Westinghouse LVM-37W3 on my desk.

D

docmal

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 13, 2006
Messages
313
Well i pulled the trigger on this about a week ago and it came in at my local store this morning. I purchased from Nebraska Furniture Mart for $1699.00 plus tax. MSRP is $1899.00.

I have only had about 2 or 3 hours with this display so I will only give you my initial impressions. Tomorrow night I will give a more thorough mini review.

First, its huge. Its so big my face gets a little warm when I get into a game and lean forward.

Also due to the pixel pitch there is some screen door effect when I am less than 3 feet from the monitor (which is to be expected.) I plan on moving soon and at that time I will mount the display on the wall instead of on the desk, allowing me to be further from it. The screen door effect virtually disappears after 3 feet distance.

I played some games and did alot of testing with my mouse. This display does not exibit any noticable input lag, and it has none of the afterglow that was common with my 2405. There is very little noticable ghosting of any kind during gameplay.

This is one hell of a display. One thing about the setup though, when i first changed the resolution to 1920x1080 I noticed some terrible flickering in the animations of menus and highlighting buttons. I figured out that my Nvidia drivers detected the display as 1080i and was sending a 1080i signal. I manually changed the timing in the advanced timing tab in the nvidia driver to send a 1080p signal and everything looks fantastic now.

Anyway, I will od a more in depth review later tomorrow night. The initial impression though is that this is a keeper!
 
Awesome! I am seriously considering picking one of these up...

How do things look at non-native gaming-wise?
 
So is this the new version of the LVM-37w1 or what? I'm havin trouble findin the LVM-37w1 locally. If it is the same or better version i know i can get 1 here no prob. Thanks. =)
 
Yes its essentially the updated version of the 37w1. I think common carriers like bestbuy should be getting them in soon (if they havent already).
 
docmal,

how are you h00king up to the display? DVI->HDMI converter? is it HDCP compatible?

also, can you take some pix of the display with movies on them? i love watching movies on my HTPC, as well as working on it (office apps, dcc, etc.), and i like gaming. but mostly gaming. i'd buy this over the 3007 because of wider-screen.
 
JediFonger said:
docmal,

how are you h00king up to the display? DVI->HDMI converter? is it HDCP compatible?

also, can you take some pix of the display with movies on them? i love watching movies on my HTPC, as well as working on it (office apps, dcc, etc.), and i like gaming. but mostly gaming. i'd buy this over the 3007 because of wider-screen.
Click to expand...

It has 1 DVI and 2 HDMI. I would assume he is using the DVI

It is HDCP compatible.
 
I am at work right now but I can give a little more insight on this display, no pictures yet though.

Official Westinghouse Specs

This is the new version of the famous westy 37inch w1. It is 1080p and has an 8ms response time.

It is hooked up to DVI-1 using a DVI cable I purchased from here.

I have my graphics card set to allow the monitor to do the scaling and I have the monitor set to not stretch the picture. So If a game is run at a lower rez I still get 1 to 1 pixel mapping and there is no interpolation. For instance if you are running a game without widescreen support you will get pillarboxes instead of a stretched image. The reason I did this is that the screen is so big that stretching the image isnt really necessary. Running something at 1280x1024 for instance produces some thin letterbox lines and some pillarboxes on the sides. But the image looks great. I will take a more in depth look at the monitor's scaling possibilities when I get home.

I did some testing with Half Life 2: Lost Coast and FarCry last night. Half Life looked great and as usual I noticed no ghosting (it isnt the fastest pace game) FarCry on the other hand had what appeared to be terrible ghosting. I remembered not being able to play farcry on my 2405 either due to some terrible ghosting. I decided to investigate further and found that in the advanced configuration for FarCry I had Motion Blur enabled. Either this feature is buggy with my hardware, or is horribly implemented in the FarCry engine because when I turned it off all of the horrific ghosting was completely gone and the game played great.

I also am an avid Dark Age of Camelot player (which is an MMORPG like WoW) In this game with my 2405 I had terrible afterglow. On the 2405, In a dark scene with snow falling down the snow particles would leave a black streak behind them, and in a brite scene the trees would leave a white ghost/streak behind them. Often this is called afterglow or reverse ghosting. This effect does not exist on the Westinghouse.

I have to be honest though, I do miss the extra 120 pixels at the bottom of the screen that the 2405 offers. (1920x1200 vs 1920x1080) The extra vertical room would be nice. Another downside is that the screen is so big that I often have angle viewing problems on the extreme right and left. Although due to my current desk setup I sit more to one side of the screen and the opposite side is where I notice the angle viewing problems. In order to avoid any of these issues I highly recommend keeping 3 feet from the screen and directly in the center.

The OSD for the monitor is actually very easy to use and intuitive. I was suprised to see a brightness and a backlite adjustment. By using both of these sliders it is very easy to dial in some great black levels. All the regular TV adjustments are also available: contrast, color temp, hue, tint and sharpness.

I am starting to believe that most monitors and even LCDs havs some form of overscan, where a few pixels on the panel are actually masked out. This screen does not have that. The reason I say this is because I have noticed some strange things on the outside edges when playing some games. For example, when playing HL2: Lost Coast during loading the screen would be black except I could see about 2-4 pixels along the sides, top and bottom. These pixels looked like noise or garbage but when the scene loaded and the black screen lifted I realized I was seeing the edges of the actual game screen. This happened upon loading the Lost Coast and upon finishing and exiting lost coast. Also when playing Dark Age Of Camelot the top ~4 pixels display properly but sort of lag behind the rest of the display causing a little strange tearing at the top of the screen.

Both of these effects are isolated events and I could not reproduce them in other games. I tested the top of the screen by dragging windows around and did not see any effects such as the tearing in DAOC. So I think the developers of these games/graphic engines were counting on some tiny bit of overscan to hide the screen edges. And honestly, its not very noticable. I just found it odd because I was under the impression that most LCDs don't have overscan. But I never noticed these effects until I used the westy. I actually find it neat that Westinghouse is following the guidlines and not using any overscan at all, showing us every pixel in the image.

I will post pics and more insight later tonight.
 
thx docmal =).

i'm sure you can fix those things with a handy app like powerstrip.

i actually don't like extra vertical res because i watch movies/widescreen stuff waay more than i game or do work on the display. i don't like it cause i see black bars. that's why i'd probably get westinghouse over dell. the only thing i hesitate on is brand. it's not as reputable as dell. yeah, yeah i know lg and samsung pretty much makes all the panels, but has there been any ongoing issues with these displays that people know of?

is it *really* 1080P? read user feedback on how it isn't *really* 1080p and that there's some hanky-panky going on.
 
The overscan issue you talk about has me confused.

LCDs by nature have a native resolution. If you run your video card, windows, your game, etc at that native resolution and refresh rate with a pure digital connection, I would think you would achieve a 1:1 pixel map. Therefore, there should be no such thing as overscan. I guess it is possible the manufacturer built the LCD frame so it covers the LCD panel's viewable area by a few pixels on accident. That would kinda piss me off ...heh

Anyone have factual evidence about this supposed overscan issue with LCDs?
 
it may just be an issue with those specific games at those specific resolutions. Anyone with a 2405 and HL2: lost coast want to see if you can see the pixel thing on the edges? My guess is that it would be hard to notice on anything smaller than the 37inch.
 
Sorry about my ignorance, but is it necessary to buy an extra cable to hook it to the PC? I thought it had a standard DVI input... what type of cable do you have to use?
 
for this specific display, it has DVI inputs. so, yeah just a regular DVI cable will do.

but for HDMI-only HDTVs, you'll want a DVI to HDMI converter. FYI.
 
The problem in Dark Age of Camelot has now disappeared. I believe it has to do with getting the proper refresh rate, and vsync enabled.

A few suggestions. Since the display is so large Tearing is a bigger issue than it used to be. It is very noticable during fast paced games. It is NOT occuring more, but it is much more "in your face."

I messed with some settings until I was satisfied, below are my results. BTW, I am using dual geforce 7800GT in SLI mode.

Setting Vsync on and triplebuffering to 2 frames reduced the tearing but not completely.
Adding a custom resolution of 1920x1080 @ 100hz and setting vsync enabled removed all evidence of tearing and also removed the strange pixels at the top of Dark Age of Camelot (which I assume was just tearing)
 
About the cable: Yes it is a plain DVI-D cable, but the Monitor does not come with one. So I purchased it from monoprice.com. It is an awesome cable the ferrite cores are about 2 inches in Diameter and it has gold plated ends. It is 6ft for about 10 bucks shipped.
 
i thought vsync is a big no-no.

docmal, have you tried playing around with powerstrip? it's a very app for display adjustments.
 
I have used powerstrip in the past, but don't see any reason to use it on this display. The only place I notice any strange behavior is on the borders during half life 2 level loading.

Vsync is a no no if you are going for high framerates because it locks your framerate to a multiple of your refresh rate. Doing this reduces or eliminates tearing at the cost of having a semi-locked framerate. This is bad for benchmarking because you will never reach those 100+ fps moments but your frame will rmeain more constant and will not show tearing.
 
I find it hard to believe that monitor will do 100Hz @ 1920x1080. I think DVI-D is locked at 60 or 75Hz. And I am sure the panel only officially supports like 60Hz at native res. So even though you set it at 100Hz, I have a feeling it is only running at 60Hz.


...Just a thought


EDIT: You should download some 1080P content from the Windows Media HD site and take some pics! ;)
 
BETTER yet, install coreavc decoder 0.0.0.4, haali media splitter, coreaac decoder, and playback quicktime HD trailers =).
 
I was interested in the Westy a while ago, but I could never get a clear answer to my question...

How does it handle non-native resolutions?

If I set a game to 1024x760, would the monitor stretch it to be the native resolution, or would it only display the 1024x760 and fill the remaining display with black?
 
chiablo said:
I was interested in the Westy a while ago, but I could never get a clear answer to my question...

How does it handle non-native resolutions?

If I set a game to 1024x760, would the monitor stretch it to be the native resolution, or would it only display the 1024x760 and fill the remaining display with black?
Click to expand...
I think they call that pull down right?

u can call westinghouse at 1 (866) 287-5555
 
Not sure if this requires a monitor driver, but if you have an nvidia card hooked up via DVI-D, then you can use an option called "centered output". This will fill in extra space with black bars/columns if you use non-native resolutions to retain a 1:1 pixel mapping.

To me, this is the only way to go because I hate scaling/compression.
 
docmal said:
The problem in Dark Age of Camelot has now disappeared. I believe it has to do with getting the proper refresh rate, and vsync enabled.

A few suggestions. Since the display is so large Tearing is a bigger issue than it used to be. It is very noticable during fast paced games. It is NOT occuring more, but it is much more "in your face."

I messed with some settings until I was satisfied, below are my results. BTW, I am using dual geforce 7800GT in SLI mode.

Setting Vsync on and triplebuffering to 2 frames reduced the tearing but not completely.
Adding a custom resolution of 1920x1080 @ 100hz and setting vsync enabled removed all evidence of tearing and also removed the strange pixels at the top of Dark Age of Camelot (which I assume was just tearing)
Click to expand...
I tried SLi with 2-7800GTs & noticed way more tearing in certain games like F.E.A.R.
 
How does it handle day-to-day use, like browsing and photo editing? I have a SONY 21" CRT Display that I'm willing to keep since I always thought that a large display such the WH would not be very suited to handle dekstop Windows use... but I saw in pictures that most of you happy owners of the display don't use a secondary display... can I ditch my CRT or keep it? Oh, and thanks for the reviews, docmal! :p
 
mike_j_johnson said:
I find it hard to believe that monitor will do 100Hz @ 1920x1080. I think DVI-D is locked at 60 or 75Hz. And I am sure the panel only officially supports like 60Hz at native res. So even though you set it at 100Hz, I have a feeling it is only running at 60Hz.


...Just a thought
Click to expand...

It probably is not actually running at > 60hz, but the graphics card is most definently locking the FPS to a multiple of 100hz. And this act somehow cleaned up all the tearing.

chiablo said:
I was interested in the Westy a while ago, but I could never get a clear answer to my question...

How does it handle non-native resolutions?

If I set a game to 1024x760, would the monitor stretch it to be the native resolution, or would it only display the 1024x760 and fill the remaining display with black?
Click to expand...

Regardless of your video card settings, the monitor has a fill mode and a standard mode. In standard mode it displays whatever your video card send it. In fill mode it stretches the image to fit the whole screen (even disrupting the aspect ratio.)

However if you have an NVidia card you can use the newest drivers and do some tweaking. In the advanced timing options you can change the card to ouput a signal that is:
Monitor scaled
Centered
Video Card aspect Ratio stretched
Video Card stretched

As far as I can tell with this display: monitor scaled and Centered produce the same results.
 
Nitrium said:
How does it handle day-to-day use, like browsing and photo editing? I have a SONY 21" CRT Display that I'm willing to keep since I always thought that a large display such the WH would not be very suited to handle dekstop Windows use... but I saw in pictures that most of you happy owners of the display don't use a secondary display... can I ditch my CRT or keep it? Oh, and thanks for the reviews, docmal! :p
Click to expand...

If you sit with your face ~3ft away fromt he display you will be very happy using this for everyday use. Any closer and the screen door effect may become annoying. I liked the 2405 better for windows work because it had extra vertical resolution to work with. But this screen is way better than my blurry old sony CRT.
 
I'm still struggling to figure out whether I should get this or the dell 3007wfp. If I do get the westy I would want to have it as close to my face as possible.....I mean close. Would the westy then be something I should get?
Also, I don't like the fact that you can't detach the speakers anymore like on the W1. I liked how that made the W1 seem more like a monitor.
What do ya'll think? :confused:
 
Why on earth would you want a 37inch monitor as close to your face as possible? If that is your plan then go with the 3007, it has much better resolution and pixel pitch than the westy. My face is about 2.5 feet away from the westy and I wish I could get another 6 inches away. Hell I can feel the heat from this display on my face sometimes.

The speakers on the W3 are on the bottom back side. You cannot see the speaker grills from the front.
 
docmal said:
Why on earth would you want a 37inch monitor as close to your face as possible? If that is your plan then go with the 3007, it has much better resolution and pixel pitch than the westy. My face is about 2.5 feet away from the westy and I wish I could get another 6 inches away. Hell I can feel the heat from this display on my face sometimes.

The speakers on the W3 are on the bottom back side. You cannot see the speaker grills from the front.
Click to expand...

Well, when I was originally set on getting the 3007wfp without any thoughts on the westy I was gonna plan on buying a monitor arm that can support its weight and float that sucker inches from my face right over the bed.
Yup, I did say i was gonna float it over the bed! :D I already do all my computing from bed as the 19 inch crt right now is at the edge of the desk which is at the edge of the bed. The keyboard right now is on the bed as we speak. How do I use the mouse you might ask? Easy, I use a touchpad. :D
I dunno, if I can afford it maybe I should get the westy as well. I would hang that thing up from the ceiling so it won't be as close to me as the monitor but it would still float right above my bed a good........3 feet from me.....ya that ought to be enough. ;)
 
docmal said:
Wow that could be the single wierdest thing I have ever heard.
Click to expand...

I used to do all my computing from the traditional desk. But when you want to do work for hours on end or if your just gaming.....well computing from bed just works for me. Its ok, I mean I get out and exercise and I'm an avid bicycle rider. But at the end of the day its easier just to lay back in bed and play FEAR as opposed to using a desk. But despite the advantages its not totally comfortable. Right now I have to strain my neck to the right side because thats where the monitor is. Having a big lcd float right above me though would be teh ultimate in teh lazeee! :p
 
hate to resurrect an old thread but how is the scaling around the edges?

is it full 1080p?
 
I got the older version of the 37 inch westy, been using it to play Oblivion(PC), and it looks awesome. New version must look just as good, or better. Also, I'm jealous of your HDMI ports.

To the poster above, mine is 1080p, so I would assume this new version is 1080p as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top