- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 19 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Great Picture once calibrated correctly, lots of inputs, limited PIP Options"
Pros: This LCD TV has a great picture quality once you calibrate it correctly (brightness, contrast etc) SD and HD look great.
Cons: Limited PIP options (only VGA and another source ot 2 tv channels) misleading manual (although not needed) Default picture settings and color temp are not great and require a lot of calibration
Summary: When I went to bestbuy I had the intention of buying a 26" Samsung that i found online the night before, well when i got there they were sold out (it was on clearence) and me being me, I didn't feel like waiting so off i went looking for a (26" still) LCD HDTV for my bedroom. To my surprise the top two TVs i was looking at was a Sharp (neve really liked that brand and was surpised how well thier tv was) and the Westinghouse. I liked the sharp but it was a little bit over my price range because it had a built in DVD player which i didn't need and some of the colors to me seems a little over saturated and more like colored marker colors then real life colors, So i was about to go for the WestingHouse 26" for $649 and then i walked past the 32" WestingHouse SK-32H240S for only $50 More! I couldnt belive the price difference and because of it being bigger it now allowed me to mount it on the wall without the worry of it being too small to see so i spent another $50 for the init wall mount, Best $750 i've spent in a long time. Came home opened the TV up and the wall mount and went to work, Mounting the bracket was easy enough, find a stud put in first lag bult losely, put in bottom one, level mount, secure bottom, secure top. One thing i did notice is the mount was not flush with my wall, the right side pointed out more, but the room this TV is in use to be my 2 car garage i turned into a room so maybe i boilt the wall wrong
i just kind of bent it strait while keeping it flat of course so the tv would fit on it correctly. The mounting kit came with these little button like things that screw on to the back of the TV, its a universal mounting system VESA and all Current LCDs are VESA compaitlbe (including the WestingHouse SK-32H240S) I simply screwed on the 4 "buttons" on the outside set of holes on the WEestingHouse LCD TV, Nest I removed the base, This was a little hard to find in the manual but once i did it was easy, you jsut remove 4 screws on the vack of the TV (Marked in the manual) and lift the top portion of the LCD TV up and it slides right off the stand. Then I carefully lifted the TV with two hands one on each side, TV is fairly light (29 pounts without stand) and lined up the 4 buttons with the 4 most center holes on the bracket that lined up (there is more then 4 holse on the bracket for diff tv configurations) Once I felt them go in the holes i simply pulled down a little bit and it locked in place. The Init mounting kit also came with an locking bar for extra security, Once the bar is in it prevents the TV from being lifed up to be pulled off the mount and has a hole on one end so you can put a pad lock on it to prevent the locking bar from being pulled out. Once the TV was mounted I had to drill some holes and stuff but you dont want to hear about that.
On to the fun part, Reviewing the TV.
When I first plugged it in i was greeted with a menu wanting me to scan for tv channels since i have no antennea hooked up yet i just hit exit. I then proceeded to hook my xbox 360 up to it via the component inputs. This took less then 5 mins and I had picture, I the 360 to 720p as that is hte most native res. Out of the box i was a little unimpressed at the overall brightness of the image, So i went strait to the menus. I liked the look and layout of the menu on this tv, Small yet easy to read and easy to navigate (although i didnt know what all the pictures above stood for athte beginning. I ended up ajusting the brightness, (Up 2 #a from default at 62) Contrast (up 7 from default at 47)
Saturation (up 4 from default at 44) and sharpness (up 14 from default at 45) NOTE: Default settings are different for 480p and Standard Def Sources as well as VGA this was from component source and 720p. I then set off and played sonme 360. The first thing i noticed is on scenes where there was a lot of bright bloack seemed to get "blacker" and almost un-seeable in certain games (is that a word) So i found out that this TV uses Dynamic Contrast and found out what that was and what it does is uses a shutter system or dims the backlight to make blacks darker and whites whiter depending on the scene, this is good for movies but not for games where blacks are actually things you still need to see, So i turned the dynamic contrast down to 2, Now things were starting to look a lot better, But i still noticed one thing the TV seemed to push the Red a little bit So i went to mess with the Color Temp. I noticed the default setting was User but here is the werid thing (and i think its a bug in the tv firmware) as soon as i hit select User to see what they have the RGB set to for default settings, I notice the temp of the picture changes dramaticly to even MORE red. Basically what i'm saying is there is a default color temp (which still isnt that great and pushes the red) but you can never find out the default color temp because the firmware has a bug that when you select user it changes the temp to what is currently displayed on the sliders for RGB, this wasn't a big deal though as i ddin't like their color temp anyways. So i set out to make my own color temp that seemed neutral to me. I came up with this Red: 230 Green: 243 Blue: 231. I was pretty satisfied with the color temp except blue seemed a bit lacking but if i added more to the Blue in the RGB settings whites became blueish so i went back to Advanced Video Settings and changed The Blue Boost to 2 instead of 1. Once i did that everything was gravy. The picture quality was awsome, almost comparable to my Blasma I have in my living room (except for the blacks of course) It seems to have pretty good color accuracy and no color bleeding or blooming. after having turned the sharpness up to 45 HD Images look great with supurb detail. I was playing MotoGP '06 and i could see all the details and bumps and smashed rocks in the track. I also watched Deja Vu and could see all the age marks on Densell Washington's Face (i hope i spelled that somewhat right) My only 4 gripes about this TV are: 1: Although it has a great overall viewing angle it starts to suffer from intesity loss rather quickly i.e. you can view it at 178 degrees but at like 145 to 150 colors start to get not as bright and blacks not as black. 2: it says it has PIP but it is very lacking, I wanted to watch satellite TV (SDTV) on S-Video 1 while playing a video game on Componet 1 but you can only do PIP with VGA and a input or two TV channels so you could to Compontet and VGA but nto component and S-Video or you could channel 3 and 5 or channel 2 and VGA but not 2 and Component so that was kind of a let down, 3: When watching a 4:3 ratio TV show on a Digital Over The Air Channel that brodcasts in 720p (so you have the black bars on the left) there is an annoying little line of static, snow, whatever you wanna call it at the top of the screen (it doesnt go over the picture its above it as if its picking up extra signal) I saw someone say on a forum it is the CC info being streamed on the channel and can be eliminated by using overscan, but its a little annoying but it doesnt happen with 16:9 ratio shows. 4: Sound is a little sub-par but i think this is true with most TVs in general, my $1500 42" Samsung Plasma HDTV has crappy sound too, but its not that big of a deal because most people (including me) have surround sound and dont even use their TV Speakers anyways.
Price: What can i say about price, It was clearly unbeatable except now tis on sale for even cheaper ($600) at bestbuy
Overall I would say this is a GRWAT TV for a GREAT bargon, I know there are not a lot of review on this TV but that is because its so new, and because of the price the type of consumer this tv attracts doesn't usually go online to cent to revies an electronic. Also dont let that one bad review out there floating around scare you away, I read this one review about their tv turnign off all the time, mines never done that and this is my 2nd one (i returned the 1st one because iw as mesuring above it to see if itwas level and the tape mesure bame back down and hit the screen so it had a buldge so i said it came like that and got another hehe. So i think that was just a flue with that one persons particular TV. My best advice, is since this TV is such a good deal, if you can, get the 4 year extened warrannty for $99 becauze then if it does break down you get another one so you have the best of both worlds, good price and reliable because you can always get another if it breaks, and to be honest if you did get a mroe expensive model you wuold more the likely get the extneded warrannty because you were investing more in the TV so you want to protect it so then you would be spending EVEN MORE (get what i'm saying)
So in summary This is a great TV, Great PQ, and i really am not worried about the brand name and neither should you. Oh and did i mention WestingHouse TVs are made in the same factory as Pioneer?
Thanks,
AlbinoMan887 (Matt)
- 2 replies to this review
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I recently purchased this TV and I am very unhappy so far, maybe you can help me. I have it connected to an HD receiver via HDMI and certain colors are horrible. If there's a white screen, blue appears everywhere, peoples faces look like they have shadows all over them. I thought that my signal might not be that good, but it happens on a DVD as well, which should not happen. I've tried messings with color settings but can't get it right. any ideas?
P.S.- Sometimes the picture will look good -
Wow great review at first I was worried the price would match its quality but now I know ill be safe with this tv. Thanks and keep up the excellent reviews.
Westinghouse SK-32H240S:
