Digital Home Thoughts: A Harbinger of Things to Come: Westinghouse's LVM-37W1 LCD TV

What’s to Like?
Image quality, of course. First of all, the display will accept and properly display 1920 by 1080 progressive video from a properly-configured PC video card on a one-for-one basis. It will also properly de-interlace 1080i input signals via the DCDi adaptive-motion de-interlacer and it will upscale lower-resolution input.

The resulting images range from merely good to stunning, depending on the source. Being a confessed resolution bigot, I was not really planning on getting into the HD business this year, XBOX360 or not. I was waiting for something similar to the Sharp 1080p display to come down into reasonable pricing territory. But then I saw the LVM-37W1 in action and I saw the price and after a week of research and debate I was simply unable to come up with a reason not to buy.

Cause, the second thing to like is the price. As of November ‘05, the list price of the LVM-37W1 is $2000. Street price runs from 5-25% off that on any given week and the week I jumped it was close to 20% off. With a bit of hunting, anybody can do about as well.

Third thing to like? Features, features, features. The feature set of the LVM-37W1 is fairly rich and seems to have been drawn up by somebody who has actually lived with a modern display. There are thoughtful touches such as:
.....• bottom-mounted, removable speakers
.....• VESA-standard mounting holes, for generic wall mounting or replacement stands
.....• VESA DPMS support so the display powers down when tuned to an input with no signal
.....• 1/8” mini-plug for the VGA audio input instead of the RCA inputs used by the other inputs
.....• one composite input and one S-Video input only. Except for a VCR or a two-generations-old console, there really is no call for legacy inputs on a modern HD display. (Not sure if things are different elsewhere but I see displays with 3 composites, three S-Videos, and one Digital input and I have to wonder…)
.....• dedicated input buttons on the remote for VGA, DVI, Component, Composite, and S-Video ports let you toggle instantly between ports
.....• three PIP modes: standard floating window, equal sized side-by-side, unequal-sized side-by-side
.....• PIP that works across all inputs (with some restrictions on how they can be combined)
.....• Floating-window PIP mode has three distinct sizes, plus you can choose to position the secondary window literally anywhere
.....• very fine granularity on the OSD control settings; over 135 billion possible settings (no, I didn’t try them, but I did do the math) and the most extreme settings are still viewable
.....• OSD input settings that are port-specific; each port retains its distinct settings (a deal killer for me)
.....• A freeze-frame button. (Somebody was thinking!) Since an LCD display has to have an onboard frame buffer, all that was needed to implement this feature was a bit of firmware coding.

The fourth thing to like is the lack of tuners: in their ever-finite wisdom, the US Federal Communications Commission has mandated that all TVs above a certain size come with HD tuners. Never mind the fact that 60% of US household have Cable and another 27% have satellite TV services, to say nothing of those that have both. While I’m not 100% satisfied with my cable service, it is, for now, er, serviceable and I really can’t complain about the video quality of the HD content. And if I should ever switch, it will be to the alternate local cable provider (yes, I’m lucky enough to live in an area with two cable providers) or a satellite service. Over-the-air HD buys me nothing for now, so not having to pay for a tuner I won’t use is a plus. Your mileage may vary, of course.

A consequence of the lack of tuners in the LVM-37W1, is that it comes with no less than five high definition inputs: three analog and two digital, and it has a separate memory for the settings of each of the five inputs. Power loss does not seem to reset them, either. My old CRT had this indispensable feature but it turns out that not all HD displays have it, even name brand models. Yes: Caveat Emptor.