LVM-42w2 Remote, Calibration & Benchmark Tests

The remote control supplied with the Westinghouse is underwhelming. I will not give a manufacturer the time of day if they do not supply direct input buttons on the remote. It is far too easy a request and it makes the life of consumer much better when programming universal remote controls (such as the Philips RC9800i we typically utilize in this Reference System). I don't expect backlighting on this remote given the obvious cost-savings and target market of this display, though the buttons could certainly benefit from a glow-in-the-dark redesign.

The real problem with this remote, however, is not the button layout or its ergonomics, which I felt were on par with what you can expect at this price point. The real dysfunction was that the IR range was simply too finicky to be acceptable. I found myself constantly realigning the remote control to within 10 degrees of center to get consistent performance and responsiveness (adding new batteries didn't help). As a reviewer I am using the remote control an awful lot more than most people will, but this is something that should not be very difficult to troubleshoot and solve in the product development process. We're hoping that this is something Westinghouse will fix as soon as possible.

Calibrating the Television

We used Datacolor's Colorfacts Professional 6.0 software to measure and help calibrate black and white levels on this LCD display. In general, the Westinghouse is an extremely limited display, offering almost no user controls beyond the typical Brightness, Contrast, Hue and Color controls. My opinion is that, at minimum, the user controls of a display should include RGB Gain and Offset. This is not a valid place to cut corners or attempt to up-sell consumers on a more expensive display. As there are really no user controls for RGB Cut or Gain we didn't get much in terms of 'before' and 'after' for this display. I make it a point not to go into the service level menus in reviews; however this would be exactly where you'll want to be in order to tweak this display a bit closer to perfection. The defaults are pretty good provided you select the correct Color Temperature, but there are really no User controls to truly dial in the display.

Component Input 480i (contrast set)
I don't like to leave my green levels hanging above, even if blue is keeping them company. Unfortunately, this is the best you can get on this display without entering the service menu. It's not bad, but we could perhaps get better with some RGB controls.	The luminance histogram showed a nice gradual curve that followed our target and technically reinforced why we did not see crushed black or white levels with this display.
The color temperature was pretty even at around 6700-7000K. While this wasn't spot on, your other options put the color at 9925K and 8750K respectively. Stick with the Color 1 option and you'll be in the ballpark.

CIE Chart - Color Reproduction & Saturation Potential

The Datacolor ColorFacts CIE Chart is used to show the range of colors the Westinghouse LVM-42w2 LCD display is able to reproduce. This appears as a white triangle overtop of a darker triangle which represents the gamut of colors in the HDTV-capable range. The full "shark fin" chart is a representation of everything we are capable of seeing with the human eye.

As shown here, the Westinghouse produces reduced greens while maintaining an excellent color response in red and blue. I can handle a reduced green gamut and the picture quality I saw was quite impressive. This is one instance where the numbers don't really tell the story.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Westinghouse LVM-42w2 Benchmark Score: 73 (good, but missing some of the better implementation/features of the Genesis video processing)

Comments on HQV Testing

If you are sending standard definition material to this display in 480i it will convert to progressive scan 240p and thus fully utilize the on-board deinterlacer and scaler. In this situation, the HQV test scores are important as they show how well the display will handle noise reduction and deinterlacing of this type of content. For progressive or HD sources, HQV benchmark results are not as important as the deinterlacing (if any) is done elsewhere and the display's scaler is the key video processing being performed.

With that said, the Westinghouse performed quite well, with a bit more jaggies than I would like at the extreme angles and no noticeable noise reduction circuitry. It did a fantastic job (compared to other displays in this price range) of handling unflagged material and several of the odd cadences. I would not hesitate one bit in pairing this display with just about any source component.

Overscan measured 0.5% on the right, 0% on the left, 2% on bottom and 0.5% on top with standard definition (480i) source material sent to the display via the component video inputs. The moving horizontal Zone Plate with 2/3 pull down got as high as +/- 12 before breakup. For some reason the vertical moving Zone Plate test failed. The moving horizontal Zone Plate with 2/2 failed at +2 and -6 speeds. In general, the Westinghouse had difficulty in transitioning to video cadences from film rates. Vertical movement deinterlacing was more difficult for the LVM-42w2 than when simply adding horizontal motion.

Editor's Note
Be sure to set the Sharpness setting of this display to "4" for best result. Pixel smoothing (and consequently a decrease in resolution) will result if you don't.