Surprisingly Good

Author's Rating:

Pros: Nice HD image; good sound; lots of inputs

Cons: Awkward remote; no built-in DTV tuner; picture disappears during forward and reverse VCR scan

The Bottom Line: 
This is a good LCD TV at a reasonable price. It works best for HD viewing.

Author's Review
Let's face it, after two generations of living with bulky cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions, anything with a thin, flat-panel screen is very sexy. New models of flat-panel plasma and LCD TVs are coming on the market daily and I wanted to try one out in conjunction with an off-the-air HDTV receiver.

I was loaned a Westinghouse W32701 27-inch LCD television for an extended review period and I like it enough that I'm considering buying it. This is a surprisingly good LCD TV, although it does have some quirks that may rule it out for some people.

The Westinghouse W32701 is a 27-inch LCD flat-panel TV with the new 16:9 aspect ratio that is considerably wider than the old 4:3 aspect ratio televisions have had since the 1940s. Packaged in an attractive silver case, this LCD TV stands on a pedestal that holds the screen about six inches above the surface of whatever it's sitting on. There are speakers on either side of the screen and an extensive array of connectors located in two compartments on the back panel. A standard 75-Ohm antenna/CATV connector is awkwardly placed on the bottom of the TV, where I had a difficult time attaching my antenna cable. The viewable screen does measure exactly 27 inches, diagonally.

The resolution of this LCD screen is 1,280 x 720 pixels and the display is compatible with an XGA computer adapter. The highest-resolution HDTV displays have 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, but monitors with that resolution are just now starting to be delivered, and at fairly high prices.

The Westinghouse W32701 has a standard analog off-the-air tuner that is also cable-ready for connection to an analog cable TV system. This unit does not have a built-in digital television (DTV) tuner. It does, however, have a terrific array of connectors on the back. These include two sets of component jacks (Y/Cr/Cb) for connection to an HD receiver or to the component outputs of a DVD player. In addition, there is a composite video input, a Y/C (S-Video) input and a 15-pin VGA input. The European version of this TV has a SCART input, which is a popular format there. However, there is no SCART input in my U.S. version.

A nicely laid out remote control comes with the Westinghouse W32701, although mine has been balky and often requires several button presses to make things happen. There are several buttons on the top of the TV for on/off, volume and channel changes. One quirk about the remote control: Its bottom is curved so that you can't set the remote on a table and press the channel or volume buttons. You have to hold the remote in your hand to use its most common functions, which is somewhat annoying. Westinghouse sent me a replacement remote control that is just as balky as the original; obviously, the problem lies somewhere else besides the actual handheld remote.

I expected that an LCD panel would be lightweight but I was surprised by the heft of the Westinghouse W32701. Although it is much lighter than a CRT TV of the same display size, it still weighs a good 30 pounds or so. I was also surprised at the amount of heat that radiates from the front of the screen when this thing is on for 30 minutes. While it is just warm to the touch, I was expecting the cooler feel that I get from my laptop computer's display.

I connected my rooftop antenna to the Westinghouse W32701, stepped through the menu to have it locate all the off-the-air channels in my vicinity and then checked it out. Since most analog TV displays in the classic 4:3 aspect ratio, this means that there are two dark bars about three inches wide at either side of this LCD TV.

The remote has a button on it to stretch the picture horizontally, offering two modes of stretch. One is a simple stretch, as though the visible image was on a rubber sheet that simply is stretched to cover the entire display area. This makes people look fat and circles look oval. The other stretch mode is called "panoramic" and it leaves the very center of the image normal but overly stretches the sides of the image. In either case, I did not like what the stretch modes did to the picture, although the panoramic mode was the most bizarre. When a normal 4:3 image is displayed in 4:3 mode, the viewable screen measures 23 inches diagonally.

Many shows today (The West Wing, ER, Enterprise, Smallville and many others) are broadcast over analog TV in the 16:9 aspect ratio, making a "letterbox" display on a traditional 4:3 TV. I assumed that the Westinghouse W32701 would take this image and stretch it both horizontally and vertically at the touch of a button, but I was wrong. This TV will only stretch horizontally, meaning that you will see fat people and two horizontal black bars on the screen, even during letterboxed broadcasts. This pertains only to analog broadcasts; the unit automatically set itself to the correct aspect ratio for digital broadcasts and would not allow me to change it. Fortunately, I didn't need to change it, as it worked perfectly with digital broadcasts every time.

The display of analog broadcasts suffers a bit from ghosting and artifacts that are a result of the line-doubler built into this TV. Virtually all LCD TVs have this same image distortion, which leads me to believe that they all use similar line-doubler technology and chips. However, it is a pretty good picture as LCD TVs go and the Westinghouse W32701 is among the best I've seen with respect to this picture defect. In addition, the image is easily bright enough to be seen indoors with bright sun streaming through the windows. The biggest problem with the Westinghouse W32701's analog display is its inability to properly stretch letterboxed images in two directions.

It is on HDTV images that the Westinghouse W32701 really shines. Connected to my Zenith HD-R230 off-air HD receiver (with built-in PVR!!) using the component inputs and outputs, this is one pretty display. Off-air HD is crisp and clean, and there is very little of the LCD ghosting that plagued early LCD monitors. I've watched many off-air HD shows on this and all looked terrific, but a recent episode of "The West Wing" was spectacular with its mix of video-like and film-like images. (This was the episode where CJ was followed around by a documentary film crew.)

In HD mode, detail is excellent, colors are beautifully rendered and the image is bright and watchable. The only problem is that blacks are not black enough for my taste and I could not get the black level set to the point I wanted. But overall, I'm very impressed with the HD image displayed on the Westinghouse W32701.

I also have watched a few DVDs on this LCD monitor, although I do not have a progressive-scan DVD player. I simply plugged the DVD player into the S-Video connector and watched it in standard-definition.

Between the multiple aspect-ratio settings for the DVD player and the Westinghouse display, it took me some trial-and-error to find the optimum setting, but I eventually got the screen filled as much as it was going to be. I was not impressed by the image quality, but I'm not sure if this is the result of the Westinghouse display or the cheap DVD player I used. While it was watchable, the image looked a little as though I was watching it through a screen. I've since connected the Westinghouse LCD TV to my DVD player using component cables and the image quality is very good. Although I do not have a progressive-scan DVD player, the image is clear and colors vibrant.

There is one other display mode that is a bit difficult to explain. Most TV stations that have digital broadcasts simulcast their analog programming on their digital channel for much of the day. It's usually only in primetime that they switch to the network and get HD programming. During the time that the local TV stations simulcast their signal on their DTV channel, I can pick up this simulcast on my Zenith DTV receiver. This simulcast signal, although it is technically "standard-definition," looks much better than the off-air image from the station's analog transmitter. I believe this is because of the high-quality line doubler used in the upconversion process at the station, which is a much better line doubler than the one built into the Westinghouse LCD TV. It really makes a much better picture, although it is still technically "standard-definition."

I also tried the Westinghouse W32701 out with my XGA laptop and it made a perfectly viewable image that was easy to use from three or four feet away. It would probably be good for Powerpoint presentations from as far away as 15 feet.

Another important aspect of a display like this is its viewing angle. I don't recall the horizontal viewing angle of this TV from the specs but it is very wide and well above +/-50 degrees when moving horizontally past the front of the front of the screen. There is also a vertical viewing angle and this is a little more sensitive than the horizontal viewing angle. In other words, the Westinghouse W32701 has a "sweet spot" as you move up and down in front of the screen. This sweet spot is just a little brighter than that seen from an off-angle location and is nowhere nearly as pronounced as I've seen in rear-projection displays.

One other feature that I admired about this LCD TV is its very good sound quality. While it does not have a subwoofer and can't dig out the lowest bass notes, it is clear and distortion-free, and will be more than adequate for most people's TV viewing needs. There is a convenient rear-panel jack to connect a subwoofer.

Overall, I'm impressed with the Westinghouse W32701. It is attractive, slim, makes good pictures and has decent sound. My remote is balky but that is probably my remote. And the aspect ratio conversion of analog images reveals some poor choices by the manufacturer.

HDTV viewing really brings this LCD TV to life, however. With a list price of $2,400 and at least one Web site selling it for $1,600, this is about as good a deal as you are going to find today for a widescreen LCD display. At 27-inch diagonal, this TV is best for HDTV viewing in a small room. (You want to be close to an HD image to take advantage of all the detail.) For my small living room, the Westinghouse W32701 is a good fit and I hope I can work out a deal with the manufacturer to keep it.

July 21, 2004 Update:

I finally put this LCD TV in its proper place in my living room. Instead of sitting temporarily on a table in my living room, I removed my old CRT TV and replaced it with the Westinghouse W32701. This meant that I hooked up all my normal video gear, including my nice JVC S-VHS VCR. I had not previously used the Westinghouse LCD TV with the VCR.

Normal playback looks fine, particularly since I use the S-Video output on the VCR and the S-Video input on the Westinghouse. However, when I use forward or reverse scan on the VCR, the Westinghouse flicks to a solid blue screen and does not display any image. Therefore, I can't see when I've scanned to the point where I want it to start playing normally again.

This took me by surprise and it is quite the little inconvenience in my home. My wife videotapes a couple of shows from HGTV everyday and watches them at night, zipping through the commercials and slow parts of the programs. Now she can't see where she is as she scans the program.

If you plan to use the Westinghouse W32701 with a standard analog VCR, be aware that the TV may not display when you use forward or reverse search. This is probably not a problem with the new digital videotape formats, such as miniDV, although I've not tried it.

July 29, 2004 Update:

As of August 2004, the Westinghouse W32701 will have a list price of $1,699. Considering that many retailers will offer discounts from this, that's a terrific price.

October 14, 2004 update:

Westinghouse just announced that the list price of this LCD TV is now $1,299. Considering the street price will be lower, that makes this an excellent deal. I use my W32701 every day and it has not had any significant glitches (other than those I mentioned above) in 10 months of use.

Incidentally, the correct name of the manufacturer of this TV is Westinghouse Digital, not White-Westinghouse.