Westinghouse LVM=42W2 Experience So Far

I just wrote this up for AVS Forum, so I thought I would post here too:

I made the jump several weeks ago and bought [the Westinghouse LV-42W2] from Crutchfield.

Here is my experience so far (quick summary - I am on the fence, sometimes this set is awesome, sometimes I am quite ready to return it)

- in HD there is no question the set has amazing quality. XBOX360 over component cables is truly astounding and the #1 reason I would keep this set.

- in SD, I think it's as good as you can expect - except I have not figured out what is causing ghosting (see below)

- ps2 (SD over S-Video) looks reasonable but dithering is high - I am willing to accept this is just how the ps2 looks and get over it. I only play one game on the ps2 anymore and grafx are not a high concern here

- DirecTivo - the menuing part is pretty grungy - dithering and aliasing artifacts that I never saw before. I'm not just being picky my wife asked if the set is out of focus. The good news is that TV in general looks good enough that I am not distracted it's just the Tivo interface that looks relatively poor. There are artifacts that I am not quite sure whether they are ghosting or MPG2 artifacts -- see ghosting below.

- Component in from my 6 year old Sony DVD changer caused massive problems. The signal broke up and died. I am willing to accept my changer is old and needs replacement - but I must tell you that it happened *one* time with the XBox 360 so I am suspicious (hard reset aka unplug solved the issue, it hasn't returned in 3-4 days)

- VGA in from my laptop at 1920x1080 works well, but there is again a ghosting problem - see below. Also thanks to the poster of the gray image. I fired it up and sigh I have 2 dead pixels in the corner (not so bad) and also I am not sure it's banding or backlamp uneveness (I think the latter, truthfully, even white doesn't look perfectly even) but I see streaks

- GHOSTING. This one is a major issue. On the VGA inputs any vertical line causes a ghost to appear right next to it, things like icons on a white or grey background are dead giveaways. On S-Video with the Tivo I think I see ghosting but it's hard to tell. If anyone saw Carlos Mencia's special from a week or two ago, he had a silver chair with 4 vertical legs on stage that causes at least 7 repetitions of the vertical signal in certain shots - sometimes when he was several feet away from the chair, the "ghost" stripes from the chair legs went all the way to him. Excruciatingly distracting. Some movies I notice it as well, but again it HAS to be vertical lines. I have not noticed this playing movies from the XBox360 but haven't had the time to analyze carefully.

- LOCKUPS - this may actually get the set on a truck back to the mfr. I have so far recorded three times the set simply would not respond to me. The remote and buttons on the unit were completely unresponsive. unplugging the unit fixed the problem. I thought it might just be initial problems that were lessening over time, ,but it happened again last night.

- Remote sensitivity is poor. You might think this would be ok, but I can tell you it's not the REMOTE's fault, it's the TV. I have a Logitech Harmony and you really have to point the thing at the TV or it does not register (same thing with the MFR remote). Also it's quite often that the TV just ignores the remote until you press it a few more times - this is most noticeable when trying to change inputs.

- Only one picture setting per input. Don't get me wrong, I am happy it at least has memory for picture settings per input, but it's a bit of a problem if you are going to use something like the XBox360 for movies AND games. Games have to brighter esp Project Gotham Racing which provides NO in game controls (unlike Kameo which provides 4-5 presets) for brightness.