Allrighty, I got my LVM-47w1 from Best Buy last night. Here are a few preliminary comments. Disclaimer though -- I'm not a HDTV guru, and this is my first LCD TV. I do have a Dell 24" widescreen PC LCD monitor, but I've only had it for a few months.
The box. The box is fricking HUGE. Wouldn't fit in my friend's car. We had to take the set out of its box (to the suggestion of the swarm of Best Buy reps having cigarette breaks outside the store) and find a way to cradle it in the car. The trip was very smooth and the set was insulated from all shocks and vibrations, but juggling a 3,000$, 80-pounder TV around isn't exactly what I'd call fun.
DVI, computer use and dead pixels. First thing I did when I got home was to hook the set up to my PC through DVI. It's big. It's very big. I couldn't see myself using this for everyday computer use, or for gaming. It's just way too big, and the dot pitch of each pixel isn't geared towards computer use where you sit a couple feet away from the screen. I knew that already, I'm just pointing it out to answer someone's question earlier on the thread. I'll also say that it does 1920x1080@60Hz very well. No problems there. It actually feels better than my Dell 2405FPW, which is rated at 8ms, I believe.
Now here's my problem. I found three dead pixels, and one stuck pixel. And those pixels are huge. Not like tiny little things that you can't really see -- those things are as big as a flake of ground black pepper. You see them.
There is one pixel whose red component is always off, one whose green is always off, and one whose blue is always off. So when I display a fullscreen solid color (red, green or blue), I see black dots where those pixels are. And I'm talking about there different pixels in different locations. I guess I lucked out -- I have a whole RGB set of broken pixels -_-
There's also one pixel that seems a bit smaller (not sure why) that always seem to be "on". When I display a black screen (or when the TV is booting up or changing input) it shows up as a tiny greenish dot. Not a square pixel-looking one like my RGB ones; this one's more like a little pinprick of light.
I could live with the small "stuck" one, even with it being where it is (right in the middle of the screen), but the three "dead" ones are highly annoying. I emailed Westinghouse support this morning, explaining the situation, and asking if this was something to be expected of a new LVM-47w1 set, or if I should exchange this set at Best Buy. They replied right away saying I should most definitely return and exchange it.
So I'll play with it in the next couple days, but I'm quite definitely returning it to get a new one. And I'm hoping the next one won't have pixel problems.
Auto Source. As Kiteboy mentionned, it only switches to newly-detected sources. I was hoping that on top of that, it would detect when the current source goes off, and switch to the previously active source. It doesn't. So since the 8300HD is always sending a signal, you always have to fidget with the source buttons. Which is surprisingly slow by the way... cycling from one source to another takes some time. Still, I find Auto Source relatively useful.
Picture quality. Very impressive. Again I'm not a professional, so this is just my personal opinion. I found that increasing brighness and saturation by a little bit, and turning the backlight way down, helped bring out the colors more, and helped preventing me from getting a tan while watching TV.
HD looks absolutely fantastic. 720P feeds look kind of blurry; 1080i feeds look amazingly crisp. I was comparing it to my friend's TV -- he bought a Samsung DLP that does 720P natively -- and his 720P channels seem to look better than on my Westy. I'm guessing it's because the Westy needs to stretch it to 1080. However, 1080i feeds seem to look more detailed on my set than his -- I'm guessing his Samsung shrinks it down to 720...? I'm very confused with the whole HD thing.
Non-HD gaming. I fired up Burnout Revenge on the (old) Xbox. Not impressed. Colors look vibrant and all, but you can really tell how low-res the game is on such a big screen. That game looked high-def on my old 30" widescreen CRT, and looks very outdated on that giant screen. I was somewhat expecting this -- I'm planning on getting a PS3, and possibly a 360 if they ever make one that isn't WHITE -- but I was secretly hoping my Xbox / GameCube / PS2 games wouldn't look that blurry.
This is it for now -- I only played with the set for 2-3 hours so far, I just figured I'd post my first thoughts here, hoping it will help someone. I'm disappointed at the whole pixel thing; returning it will be a hassle that I'm definitely not looking forward to. I didn't buy the rididulous 700$ extended waranty from Best Buy but I do intend to make full use of this 30-day return policy.
By the way, is it normal for a set to have so many pixel issues?
I'm trying to convince myself that the 47" Westy will work for my needs. I want something big to sit on my desk and use for pc use and gaming. I'd be about 3 or 4 feet away.
