BF 32" Westinghouse vs. Olevia- Westinghouse was a bad choice

Scrubsy

Scrubsy

CAGiversary!
Feedback
12 (100%)
Yes its another one of these topics, but Im really torn between these two LCD's and they both look good. Does anyone here have personal experience with them? I have heard good and bad about both. I have been looking all day and even went in to see what they look like and the Westinghouse seems better. And before you say it, I have already looked at the AVS forums, just looking for personal experience with these brands.

Update: I just bought the westy and I played the wii on it and it looks pretty bad. I think I will just take it back it get something small and simple. Can anyone suggest a LCD that is 480p friendly since i wont have any of the next gen systems any time soon.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
[quote name='Scrubsy']Yes its another one of these topics, but Im really torn between these two LCD's and they both look good. Does anyone here have personal experience with them? I have heard good and bad about both. I have been looking all day and even went in to see what they look like and the Westinghouse seems better. And before you say it, I have already looked at the AVS forums, just looking for personal experience with these brands.[/QUOTE]


A coworker of mine has an Olevia Plasma and it looks amazing :O

I can't judge the westing house til its up and running, and not on a bb display feed.
 
I have a 26inch Olevia... I LOVE it. Its crystal clear. It looks better than most displays. The only thing is I got it for $500 on july4th, now this black friday microcenter has bigger versions for less... Boo!
 
The westy has a response time of 6.5ms while the olevia is 8ms. I read that this was probably the most important thing to look for in a LCD.
 
I am also torn between which one to get. does anyone know the model number or model that the olevia is? I believe the Westinghoue is (correct me if i'm wrong) the 32w6 (or maybe w3?). The 32w6 has gotten good review scores but I dont know about the olevia because i'm not sure of the model.
 
The Westinghouse is a 3213--which I suspect is a specific sku just for the Best Buy Black Friday sale (so people can't get a price adjustment). I got the 32w6 a month or so ago for $615 and it's fantastic--no complaints at all, except that the speakers are kinda crummy (but I've got it going through external speakers anyway).
 
[quote name='mik']The Westinghouse is a 3213--which I suspect is a specific sku just for the Best Buy Black Friday sale (so people can't get a price adjustment). I got the 32w6 a month or so ago for $615 and it's fantastic--no complaints at all, except that the speakers are kinda crummy (but I've got it going through external speakers anyway).[/quote]
How do games/movies/tv look on it? My newest system I will be playing on it is the Wii and maybe soon the 360.
 
I was looking for some reviews of both and found on IGN a letter asking a person at IGN Gear which was better. His response was: "That's an interesting toss up. I'd probably take the higher contrast ratio of the Olevia over the faster response time of the Westinghouse, but PiP is kinda cool and might sway me the other way. I've spent a fair amount of time with that particular Westinghouse model and it looks pretty nice, no serious issues that I could identify, so I'm more confident in recommending that one for you anyway."

If you want to see the whole thing, go here and scroll about half way down the page.
 
[quote name='Scrubsy']How do games/movies/tv look on it? My newest system I will be playing on it is the Wii and maybe soon the 360.[/quote]
Haven't watched TV on it, but the 360, PS3, DVDs, and Blu-Ray all look excellent. The 360 is connected VGA and the PS3 is going in through the HDMI.
 
I have personally owned a Westinghouse 32inch LCD and just purchased an Olevia 32inch.

Picture quality: Olevia darker darks, brighter when it needs to be. Westinghouse started to look washed out after a year.

Sound: Pretty much all LCDs come with crap speakers but the Olevia actually gets pretty darn loud without distorting. Westighouse had no dynamics.

Quality of Parts: I owned my Westinghouse for over a year and the jacks started getting loose and jiggling. It would lose it's native resolution every once in a while and the screen would go snowy and I would have to reboot it. Everything seems solid on the Olevia.

Bells and Whistles: The Olevia overall has better menu presentation and the menus are pretty easy. My only complaint is the Blue Light beside the power button.

I bought my Westinghouse with a Best Buy service plan and when it finally got unbearable I called support and they had no one to work on it so the gave me full credit so I got a Panasonic 37inch Plasma. In the last Month I got the Olevia and have been completely happy with the gaming performance on it. The Olevia's are a product of Syntax Brillian a California company.

Hope this helps.

I would go with Olevia, on the other hand the Westinghouse has a better comb filter for non HD TV viewing and the has the sexy black casing. So is it form or fashion?
 
so whats keeping me from getting a olevia over the westinghouse? just the speed? do both provide the same input and hdtv installed? if the westinhouse is going to crap out then i would just get the olevia
 
[quote name='shadylane']so whats keeping me from getting a olevia over the westinghouse? just the speed? do both provide the same input and hdtv installed? if the westinhouse is going to crap out then i would just get the olevia[/quote] I heard the olevia is bad at 480p with bad ghosting. Can anyone confirm if this is a problem with the 3213?
 
I haven't really found anything review-wise about either of the tvs except the ign article. Has anyone else had any luck? or experience with either?
 
Went last night a 9:30 to BB to check stuff out. Looks like they had a lot of the 32's. I'm interested in the 42' for $999.99, They open at 5am so I don't know how crazy people are going to get for it but I'll just throw one on my credit card if I can get there in time. Worse comes to worse I will stand outside BB and trade a 60GB PS3 for one. I have a new 42' Samsung DLP and right now I need those extra 12 inches of room.
 
Honestly, the old adage remains true, you get what you pay for. Yeah, a 42' LCD Screen for 1000 is a steal, but if you're going to spend that much on a delicate piece of equipment like an HDTV, I personally wouldn't cheap out on a off, or at least reletively unknown brand, like Olevia or Westinghouse. Maybe I'm off base here, but I just wouldn't trust anyone but the well known brands, sony, panasonic, etc., with producing a quality television set.
 
[quote name='spmahn']Honestly, the old adage remains true, you get what you pay for. Yeah, a 42' LCD Screen for 1000 is a steal, but if you're going to spend that much on a delicate piece of equipment like an HDTV, I personally wouldn't cheap out on a off, or at least relatively unknown brand, like Olevia or Westinghouse. Maybe I'm off base here, but I just wouldn't trust anyone but the well known brands, sony, panasonic, etc., with producing a quality television set.[/QUOTE]

True in some aspects but Westinghouse and Olevia have been around for a while. I personally have a series 1 of the 32' Olevia and it still works like a charm. I would defiantly buy the replacement plan on a Big ticket TV. I just had two Zenith Plasma 50's go out within 1 month of end of warranty. I had the replacement plan at CC and had them both swapped for newer units. No matter what you buy it can go bad, nice thing about this is these are BF skus so they cant replace it with a exact model.
 
For what it's worth, the 37" 1080p Westinghouse set will be $799 at ShopKo on Black Friday.
 
I just got the Olevia 32" from Microcenter last night. I work there, so I'm just getting the price adjusted Friday. I hooked it up to my PC and 360 last night and my friend brought over his 360 hd dvd player to check it out on the TV. Everything looks incredible. The 8ms response time is fine and I have had no ghosting in dvds, hd-dvds, or 360 games. I still haven't tried any PC games, but considering my monitor before this was a dell with a 16ms response time and had no ghosting, I'm sure this will be fine. Response times usually aren't a good thing to go by anyway because there is no industry standard that they are tested by so you really can't accurately compare response times between 2 different brands. I was more concerned with the great contrast ratio of the Olevia. I'm not sure what the Westinghouse is but the Olevia has a 1600:1 and it looks great. As was stated earlier, the blacks are really dark. The only complaint I have is that there is only 1 component input, but you can't beat getting a high quality 32" lcd for under $400.
 
From what it seems, the Olevia 5 series that uses the ATI exillion chipset has a problem with 480i/p sources, aka anything standard def resolution. If you get a upconverter for all your 480 sources, everything will work out fine. Which is what I'm planning to do. :D
 
[quote name='SpikeSpiegel']If you're looking to spend more. This TV will be $1000 at BB on Friday.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site//olspage.jsp?id=1134703131623&skuId=7679185&type=product

Besides the lack of 1080p resolution support this TV is fantastic IMO.[/QUOTE]

My understanding was that plasma TVs were bad for gaming due to bad burn-in - is this not correct?

I'm planning on trying for the 32" Westinghouse at BB, but I must admit I'm tempted by the bigger set. The only problem is I don't know if I have the room for it, and I don't know that I need to spend this much (esp. for a secondary set, I have a 55" rear projection in the living room that's my main set).


EDIT: I also don't see this set listed in BB's sale ad for tomorrow - where did you see that it was going to be on sale?
 
Panasonic, Pioneer, Phillips and all of the "good" brands as long as you keep the tv on a non scrolling non banner channel for about 12-18 hours upon first purchase usually a power cycle will fix any burn in issues but it's rare if it happens.

I use my Panasonic for gaming and have had zero issues.
 
[quote name='fenderhutz']Panasonic, Pioneer, Phillips and all of the "good" brands as long as you keep the tv on a non scrolling non banner channel for about 12-18 hours upon first purchase usually a power cycle will fix any burn in issues but it's rare if it happens.

I use my Panasonic for gaming and have had zero issues.[/QUOTE]

K, that's good to know then.

Some kind of confirmation that BB will have that set on sale tomorrow would be nice, if anyone knows. Again, I don't see it in the sale ad, but maybe I'm overlooking it?

EDIT: I do see the Westinghouse 42" LCD at BB for $999. It appears to have gotten good reviews as well, but my only concern is lack of 1080i support. From my understanding, tho, all games that support 1080i also support 780p, right? This is primarily going to be a gaming set. Also, I'm seeing that LCDs only display at their native resolution anyway? So does that mean that the 32" Westinghouse, even tho it accepts a 1080i signal, will scale it down to 780p?

Man, I'm really confused by all of this. I want a good gaming set, and $1k will pretty much be the end of my budget on this (and that's stretching it).
 
I got to Best Buy at midnight hoping to get the Westinghouse. The lines was over 100 people long, so I went to Circuit City to try and get the Olevia. They didn't have any in stock so they sold me one for that price with free delivery. So I guess I am happy.

People are so rude though.
 
[quote name='fenderhutz']Panasonic, Pioneer, Phillips and all of the "good" brands as long as you keep the tv on a non scrolling non banner channel for about 12-18 hours upon first purchase usually a power cycle will fix any burn in issues but it's rare if it happens.

I use my Panasonic for gaming and have had zero issues.[/quote]

That's only for Plasma TVs, and even now, they're alot better and you don't have to worry too much about it. I don't think many people keep scrolling banner channels on for that long.

[quote name='argyle']K, that's good to know then.

Some kind of confirmation that BB will have that set on sale tomorrow would be nice, if anyone knows. Again, I don't see it in the sale ad, but maybe I'm overlooking it?

EDIT: I do see the Westinghouse 42" LCD at BB for $999. It appears to have gotten good reviews as well, but my only concern is lack of 1080i support. From my understanding, tho, all games that support 1080i also support 780p, right? This is primarily going to be a gaming set. Also, I'm seeing that LCDs only display at their native resolution anyway? So does that mean that the 32" Westinghouse, even tho it accepts a 1080i signal, will scale it down to 780p?

Man, I'm really confused by all of this. I want a good gaming set, and $1k will pretty much be the end of my budget on this (and that's stretching it).[/quote]

90% if not more of next gen games will be 720p. There is no game that is only 1080i. You can upscale 720p games to 1080i. The Westy, if its source material is 720p, will either play it at that or upscale it to 1080i. It's up to the individual on which looks better.
 
[quote name='stag8603']I got to Best Buy at midnight hoping to get the Westinghouse. The lines was over 100 people long, so I went to Circuit City to try and get the Olevia. They didn't have any in stock so they sold me one for that price with free delivery. So I guess I am happy.

People are so rude though.[/QUOTE]
What do you mean "they sold you for that price" if it out of stock? Like a preorder for their next shipment?
 
Picked up a series 3 Olevia at Compusa for $550, the line to get in was zero and the time to ring out was 5 mins because of a call for Auth on a credit card for the guy in front of me, I paid cash and was out. Not too bad.
 
I'm really liking the black friday LCD from Olevia, my first HDTV purchase! Still playing around with it but the 360 graphics made my jaw drop.
 
If 80%+ of the people you asked on here stated the Olevia looked to be the better choice, why did you go with the Westinghouse?
 
[quote name='fenderhutz']If 80%+ of the people you asked on here stated the Olevia looked to be the better choice, why did you go with the Westinghouse?[/QUOTE]

QFT
 
[quote name='Scrubsy']Update: I just bought the westy and I played the wii on it and it looks pretty bad. I think I will just take it back it get something small and simple. Can anyone suggest a LCD that is 480p friendly since i wont have any of the next gen systems any time soon.[/quote]

how did you hook up the wii? how bad was the picture?
 
I ended up grabbing the 42" Olevia 542i at Microcenter for $800. I stopped in on Tuesday night to check the PQ with all options (I'd heard of the 480i/p issues) and nothing was wrong with it at all.
Now to find an xbox...
 
Can anyone that was there (micro center) this morning tell me if the tvs (olevia)were hot items or if they would be there later
 
i jsut picked up the 32" westy, lemme tell you, the hd channels show up crystal clear on 1080i and my 360 has never looked better.. also if anyone can't figure out how to program their io remotes ( cablevision) since the westy code doesn't work. ill give you some help. try 001 or also known as a sony code... btw i heard the westy's are sony grade 1 panels and to me it sure seems that way.
 
[quote name='zewone']What do you mean "they sold you for that price" if it out of stock? Like a preorder for their next shipment?[/QUOTE]

Yeah that's what I think they did. They told everyone waiting in line at about 4:30 that they would be letting a limited quantity of people purchase the Olevia and they would deliver it for free. I don't know if they never received their shipment or what but I got the TV for $475 so its not that big of a deal.
 
Quick question...What do I need to buy to get my Cable in HD? I guess the Olevia has the tuner and all, but do I still need a certain receiver or what?
 
[quote name='Scrubsy']Update: I just bought the westy and I played the wii on it and it looks pretty bad. I think I will just take it back it get something small and simple. Can anyone suggest a LCD that is 480p friendly since i wont have any of the next gen systems any time soon.[/quote] If all you're going to be feeding it is 480i content, they're both probably worse choices than an old-fashioned SDTV, which you could get for $150. I didn't realize it was to play the Wii on.
 
[quote name='stag8603']Quick question...What do I need to buy to get my Cable in HD? I guess the Olevia has the tuner and all, but do I still need a certain receiver or what?[/QUOTE]


u need a HD Cable Box and a cable, either a hdmi, dvi, or maybe even component, I am getting my hdmi from my cable company when I got the box.
 
[quote name='Ikohn4ever']u need a HD Cable Box and a cable, either a hdmi, dvi, or maybe even component, I am getting my hdmi from my cable company when I got the box.[/QUOTE]

Okay. I'm getting ready to hook up run the Cable cords into the room that the TV is going in (didn't previously have cable there). So as soon as I do that I'll figure that out. I'm guessing I will just need to call Comcast to get the box.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top