New TV for me: Westinghouse LTV-37W1

[Dean McManis]

It's been about 9 months since I got my Olevia 37" LCD display, and I've been quite happy with it. The Olevia is built using LG panels and electronics and it looks great, especially with HD material. And it's been my main computer monitor as well all this time.

But I had been longing for a 1080p native LCD display even when I bought the Olevia, but they were over $1,000 back then with top models from Sharp and Sony going for over $2,500.

Well, I saw a Westinghouse 37" LTV-37W1 for sale last week for $580 and I could not resist. It is a new display, but not a new model as the LTV-37W3 is out now (at a higher price of course), and in the end after selling my Olevia (which cost me about the same as this display 9 months ago) the net cost is just another $100 out of pocket.
Which was worth the upgrade for me.

The contrast and black levels of the Westinghouse is good, but not quite as good as the Olevia was, however after reading some reviews it appears that a simple calibration can yield some good results, so I'm going to run Video Essentials this weekend and see how it looks.

The Olevia was already very bright, and this new display is just the same and in fact I reduced the backlighting to 50% because I usually don't watch the display with full daylight in the HT room, and it's easier on the eyes. :E

The most striking thing of course is the 1080p resolution. This display is now my new computer monitor and the image is as crisp as my 20" PC monitor at work...just blown up to 37".
Now the images that I had shot on my digital cameras can be viewed closer to their full resolution, which really transforms the pictures. 8O

And I have been watching both pre-recorded HD clips and demos that I had on my hard drive, and HD programming recorded on my HD-DVR. And the quality is just stunning!

Realistically, with the extra clarity, compression artifacts, grain and such show up a bit more than before, but I'll take the trade-off for getting a clearer image when viewing quality material.

At the same time I've built up a new PC with Vista Ultimate and scaled DVDs look great as well playing in Media Center.

It doesn't have a tuner, but my Direct TV DVR has it's own tuner and it also scales the picture to 1080i, which looks good even with regular programming.

But this is just day two for me with the display, so I'm still learning about it.
So far it's quite impressive. I probably wouldn't be as pleased if I was going to use this as my HT-only display, or needed a built-in tuner. But for normal TV watching and computer monitor and gaming use, this display looks fairly impressive to me. 8)

[aud19]

Sounds like a good investment for another $100 Dean! :T Let us know how she handles calibration

[Dean McManis]

I won't be able to get to the calibration until this weekend, but I did some more tweaking this evening, just playing around and WOW! what an improvement!

It was counter-intuitive to drop the brightness down even more than 50%, but as I did the picture got visibly better.
The sweet spot so far is at only a 37% brightness level, but with this setting the black level and contrast is now better than my Olevia was. 8)

I downloaded some more 1080p HD clips and the video images and colors really POP off the screen now, as if a fog had lifted.

Hopefully I'll be able to dial it in a bit better still with the calibration software this weekend. :T

[aud19]

Good to hear... I too was surprised on how much I had to tone down my CRT RPTV to get an accurate picture when I first got it!

[Chris D]

Very true. Next, you'll likely have to turn down the sharpness, and the picture may initially appear blurry.

[Pookie007]

I have a Westinghouse at my work apartment in the bedroom. Someone told me they were working with JVC, but I never cared enough to verify that. I think it is about a 30" widescreen. I has a great picture on the HD channels. I don't think it performs as well handling the non-HD stuff, but it was about 1/2 the price of the competition in the same size. The only think I noticed was I had to output from the cable box to 720p. If I used the 1080i output, you could see a line on the top of the picture. I am really happy with it and was thinking about getting another one for my daughter's bed room at the house. Then again, saybe a better idea would be to give her the Westinghouse and buy myself a new 42 plasma for the work bedroom.