Westinghouse Electric LTV-32w3 32" HDTV LCD TV

When my Sony WEGA 27" went out and was worth less than the repair bill I went shopping for a new TV and eventually bought the Westinghouse from Best Buy. I have to admit I am a cheapskate and that was a major factor in my decision. However, when I asked the sales guy why this tv with the same features was so much cheaper (~$900) than tvs with similar features and size sitting next to it he claimed that the picture isn't nearly as good. Granted, I wasn't in the AV club and am by far not an expert, but I could not see what he meant. Of course I am a guy, so I nodded along and pretended to agree, but honestly the picture looked pretty much identical to me with the possible exception of the very high end models like the Sony. He also told me some stories about seeing a lot of the Westinghouse Tvs being returned with bad pixels, in an obvious attempt to prime me to buy the extended warranty, but I was undeterred.

So I got it home. It was very easy to set up, and I was happy with the number of inputs and the location of them. It made it very easy to hide the tangle of cables. Well, that was until I realized I had a ton of HD options, but only one set of RCA inputs. Okay, I am a bit of a caveman and don't have all sorts of HD components yet,so this was a bit of a problem. I made do by buying component cables for my DVD which was fairly late model, but my venerable VCR is still sitting in the entertainment center with its cables hanging impotently out the back.

So on to the TV: The picture looked fine to me. I still think a tube tv looks much richer, but I am not all that picky and just liked the larger screen and the fact that it took up less real estate in my bedroom. Unless you are watching high def, it doesn't use all the screen available unless you turn on "Stretch mode". Both my wife and I can see some distortion in stretch mode, but have gotten used to it and leave it that way most of the time. They say you look 10 pounds heavier on tv. With this one I think it is 15.

I was excited to have PIP mode once again, which I haven't had since my dog ate the original remote to my Magnavox and the universal I bought didn't have a button for it. This excitement was short lived. Apparently PIP only works with some combinations of inputs which I don't understand much more than to say if one of the P's isn't High Def, then you get no PIP.

Sound Quality:
Passable, not as good as my old WEGA, but I assume most people who buy these have Home theater systems anyway. I'd suggest one. The biggest issue I have here is that I really miss the feature where it levels the sound. All my other tvs (even the cheap ones) have had this. I never realized how loud commercials really are until I watched this tv for a while.

Biggest complaint: The remote control. The remote for the tv is very intuitive and I like it, but I really prefer to just use my Satellite remote for everything. No luck, there is no known code (according to the manual) to program another remote to work with this tv. Apparently you can get something called a "Learning Remote" that will work, but hey, I want to use my DirecTv remote dang it! I experimented for hours but never got it to work. So I am stuck using two remotes for now. Now the worst part. Apparently the Westinghouse remote uses the same signal as my Sony DirecTV box for some commands and you can't change it on either place. This makes for some fun games like which random tv function happens when you press the channel button on the DirecTV remote. The most amusing of these games is when you have the tv and directv in opposite states (on/off) since the power button works on both, they both toggle when you press the button. Dang it, if I wanted to get off my butt and push a button on the tv I would live in Bedrock!