1080P Panel Wars Ep. II: Westinghouse LVM-37w1 - Page 9

Can you comment on the reponse time of the LCD TV? There were a couple of comments saying that ghosting was noted on fast action scenes and I just want to make sure that's not the case before making the purchase. Thanks.

Wow, I desperately want to see how this monitor handles other resolutions like a 720p feed or even something like 1024x768..

Any chance of playing with the screen resolutions and showing us the results!?

I am hunting for a TV to use as a videogame monitor....ps2, XBOX, the next-generation systems and..frankly if it looks that good...even as a computer monitor for playing First Person Shooters...

I'm curious how this TV handles things like an SVIDEO input or a component input at 480p, for example..

Any chance you can put up a scan of the coupon?? Would also like to know the price after rebates and coupon. Thanks.

please remember Forum rules do not allow coupon talk

Thanks

OK. I just called crutchfield and cancelled my BenQ 3750 order. I think I will wait costco's deal on 37inch LCD. anybody else with me? The only problem is the promotion is still 3 months away.

Actually you guys want to hear a scary thing...?

I have a 65" Mitsubishi set that is my primary HT display, but because of fears of burn-in, I've avoided most gaming on the box...I've had it since 2001 and its served me well.

But I've been looking into a secondary display for gaming....for my PS2, Xbox and whatever next gen systems come down the line. This Westinghouse was one of the displays that was making the cut.

And then...I started looking at prices

To replace my 65" Mits, should something bad happen to it, would cost me several hundred dollars *LESS* than this LCD display at 1/2 the size!!!!

So I guess its time to start gaming on the mits, since if something like burn-in were to happen on it, it would be cheaper to replace it than it would be to look for a flatpanel right now. What I'd lose in real-world resolution would be made up for with a better picture quality.

Man its scary how the pricing changes over the years

Granted you wont be using a 65" display on your desktop......and its a bit deepr than 5 inches....but you know, there is alot to be said for the "Bang for the Buck" factor here,
isn't there.

arthurking,
I will be waiting and depending on what is available at the time I may also be buying costco's. It's the cheapest and has HDMI with one of the best warranties available. I want what is best for me in this price range. I want the best contrast ratio and response time and also good connectivity and good warranty. I haven't seen any info on the Sceptre except what is in the Costco book which is very little. I would pay a bit more to get a better display. The next three months will be interesting for the 37" 1080P LCDs. I can wait for the early adopters to figure out which model is best.

quick question - does the front speaker detach or is it permanently attached?

Rusch -- Set up an input for your game where you back off on the brightness and, especially, the contrast settings.

If you do this, there is a very good chance you will never burn in your TV.

Good luck and happy gaming.

I was up late last night, but I still have not been able to put it through its paces. First impressions: SD is crap, Computer is awsome (I need a new one), HD is good. Have not tried DVD yet. I saw something that might be ghosting while watching a 1080i docudrama (shaky cam), but I am not sure if it is the screen itself or the on-board processing. The resolution seemed to fluctuate from high to low depending on the movement of the scene. This might be ghosting, but it might just be how it processes 1080i and turns it into 1080p. I think I saw an improvement when I switched to 720p, but I need more time to confirm this. It may have gone away when I turned down the backlight.

If you just want to watch SD TV or DVD's, I'd say stay away from this set. Get an ED Panny Plasma its cheaper, bigger and better. But if you want a 37" 1920x1080 computer monitor that can double at a TV set, this is the only option right now. I'm not a serious gamer so I can't help you guys.

I need more time. I would like to see this set attached to an iScan HD. I'm not convinced I'll keep it. I still have the BenQ on order at Crutchfield. I'm going to spend some time with the Westinghouse in my new office. Once the chairs and the couch get delivered and the faders are installed on the recessed lights, I'll be able to give it a better evaluation.

I completely agree with your assessment of how good digital photos look at 1920X1080.

A 1920X1080 24 bit RGB image contains 6.22 megabytes of data and it doesn't hurt to make sure that each sub pixel gets fully fed all 256 levels.

I like to use photoshop to generate TIFF and BMP images from raw files on my dSLR cropped to the exact screen size and ppi resolution of the display (49 ppi for the Sharp 45). They really pop out at you and the detail is amazing. You can zoom in on a nat's eyebrow. I see little reason to print since I got the Sharp 45GX. You can help justify the price of the display by how much money you're going to save on paper and ink.

I also highly recommend webshots.com for spectaular screen saver images already cropped to 1920X1080.

BTW does anybody know the exact screen dimensions of the Westinghouse 37?

The big question is, "Will CRT RPTV sets be available in a few years?". I don't know, I like the big CRT sets. If you have the space I think they are the best thing for viewing movies ect... They are cheap at the moment, but what happens when
the manufacturers decide to slow down or stop making them all together due
to low cost of other technologies? Will you still be able to get the best PQ for
movies at the current low prices?

Kinda strange. In any event, I'd game on a smaller set. Not to mention it would
suck less juice.

Mike

CRTs will be available for several more years. But around decade's end, they may well be on their last days.

it is good to know your opinion. Actually I am somewhat reluctant to make big purchases from online store, even some reputable stores like crutchfield, because I had some terrible experience with amazon and Toshiba on the famous 30HF84 disaster. When something goes wrong, B&M stores are the easiest to deal with, which can save your lots of time and energy. As long as the price difference is not that much and within my budget, I think I will go to B&M store for such big purchase, esp. from costco.

For those saying SD is crap, what are you using as a source, and how is that source connected to the display?

I'm curious about SD and DVD playback (in addition to HD), and am curious which inputs and resolutions are being used. I know often times the component inputs on displays are heavily filtered resulting in overly soft video (and why I use VGA/RGB inputs when possible). In other words, I'd like to see/know how my Bravo DVD player using DVI and 1080i playback would look.

The Westinghouse LVM-37w1 arrived today. I tested some 720P, 1080I and some 1080P material from a few sources. All tests so far are from the DVI 1 and DVI 2 inputs.

Zero Bad pixels

1080P from a computer is just awesome. I even pushed the monitor at 1920x1080 x 60hz and 70hz. Both 60hz and 70hz worked flawlessly.

This is the sharpest monitor I've ever seen. The black level, colors and brightness are much better then my Samsung 21.3" LCD SyncMaster 213T, 30" Phillips LCD, 32" and Magnavox LCD and my Panasonic AE700 Projector. The Westinghouse is actually too bright and needs to be turned down. On computer signals it is just blindingly bright with it's 20 tubes and are razor sharp. Skin tones were excellent. I played ten 1080P clips from here.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...tShowcase.aspx

They are amazingly clean with little or no ghosting. Digital Pictures from my Olympus 8 megapixel 8080 look the best I've ever seen. on the 37".

1080i looks really good from Directv but it's clear that those 1080P samples are much better. Black levels are good but are not near what you get when run from a good computer card at 1080P. 1080i does show ghosting but not anymore then my other sets. 720P actually looks as good or better then 1080i on the 37" coming from my DVR TiVo HR10-250. The westinghouse does an excellent job upscalling 720p signals. Better then my native 1280x720, 1280x768 and 1366x768 sets do. It made my 61" Samsung HDTV CRT Rear Projection look like crap in every respect in side by side comparisons.

This is a keeper for me. It's clear that the source material is really the limiting factor now. Compressed 1080I from Directv is not near as good as a real 1080P source material that this set can handle. In 1080I Ghosting came from lots of compression but vanished with clean source material. You can see a staircase effect on "some" 1080I source material but not 720P source or 1080P. Taking 1080I source and outputing it to 720P then letting the set upconvert it to 1080p looks really good.

The speakers and stand can be removed if needed and have quick disconnects.

The manual is now upline here: http://www.westinghousedigital.com/s...n/37w1uMan.pdf

The set takes >1 watt on standby and 218 watts at start. After 5 minutes it's under 190 watts.


You really need to run this set at 1080P from your computer to see how good the picture can be.

And the big question: Hows it look with a 480p signal upconverted......?

Think Progressive Scan DVD.....which is probably the medium that many people buying this set would look to for most of their movie watching...

My set ran fine at 60hz and 70hz but it might not be a good idea to run 1080P at 70hz as it might overdrive the electronics.

From the manual:
Warning: Do not set the graphics card in your computer to exceed these refresh rates; doing so may result in
permanent damage to the HD Monitor.

Agreed. This is in the running to be my first HDTV. The price is right and the performance doesn't seem to be too bad. Its either this or a Panny PDP (model 37px50).

I've always liked LCDs, so I am partial to the westinghouse, so I am reading this thread a lot to get the pulse of the members.

It looks really good with my Samsung HD-841 High Definition DVD player using the DVI cable. I haven't tried the other connections yet. Playing DVD's from a PC as the source using Cyberlink's PowerDVD and DVI output gives superior output over stand alone DVD players. 3+ Gigahertz of processing power can really do some awesome upscaling and anti aliasing.

I was messing with the dual DVI's and the set will do PIP, PBP and POP with 2 DVI sources. They did a great job on the quality of the multiple inputs and how well they function. Also the set remembers settings so if you switch from DVI 1 to DVI 2 you don't need to tweak all the picture settings every time you change inputs. Each input has it's own memory. This is great if you have a Samsung 841 DVD with black crush.

The remote layout works well but the IR remote needs more powerful IR emiter or a wider angle detector.. If you get more then 30-40 degrees off angle the TV won't pick up the signal.

Westinghouse seems to have finally posted the manual on their website. The manual shows that the front speaker is detachable by disconnecting wires and removing screws.

As I have only made 2 posts, I can't link to it, but Westinghouse website is not complex so you should be able to find the product page for the LVM-37w1 and it's manual.

Sounds Good. I think the ultimate test will be to try it with a good 480p player connected via component.

Of course I've always questioned wether or not upsampling was even necessary on fixed-pixel devices. On a CRT based system, scanlines are reduced/removed by upsampling.....but with fixed-pixels you dont have that problem. Oh well!

It sounds like Westinghouse has a winner, let Yoda say it best..

"Begin...these Price Wars..Should!"

On the 37" westinghouse I was wrong about seeing staircase effects on 1080I material. The only time I see the staircase on 1080I is when the image was paused. At <2 feet away you can see 540 vertical steps from the interlasing only when the video is "paused" but not when the video is playing as the lines are filled in and the jags are completly cleaned up. So the image is actually converting to 1920X1080 Progressive when playing. This might be why you can see more ghosting at 1080I then 720P or 1080P as the image is really filling in at at 30fps not 60fps at 1080I. Someone mentioned they thought the 1080I mode might be downsampled to 1920X540P to save cpu power but it's not. Your getting the full 1920x1080P.

Also the 0-100 setting for the backlight control is a great feature. I wish all my other LCD's had this feature.

I tried feeding it DVD material using component DVD signals/480P and the 37" upscaled the material better then my Samsung 841 via the DVI cable does.

How does off-air digital stuff at SD look? How about analog off-air? How about standard resolution satellite video?

It is going to be a long time before HD is the norm for all of the broadcast programming, so SD performance counts.

And thus I get the answer to the last remaining question I had. Thanks for clinching it for me, metasearch

I was disappointed with SD. It comes from a high def Tivo upconverted to 1080i by the Tivo and fed to the display via DVI.

If you look at the menu there is a sub-menu for system information. It gives you information on the signal that it is being fed. When fed 1080i, it reads 1920x540.