When it comes to LCD or plasma televisions, you seem to keep the major brands in mind: Sony, Samsung, LG, Sharp, Panasonic, or Toshiba; but have you ever heard of Westinghouse making televisions? Today, we take a look at one of Westinghouse’s newest models, the LVM-37w3 37″ LCD TV.

The LVM-37w3 is a 37″ LCD TV that has a resolution of 1920 x 1080, which means it is ‘full HD’ or 1080p. Other supported resolutions are: 480i/p, 720p, and 1080i. The LVM-37w3 features 6 HD connections: HDMI, DVI, VGA, and Component video, in addition to the standard-definition composite and S-video connections. The 37″ TV also features 2, 15-watt speakers at the bottom of the unit.

When we hooked up the LCD TV to an Apple MacBook notebook for general testing of the unit, we found that it produced accurate colors and excellent picture quality, even while viewing compressed HD video content such as the MacBreak video podcast which is shot in true 1080p. Audio from the TV also sounded great, but for the true home theater enthusiasts, you will probably want to hook up an external home theater system. For most people though, the built-in speakers will suffice. We also tested the LVM-37w3 with an Xbox 360 video game console via Component video, and the quality couldn’t have been better. If you’d like to learn more about the quality of the video with other equipment, check out our review of the Oppo DV-981HD upconverting DVD player. The LCD TV on another note was exceptionally bright, and so bright that we had to turn the brightness down in the settings.

On the bad side of things, we found the remote control to be unresponsive in some cases, but since your looking at buying a nice HDTV, you’ll probably want to replace the remote with something such as a Harmony remote control from Logitech. Another thing that the 37″ LCD TV lacked was an ATSC or over-the-air HDTV tuner.

Well, there you have it folks, the LVM-37w3 from Westinghouse does live up to the hype that we’ve seen surrounding it, and is a great alternative for people who are on a budget and want to replace their old tube standard-definition television.

The Westinghouse LVM-37w3 is a great TV for the price, and can be found for almost $1,000 depending on where you buy it.

Pros

• Stunning image quality.
• Six (6) high-definition inputs including HDMI.
• Great price point for budget-buyers.

Cons

• No ATSC tuner.
• So-so remote control.

Final Verdict
4.5 out of 5 stars.

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