Westinghouse LVM-42W2 42\" LCD TV

Treat yourself better, don't bother with Westinghouse

Strengths: Kinda good for its price at time of purchase in 4/2006.

Weakness: The product is ok, but the Westinghouse company is a nightmare to deal with. I sware I will never consider Westinghouse even if it's cheap as dirt.

Shortly after I bought the LVM42w2 in April, I started experiencing the power lockup problem once in a while. I contemplated returning it, but sadly I made the wrong decision to keep it. Here's a recap of what it took to have the problem resolved. I am glad that I kept a log of all dealings with Westy service. Here is the log I kept. It is long, but I hope you would take the time to read to...
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Shortly after I bought the LVM42w2 in April, I started experiencing the power lockup problem once in a while. I contemplated returning it, but sadly I made the wrong decision to keep it. Here's a recap of what it took to have the problem resolved. I am glad that I kept a log of all dealings with Westy service. Here is the log I kept. It is long, but I hope you would take the time to read to understand how much frustration I experienced, which you may be able to avoid by making a better purchase decision.

5/2/06 Email Westy service about power lockup problem
5/3/06 Westy dismissed case as problem with my power source
.... Problem only happened once in a while but got worse and worse and in July I managed to turn in on less than 1 out of 10 times. ....
7/19/06 Called Westy service to open service call. Was told not to ship it in for service, but that a 3rd service company, IAI, would call within 2 weeks
8/14/06 Waited almost a month, nothing happened. Called Westy. Was told that my case was still open with IAI, should get a call soon but no promise when
9/12/06 Another month went by, nothing happened. Called Westy. Was told that my case was still open with IAI, and that my case was reassigned a high priority, should get a call from IAI REAL soon
10/16/06 Another month went by, nothing happene. Called Westy. This time I was that my case was in IAI's system and that I should call IAI directly to schedule an appointment. What? If that's the case, why didn't they say so 3 months earlier. I asked to talk to a service manager. The manager repeated that I should call IAI directly. When asked why I was told so 3 months earlier, he said he didn't know why but it wasn't his fault because it wasn't him who talked to me before. What a manager to build company reputation !!
10/16/06 Called IAI, person answer that phone said I should get a call back from a local technician the same day or next.
10/18/06 No call from IAI. Called and got answering machine, and left message
10/19/06 No call from IAI. Called again and same person answered phone. He said he forgot to call the technician. He put me on hold and tried to talk to the technician but only managed to leave a message.
10/23/06 Nothing happened. Called again, a different person answer the phone and said he would call back next day when he knew what was going on
10/24/06 Finally a IAI local technician called. Somehow, he told me that he was busy with his main job painting houses and was not able to entertain the IAI jobs
10/27/06 The IAI techician showed up at my house. After hooking up his laptop to the LVM-42w2 through a RS232 to VGA dongle for the firmware upgrade to 1.19, he called up someone to walk him though which buttons to press, what to click with his mouse, etc. After an hour or so working with the person on the phone, he declared that the firmware upgrade a failure and blamed the problem to be a bad dongle. He said a replacement dongle would be shipped to him and he would be able to come do it again on 10/30
10/30/06 Technician called and said the person who was supposed to ship the dongle didn't ship it
10/31/06 Technician called to say he still hadn't received the new dongle, and that he would be out of town till 11/6
11/7/06 Technician called tp say he still hadn't received the new dongle
11/10/06 Technician called and said he finally received the new dongle and scheduled to come on 11/13
11/13/06 Technician came with the new dongle, finally the firmware was upgraded to 1.19 successfully


Now, the problem is gone. But looking back, it took a total of 6 months to have such a well-known problem resolved. This is half of the unit's warranty period!!

If you read up to this point, but still decide to purchase this unit, I wish you luck. But please bare in mind that there are better respected manufacturers with inhome service.

As a consumer, you deserve better than what Westinghouse offers.

By lcdlover - Nov 23, 2006

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Strengths: Great price, good picture

Weakness: Broblems after two months

I did a lot of research and for the money this is the TV to have. I read all of the reviews and decided for every review that had something bad to say there were 10 that said it was great. When I got my TV home I was very impressed with the High Definition picture, regular digital picture was not so great but I could live with it and still thought I made the best decision considering the price,...
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I did a lot of research and for the money this is the TV to have. I read all of the reviews and decided for every review that had something bad to say there were 10 that said it was great. When I got my TV home I was very impressed with the High Definition picture, regular digital picture was not so great but I could live with it and still thought I made the best decision considering the price, until last night when I turned the TV on and there was a rainbow of vertical lines. I immediately ran to the computer and sent an e-mail to Westinghouse customer service. My TV wasn't going to die, I was going to be one of those that wrote a gleaming review of the product. I waited a full day and no reply from customer service. I called in spoke with someone right away and told him what the problem was, apparently I wasn't the first to have the problem but I was the first person this month that he had talked with with the problem (should I win a prize for that). He opened a trouble ticket and said someone would get back with me in about 10 business days to tell me what to do next. Having worked customer service position when younger I knew it wasn't his fault but let him know that was ridiculous, he advised that they weren't supposed to give out a time frame but he has noticed that customers appreciate a time frame. 10 days turn around to probably tell me that I have to pay shipping to send the TV back is just insane, how do they stay in business. After reading another review this could be a six month process. To those who are thinking about buying this TV or MONITOR you have to ask your self a question: Do You Feel Lucky?

By scgarland - Mar 12, 2007

Westinghouse 42" HD LCD TV

Strengths: Picture Quality

Weakness: None yet. Non HD sources look fuzzy but can be improved with S video cable from Satellite/Cable box.

This is my first HD TV. I purchased this TV for Xbox 360 and as an alternate PC monitor. Regular 480p DVD's look great on this TV.

Gaming will never be the same. The 1080i and 1080p
sources look fantastic. For the price you can not beat the value. I have had no problems with the remote. Just have to make sure it is pointed directly at TV.

By bheeke - Mar 7, 2006

Westinghouse is back !

Strengths: Best looking, highest resolution monitor at a good price. Super bright screen. So many input choices and easy to connect to.

Weakness: Remote is poorly designed and difficult to use. Also monitor takes too long to switch between sources.

I have hooked up this monitor (tuner-less TV) to my Comcast HD box setup for 1080i and the picture quality is fantastic! I have also hooked up my XBox 360 and it sure looks awesome too. Very fast response time. The picture was so bright I had to turn it down from its default level. The connections to it are easily reachable from the sides. I have already checked out the various VGA / DVI /...
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I have hooked up this monitor (tuner-less TV) to my Comcast HD box setup for 1080i and the picture quality is fantastic! I have also hooked up my XBox 360 and it sure looks awesome too. Very fast response time. The picture was so bright I had to turn it down from its default level. The connections to it are easily reachable from the sides. I have already checked out the various VGA / DVI / Component Video / S-Video inputs with my components and all of them look great.

The weakest part of the system is the remote control. You have volume up and down keys but then you can also use the arrow keys left and right to change the volume. You have keys to cycle through all the sources up and down, then you have keys for cycling through different source groups (ie DVI1/DVI2/HDMI) with each press of a single button and then you also have an Input key. Can you say redundant?

It also takes the monitor a second or two to switch between sources though which may not be something you would like if you are impatient.

All those source keys yet no way to change the PIP source or swap the PIP source with the normal screen from the remote. You have to bring up the on-screen menu to make selections like that. Another nice feature only available in the on-screen menu is the sleep timer. It would have been nice to have that one on the remote. The on-screen menu is very comprehensive but many common features would have been better suited being directly available on the remote control. The remote also seems very weak at transmitting its signals to the monitor. You have to directly aim it at the front sensor for it to work properly.
I would rather put the remote functions I use most often on a universal remote to get past some of the weaknesses in the remote design and layout. Overall this monitor is well designed and I would definitely consider buying another one.

By stevaughn - May 13, 2006

Great monitor for a great Value (v1.03 firmware)

Strengths: 42 Inches, Price, Panel Quality, Wealth of inputs, Excellent use as a monitor, 1080p ready

Weakness: RGB settings can only be tweaked in Service Menu, Problem with HDMI @ 1080p (sparkles), Lockup problem (only in previous firmwares), some minimal banding.

I recently returned my 37" Sceptre 1080p TV for this monitor for a few reasons. First off I didn't really need a tuner since my PC has a tuner with DVR (not that I get HDTV Reception where i'm at anyway). Secondly there is only one shared HDMI/DVI ports on the Sceptre whereas the Westy has a wealth of inputs (2 DVI, HDMI, VGA, 2 Component). For the quality you get with this set and the price you...
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I recently returned my 37" Sceptre 1080p TV for this monitor for a few reasons. First off I didn't really need a tuner since my PC has a tuner with DVR (not that I get HDTV Reception where i'm at anyway). Secondly there is only one shared HDMI/DVI ports on the Sceptre whereas the Westy has a wealth of inputs (2 DVI, HDMI, VGA, 2 Component). For the quality you get with this set and the price you pay it is a better value many times over than the other TVs in the market . If you were going to get a comparible 1080p panel from Sharp or Sony expect to pay at least twice as much for not much quality difference.


My set was shipped from the factory on 6/19/2006 and the Panel is from CMO (Chi Mei Optronics) so sets made during this point and after should all be at least v1.19 which has fixed most of the major problems. RGB is still only in the service menu. But if you can go in and change some values you can come out with some fantastic realistic skin tones even with some recommended settings. I will most likely tweak even further with AVIA. People say there is some banding (uneven backlighting) which I can see slightly if you look for it. However in normal usage I never see it (at least not on my set). Some people say they have worse banding than others.


Currently I have noticed 2 artifacts. During WMVHD 1080p in windows I get some lines popping up (i'm not sure if this is a problem with the set or codec since it doesn't happen with mpegs). Also I've noticed some framerate stuttering in the opening movie for ghost recon, but it could just be the video file since gameplay is smooth.

*update: Good news guys, Westy now has a method for you to get a new firmware (v1.19) if you don't have it already. To check your firmware goto the menu and on the rightmost option check info. It should say 1.11, 1.16 or 1.19 depending on what firmware you have. If you have 1.11 or 1.16 it's highly recommended you get the new firmware to fix the lockup problems. Further Explanation in the User Discussions topic.


*update 2: Well quite a bit has happened. I eventually went ahead and went straight to the Westinghouse facility and swapped out my set for the "new" 1.00 Set In order to get 1080p compatability over HDMI and DVI2. The reason why the firmware is 1.00 is because they've changed the internal hardware a bit (probably the HDMI chipset) in order to make sure it supports 1080p. However there are some new problems with this set. There are severe handshaking issues with the PS3 which cause the screen to blink constantly making the HDMI port unusable with the PS3. However it does work over DVI with some issues of garbled picture whenever the ps3 changes video resolutions (like from game to menu to blu-ray), It is easily fixed by switching input and back, which can get a bit annoying.

*Update 3
I got my firmware updated to 1.03 and now the HDMI works with the PS3. So now all my Digital inputs are in use and i'm much happier :).

By zoglog - Jul 7, 2006