Got my Westinghouse LVM-37W3 37" 1080p display today!

My w3 is also still going strong. After 6 years as my primary monitor it now serves as a TV for the first time and it does a decent job.

It was one of the best purchases I have made in recent years as I have gotten so much use out of it and it's still going strong.
 
My Westy is still going strong after 5 years! Purchased mine from Costco. I have tried other TV's in the 32 to 37 inch range and none have come close in picture quality. Was the best monitor for the money at the time and still I could not be more pleased with the purchase.
 
Ditto! Same model, same Costco model. Probably the best PC part money I've ever spent.

Image retention is my only gripe. If the Windows 8 login screen stays on for an hour, I'll have retention that takes a little while to go away.

No sense in upgrading until a good 4K monitor comes around; meaning one where 60hz is easy to do and that has a reasonable price.
 
enc0re said:
Ditto! Same model, same Costco model. Probably the best PC part money I've ever spent.

Image retention is my only gripe. If the Windows 8 login screen stays on for an hour, I'll have retention that takes a little while to go away.

No sense in upgrading until a good 4K monitor comes around; meaning one where 60hz is easy to do and that has a reasonable price.
Click to expand...

We are on the same page. I have gotten my money's worth out of the Westy. I want to upgrade to 4K from this, but the image retention is really bad, and my right backlight is starting to dim.
 
wow... great to see so many of these still going strong. Legendary display! I gave mine away to someone who really needed a TV a couple years ago.. I think she still uses it.
 
MrMike said:
We are on the same page. I have gotten my money's worth out of the Westy. I want to upgrade to 4K from this, but the image retention is really bad, and my right backlight is starting to dim.
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I have always found the default backlight setting of 80 way too bright and dial it down to 20 or 0. Have you given that a try? Might make the fading less noticeable.
 
I still have my Westy going on 7 years now without any issues, I agree it was one of the best electronic purchases.

I am looking to upgrade to the Dell U3415W that is coming out soon, depending on the price. I really don't want to go down to 27in. Hopefully the U3415W is not plagued with all the issues that the U3014 is having.
 
Mine finally died today of splotches. Could not handle it anymore. . they were getting too dark and all on one side. A little over 7 years of solid service. Debating whether to hold onto it for a bit and part it out (if such a thing can be done) or just toss/recycle it.
 
Danny Dawg said:
Mine finally died today of splotches. Could not handle it anymore. . they were getting too dark and all on one side. A little over 7 years of solid service. Debating whether to hold onto it for a bit and part it out (if such a thing can be done) or just toss/recycle it.
Click to expand...

Same thing just happened to me. I have relegated it to backup TV in a spare bedroom as it still functions, but it will be time to upgrade my monitor. Unfortunately, I think it will be a size downgrade.

RIP Westy 37"
 
Mine still runs strong. I had it for a few years and then gave it to my bro for a few years. One of my FAVORITE monitors for a PC. Nothing has been more vibrant to my eyes, and it truly was the perfect size.
 
I have had this monitor forever it seems and it has served me well. Problem I'm having now is that I want to run HDMI out from my Surface RT to it and I can get picture and now sound. I have been able to do this with other TVs with the Surface RT. I remember there being some issues with the Westy and HDMI and thought there might have been a firmware update that I didn't bother with at the time since I didn't need it. Does anyone else remember this or can point me to where I can fine a firmware update? Or even how to check what firmware I'm on? Thanks
 
Can't help you on the firmware, I just wanted to post that my westy is still running happily. I gave it to my 15yr old son for his pc/Xbox display.

I finally downsized to a 27" display just for sheer size reasons.
 
Looks like it's time to sell my 37w1. What a great monitor mine is still going strong
 
revenant said:
wow... blast from the past! Glad some of you still enjoy your westy.
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I was looking up info on how my 37w3 handles RGB and this thread popped up again on Google. Man I'm glad mine still works. Still using it the same way now that I did back in '06. Still owe it to this thread for introducing me to Hard Forum and this monitor.
 
I still have my original and SE models. Gave the SE to my dad to use when his old CRT TV finally gave out; then I bought him a 42" plasma for Christmas a few years ago and he still uses the Westy in a bedroom! My non-SE Westy sits at my house unused. It's too large for our bedroom stand and I've moved on to higher-resolution displays for PC use, but man was that thing saweet! I'd love to pass it on to someone who would enjoy it but I shudder at the thought of the shipping costs.
 
Mine is still functional, going on it's eighth year of daily use, but wear is showing on the screen with patchy dark areas, and image retention issues are definitely distracting. All in all, I've gotten more than my money's worth from the monitor, so this is one bandwagon I don't regret climbing on. :D
 
Dang this thread makes me nostaligia really hard! Here is my old post college apartment circa 2006-2007, with my westy on the far desk to the right! I used to run some colorful background pictures lol



 
Finally sold mine for $50 on Craigslist and was still working perfect after 10 years.
 
haha! yeah. I gave mine to a person in need - but at the time it still worked great. I remember when I planted that beast on my desk and my wife nearly fell over when she came home. ;)
 
revenant said:
I remember when I planted that beast on my desk and my wife nearly fell over when she came home. ;)
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LOL same here. I had put up a wallpaper of an exotic beach somewhere. She walked in and saw it for the first time and said "WOOWW!"

Last year when I bought my 48" SUHD 4K Samsung, which is not only larger but completely decimates the Westy when it comes to image quality, she was used to me having large monitors so she was like "Meh. That's nice." Lol.

My dad is still using one of my Westies in his spare bedroom - works great - and my other one is sitting unused in our basement with no one to love it. :(
 
I'm still using my Westy 9 years later.

Thing has some issues arise, settings getting fuckered up. Remote with fresh batteries stopped working.

But I still use it!
 
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After 14 years of faithful service, my LVM-37W3 has left the house. I've been PC gaming on home-built rigs since 1989. This monitor has been the best bang-for-the-buck part I have ever bought.

If you owned, or still own, this [H]ard legend, spare a thought for the Westy.
 
enc0re said:
After 14 years of faithful service, my LVM-37W3 has left the house. I've been PC gaming on home-built rigs since 1989. This monitor has been the best bang-for-the-buck part I have ever bought.

If you owned, or still own, this [H]ard legend, spare a thought for the Westy.
Click to expand...

It was nice to read this. I wonder how many people are still using it? I used mine as my main monitor from 2007- Dec 2013. Then it was a TV for my Dad till 2016 when it finally bought it due to a fall 😢

Best monitor I had ever owned till my curved ultra wide 34" that I use now. I even went and built my own custom keyboard tray that could be extended pretty far due to feeling that I was sitting too close to that monster.
 
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enc0re said:
After 14 years of faithful service, my LVM-37W3 has left the house. I've been PC gaming on home-built rigs since 1989. This monitor has been the best bang-for-the-buck part I have ever bought.

If you owned, or still own, this [H]ard legend, spare a thought for the Westy.
Click to expand...
Thanks for bumping this thread. I think about it from time to time. What a legendary display. :)

Out of the two that I owned, I ended up giving one to Dad (LVM-37W3SE) and he used it as a bedroom TV for years until (I think) the screen finally went out. Before that happened, the 42" Samsung plasma that I bought my parents for Christmas years ago was his main living room TV and it was starting to get splotchy. By then I had upgraded to an LG 55B7 OLED for my main display, so I gave him my old 48" Samsung JS9000 4K quantum dot LCD to replace the Samsung with deteriorating picture quality and he was super impressed with that upgrade (he only has non-HD Comcast cable TV and he said the new Samsung made it look like HD, lol). So he retired the 42" Samsung plasma to the attic and then when the Westinghouse in the bedroom finally gave out he stuck the Samsung plasma in there to replace it.

My other Westy (the OG LVM-37W3) is currently in storage in our basement. I haven't turned it on in years, and I have no idea if it works or not.

They were truly great displays back in the day but I'm pretty sure if I fired it up today, I'd be disappointed by the PPI and lack of resolution, the pixel response time/blur, and maybe the input lag compared to what we have today. Maybe it's better to just leave it in my memories.

The LG 48CX is probably the closest thing that I can think of, in modern times, to compare to the good old 37W3. Probably even more of a gamechanger since it's not just a big, beautiful display but it also offers multiple inputs like the Westy + a tuner along with 4K @ 120Hz, G-Sync/VRR, BFI, great input lag and of course the image quality blows away the vast majority of LCDs. The 48CX thread has surpassed even this one in size, but the 37W3 still holds a fond and important place in PC display/gamer history.
 
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jzodda said:
It did not have a TV Tuner so it was 100% monitor!!! :p
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You are correct! For some reason I was thinking that the original had a coax input and the SE did not. But after looking around (man there's not a lot of info on the net about these anymore!) the OG model had 2 DVI ports while the SE only had one (and apparently a slightly higher contrast ratio of 1000:1 vs. the original's 800:1).
 
Wow... I have lots of good memories gaming on the Westy... Loads of LoTRO... It became the bedroom TV when I went Eyefinity / Surround ... I ended up giving it away to someone in need of a TV.... then ditched surround for a 40" 4K Samsung with 444 chroma.. then to a 120hz Ultrawide which I am currently using.

EDIT: Damn..I paid a grand +tax+shipping for that TV.. hah
Invoice Date3/29/2007 2:03:53 PM

ItemDescription
Quantity​
Unit Price​
Extended Price​
NOTE 89-234-001 has Volume Discount
1​
$0.00​
$0.00​
​
​
89-234-001 LCD TV WESTINGHOUSE LVM-37W3 37" 8M
1​
$999.99​
$999.99​
​
​
EWRA-003 Electronic Waste Recycling Act 35
1​
$10.00​
$10.00​
​
​
​
Subtotal​
$1,009.99​
Tax​
$72.50​
Shipping and Handling charge​
$125.37​
Amount Paid​
$1,207.86​
 
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Oh, the memories of Qcon and the 37" Westy.

I used mine for 5 years before passing it onto my son who used it for another 3. It died 3 or 4 years ago.

What a great piece of hardware for its time!
 
Whoa talk about a blast from the past. I still have mine. Last I used it was about a year ago. First game I remember loading up was CS: Source. This was my first time playing anything on a 1080P monitor and my 754 AMD 3200+ paired with an ATI 1900XT and were capable of doing this back in 2006. I later went and upgraded to a 5600+ then a 6400+ and finally a Phenom II CPU which I used for many year until I was able to get a Ryzen build. Actually retired the monitor in January of 2020 when I got my hands on a nice LG panel. That Westy panel carried my PC gaming setup for over a decade.
 
DarkStar02 said:
I just got rid of mine a little over a year ago. It had been sitting in storage for the past 6 years but AFAIK it still worked!
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I used mine for years and took great care of it. I put it in storage for many years only to test and see it still worked perfectly to give it away. The kid I gave it too seemed very excited.
 
This reminded me of an SE that was still in storage. It was my main monitor from 2007-2015, then it was replaced w/ a 43" LG. And that was replaced by a 4K 43" LG last year.

I bought my mom the original, non-SE version, which she used from 2007-2011. Sold it within 3.5yrs (to a fellow [H] user, I believe) because we found a good deal on an LG 42", but nobody else in the house could fit it on their desk at the time, lol.

Both were bought from Costco, and they were great for the time. I'll probably give the SE away to one of my nephews. I just tested it, and it still looks great (for a 14yr old LCD)!
 
Beutiful thread, I have been using my 37" Westinghouse LVM-37W3 since January 2007.

After 15 years of use, I notice the following:
- there is some discoloration (darker tone) especially when blue images are shown, along the right and top borders; if images are mostly white or anyway bright, discoloration is not noticeable;
- pixels have memory like if this was a plasma and not a LCD monitor; if I put a white background after a while I've shown Windows desktop I will still see all the icons;
- there is no way Windows 10 or Ubuntu can recognize the monitor audio through HDMI; every time, at boot, I will have to open the NVidia app and enable sound;
- if Windows goes to sleep, audio will be disabled; I have to use the remote and change to DVI1 and then back to HDMI to restore audio, or I have to raise volume;
- if Windows goes to sleep, in most cases when image is back it will be offset several pixels down; again I have to use the remote and change to DVI1 and then back to HDMI to restore image with no offsets;
- I can successfully run up to 1920x1080p 75 Hz, but image will be offset some 3 pixels to the right;
- remote seems to suffer from contact oxydation; it's rarely used and some keys sometime just don't work;
- I am happily using a KVM recently purchased from AliExpress to share HDMI between my personal Win10 PC and my work Win7 PC; no issue!

All this being said, all these quirks will not prompt me to get rid of this monitor that I believe I paid at the time 1100$. It is evident most of the issues are firmware problems. System Info reports firmware 1.0.

Reading elsewhere around the web it seems BestBuy back in the days had the possibility to update monitors firmware through a USB, while Westinghouse support has always maintained you had to send the monitor back if you wanted a firmware update. Does anybody know anything different? Does anybody have an image of the magic BestBuy USB flash drive?
 
sandrot said:
Beutiful thread, I have been using my 37" Westinghouse LVM-37W3 since January 2007.

After 15 years of use, I notice the following:
- there is some discoloration (darker tone) especially when blue images are shown, along the right and top borders; if images are mostly white or anyway bright, discoloration is not noticeable;
- pixels have memory like if this was a plasma and not a LCD monitor; if I put a white background after a while I've shown Windows desktop I will still see all the icons;
- there is no way Windows 10 or Ubuntu can recognize the monitor audio through HDMI; every time, at boot, I will have to open the NVidia app and enable sound;
- if Windows goes to sleep, audio will be disabled; I have to use the remote and change to DVI1 and then back to HDMI to restore audio, or I have to raise volume;
- if Windows goes to sleep, in most cases when image is back it will be offset several pixels down; again I have to use the remote and change to DVI1 and then back to HDMI to restore image with no offsets;
- I can successfully run up to 1920x1080p 75 Hz, but image will be offset some 3 pixels to the right;
- remote seems to suffer from contact oxydation; it's rarely used and some keys sometime just don't work;
- I am happily using a KVM recently purchased from AliExpress to share HDMI between my personal Win10 PC and my work Win7 PC; no issue!

All this being said, all these quirks will not prompt me to get rid of this monitor that I believe I paid at the time 1100$. It is evident most of the issues are firmware problems. System Info reports firmware 1.0.

Reading elsewhere around the web it seems BestBuy back in the days had the possibility to update monitors firmware through a USB, while Westinghouse support has always maintained you had to send the monitor back if you wanted a firmware update. Does anybody know anything different? Does anybody have an image of the magic BestBuy USB flash drive?
Click to expand...
At Best Buy, they actually service TV's or did at the time. As a result, it was a matter of someone having the firmware and the knowledge to do the update. This was likely provided by the manufacturer, as they would give us at least the bare minimum to troubleshoot their products. It was part of what they had to do in order to get Best Buy to sell or service their products. (I used to work there, albeit earlier than 2007.)
 
All I need to do then is to find somebody who has been working at BB since 2006 who has the magic USB still in a drawer. Anyway, more seriously, should I find a way to upgrade firmware, I will post it here. I am using this monitor more, these days and while it shows images beautifully, the sound and image offset issues happen multiple times per day so it's a little annoying.
 
Up until 2017 monitor was used as a TV, so the issues seen when connecting to a PC were never noticed (not to mention we ran for the first 5 years with component video interface).

I think VGA also had an issue, when Windows XP would go to sleep, image would come back super bright and with no contrast; I had to power cycle the monitor to restore proper brightness and contrast.

Westinghouse, excellent hardware but boy, your firmware...
 
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