LVM-42w2 Setup & Menu System
The User Manual for this display is atrocious. To define that, let me illustrate one of my favorite passages which describes a particular function:
"DPMS: Select DPMS On/Off"
Well, that was certainly helpful. Perhaps they never went to grammar school where one of the first things you learn is that you cannot define a word by using the word itself in the definition. (DPMS stands for "Digital Power Management System" and is used to turn off the display when it senses that there is no input signal - this is commonly used in PC displays.) Much of the manual is written in this manner, and as such I found it to be an impediment, rather than helpful, in learning what the various functions do.
Picture Parameters
This first menu item contains all of the basic picture settings for the display including Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Hue, Color Temp, and Sharpness. You can also set the Aspect Ratio of the picture and control the level of the Backlight. I found that the Color Temperature had three basic settings 舑 cool, too cool, and normal. Color 1 is where you want to park the Color Temp setting for optimal performance.
Westinghouse allows you to adjust the Backlight of this display. We ran some tests and found that decreasing the backlight all the way to zero only reduced overall contrast from 286:1 to 280:1 (ANSI). This is essentially negligible and has the added benefit that your black levels drop from 1.98 cd/m^2 to just under 1 cd/m^2. If you ask me, you've basically found your daylight and nighttime mode function right here. For night time viewing drop the backlight all the way down, and raise it up to maximum for daytime viewing.
The Sharpness control seemed to only control the amount of visible noise in the picture and apparently was provided more as a placebo. I'd recommend leaving it all the way down for a smoother picture that doesn't lose any real resolution.
Audio Settings
The Audio Settings menu may actually never be used by some. If you are using an external receiver or amplifier and loudspeakers then there is little reason to visit this menu. If, however, you want to make use of the Westinghouse display's stereo speakers and integrated 舠 subwoofer 舡 then you'll want to stop here for any tweaking.
Bass, Treble and Balance are available in this menu along with standard mute controls. You can also opt to select Internal or External speakers for routing audio out of the unit via the stereo RCA connectors located on the right side of the display.
Mute and Volume controls are available from the remote but are included here as well, presumably in the event that the remote becomes inaccessible.
Picture-in-Picture
The Picture-in-Picture menu (which also supports Picture-Beside-Picture/split screen and Picture-and-Picture) is where you will go to set up and select which PIP/PBP/POP mode you would like to use for viewing. You can also configure size options and choose where the audio will come from when using these modes. The menu system becomes increasingly important in this area as the Westinghouse remote control only allows for activation of PIP mode and source selection. I would have preferred they replace the Freeze button with a Swap button which would make use of PIP from the remote much more convenient.
The LVM-42w2 is very flexible in that it allows the use of these modes with any of the inputs which have an active source signal. In this way a person with absolutely no life can watch a DVD while still keeping an eye on the latest sports scores coming in from the Cable TV box. You can also control the position of the PIP box with almost pixel accuracy 舰 Ah, technology 舑 finding ever more intricate and subtle ways to bring out the laziness in consumers. Oh, come on 舑 you know you love it!
General Settings
This last Menu section contains... everything else. You can use it to disengage the white LED on the front panel, alter the Transparency of the menu overlay, check the System Info to verify the input signal and your source component output formats, and even perform a Factory Reset on the display. DPMS is available here which simply turns off the display quickly when no input signal is available.
There are some other goodies as well such as a Sleep Timer, Language selection and being able to adjust the Menu Position, but in general this is the place you go for the miscellaneous leftover system settings that don't appear anywhere else. This is also the place you want to be to check out the input source. For example, I used it to verify that I indeed had a valid 1080p source to the multiple inputs. It also showed me that the Westinghouse (properly) converts all interlaced inputs to progressive images, so standard definition 480i input signals are converted to 240p and 1080i signals are converted to 540p.
