, but it's just not a clean solution. In all fairness, I have the same problem with my Viewsonic N5 tuner module, and it's a hassle to have to wait as the macro does its thing, keeping the button pushed all the while.

Maybe I'll head over there and have a look -- maybe the BB site is wrong.

These appear to be attractive sets, the price is right, Faroudja processing. It needs to be determined if these sets can be calibrated well.

Paul

Looks like LCD panel shopping just became harder than comparing response time, contrast, black levels, and colorimetry.

See
http://firingsquad.com/hardware/budg...0405/page2.asp

You need to know what panel type these Westinghouse (or any panel you plan to buy) LCDs are, i.e. S-IPS, TN-film, or PVA/MVA. Big differences among them. Looks like advertised pixel response rates are meaningless (no suprise there) without knowing the panel type.

Also, TN-film panels appear to be useless for critical video viewing, as they only do 18 bit color.

Looks like a 20ms panel can actually respond better than a 12ms panel, depending on which panel technology it is.

If I recall,

LG/Philips manufacture the S-IPS panel type -- great speed, some off-axis color shifts, some sacrifice in contrast.

Samsung manufacture the MVA panel type -- have a good balance of performance characteristics

TN+Film is used widely for "cheapie" 17" LCD panels because of cost and response but at the sacrifice of almost all other performance characteristics.

Big topic in the "gamer" world.

Paul

The $64K question: Which type(s) are the 27", 30" and 32" Westinghouse panels?

Given the spec'ed 8ms response time for the 27" my first "guess" would be the S-IPS. Usually the S-IPS panels can be determined by a slight "rainbow effect" with off-axis viewing of the panel on, but displaying a black screen.

I haven't seen any of these new Westinghouse displays, so it's total conjecture.

Paul