Customer Reviews

Westinghouse TX-47F430S 47-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

One Star?? You've got to be kidding. The comment wasn't even about this model. I've had mine a week now and could not be happier. Great picture and great price. Excellent prices on the Amazon HDMI cables as well.
Most *expert* reviews complain about the blacks, but I'm satisfied with the performance. I did purchase a reasonably priced extended warranty, which will take care of the TV if the tuner breaks in a couple years. 720p sports look great, but 1080i TV is truly breathtaking. I believe you can see the difference on this size screen. The TV supports 1080p, but I don't have a source for that.
I'd certainly recommend this TV to a friend.

I was looking for a great deal and TV, thought I fould it with the Westinghouse. My issues is not with the TV, understand things happen (hate when it is with me) but my issues is with Westinghouse's customer service. My TV worked great till after 3 weeks no picture....nothing not even the Westinghouse screen. OK it's under warranty...giving the readers digest version it's taken me over 7 weeks of calling Westinghouse (oh year each time you call you must start at step 1...frustrating, but not the poor customer reps fault. Finally after waiting for them to approve getting my TV repaired, waiting for the service tech to come to my house...to my last call where I was told that "if you don't get any picture we just replace" Yikes...so with 7 weeks w/ no TV I had to shell out $200 to ship it back and am now waiting on another week for them to ship me, hopefully. a new one. Again I may have got the "made on Friday TV"...and I can understand that...but the customer service at Westinghouse just beat me down...they never returned a call, and I was very nice each time I called.

So...my great internet deal went all to he%%...so as I look to replace my living room TV with a 52"...Ii am sad to say it won't be a Westinghouse and I'll purchase it locally

Have had this tv for a few months now and with the exception of what may be the most frustrating remote control in the world (but really with the exception of the on/off button everything else is done with a different remote) this is probably the best television I have come across. As a huge movie guy and sports guy I was tempted to spring for "top of the line" sony televisions, but thought twice when I saw how this performed side by side a 3,000 dollar sony. If you are looking to pick up a nice tv with plenty of options there is really no reason to not pick this one up.

I've had this TV for over a year now and it has been a fine TV during most of that time. This is a quick, simple review of my experience with it:

Pros:
-It's hard to get a large 1080p picture for much less. The value is very good. This was my first HDTV and I could only grin when I first saw a good 1080p signal on it. Its an incredible leap from analog cable.
-Allows for full appreciation of Blu-ray. This media is so much better than DVD for video quality. Suggestion: Do not buy Blu-ray discs, but rent from Blockbuster or Netflix.
-Simple to set up with easy menu navigation and fairly expansive settings
-Performance surpasses its price
-Built in tuners are very capable. Over the air 1080p looks great.
-Very good 480i scaling. It makes the difference between analog and digital 480i cable almost unnoticeable.
-Many inputs. My roommate and I have quite a few game systems and the 4 HDMI inputs have been very useful.
-Built in sound system is good, but will eventually develop vibrations.

Cons:
-Experiences PS3 flickering over HDMI (See below)
-Poor black levels: must decide between dark blacks with bad shadow definition -or- good shadow definition and gradient with noticeably light blacks
-Poor scaling of 480p signal. My Wii looks better on 480i than 480p settings.
-Slight shadowing of 1080p VGA signal. Remedied by using DVI output from PC to VGA converter.
-The settings for all of the HDMI inputs are linked. You can set specific video settings for all the different inputs except the HDMI inputs, which all must have the same settings. Changing the brightness for one changes it for all of them, for instance.

Issues:
-It looked much better after adjusting the settings at home than it did in the store; set the sharpness up to 70 or 80, for instance.
-Slight Audio-Visual lag at times. I can't reproduce the pattern, but sometimes the voice will come significantly before the movement of the actor's mouth. This is especially detrimental in fast-reaction based games.
-My PS3 connected via HDMI would flicker. The signal would go in and out, which was very disconcerting during a climactic action scene on a 1080p blu-ray. This problem was especially prevalent on 720p signals. THIS HAS SINCE SUBSIDED AND DOES NOT HAPPEN ANYMORE. I'm not sure why.
-Recently, my set has experience significant red "snow" or fuzz in dark areas with distortion of whites or light grays. I luckily bought the set with a credit card that provides an extended warranty, but otherwise I would be out of luck. It makes some media almost unwatchable. This has been a major problem and will require repairs. Note that this issue arose less than 2 years into the life of the set.
-I attempted to update my firmware and this process was impossibly difficult. The site does not let you download by mouse click, but instead requires that you input your serial number. It tells my mine is invalid. Westinghouse phone support is of no help in this matter.

Overall:
This far after the purchase, I can say that I would only recommend this set if you are absolutely dying to have an HDTV and are feeling very light in the checkbook, like I was. I would not buy a 720p TV ever, but this is the bare minimum for a 1080p set. If you're going to spend the $[...], go ahead and spend the extra few hundred for a better set, especially with deeper blacks. It will bother you if you're in a dark room watching a nighttime scene in a movie and the night sky looks like a dull gray light filling the room. Also, things like black suits and hair lose their definition on this set. I have had numerous issues with the set and am now having it repaired a year and a half after buying it. Like I said, this set made me smile when I first had 1080p video and games on it, but the problems and shortcomings make me wish I had spent just a little more.

UPDATE (10/3/09):
I wanted to love this TV. It was my first HDTV. I bought it in my third year of college with three roommates putting in $[...] each to help. Coming from standard definition CRT and rear projection sets, this set looked pretty good. The blacks were fairly crushed, and shadows in scenes looked uniformly gray. But 1080p was very impressive, and as I've used it extensively for game playing, the high resolution has been great with my PS3 and my roommates 360.

HOWEVER, when I spend $[...] on a piece of electronics, I expect it to serve its purpose for more than a year and a half, which this set did not. I purchased the set in August of 2007, and in November 2008, it began to exhibit very bad color distortion and red "static" or "snow" in dark areas. I spent quite some time adjusting the picture settings to make it watchable, but it was simply miserable to look at. Luckily, I purchased a 2 year third party warranty with the set, and am currently in what's been a 3 month long warranty repair process. Evidently, the main data board is in need of repair (a $[...] part).

Mind you, the set is failing after less than a year and a half of moderate daily use. This comes in addition to the various problems common with this set (dropping of input signals, failure to pick up input from the PS3, losing signal when changing resolutions, vibration of TV cabinet with speakers), all of which I have experienced. Do not buy this TV. You can purchase a much better set for only a few hundred dollars more. Had I had a little more wisdom under my belt, I would have done the same.

I cannot recommend this set to any prospective buyer. For more information, read the AVSforum owner's thread:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=851860&page=182

While the price is tempting (I've seen it as low as $[...]), this set experiences a major failure after around 18 months. In my opinion, a product recall or class action suit against Westinghouse is in order. That forum is filled with 200 pages of consumers who spent $[...] on a TV that last them less than 2 years, and that my friends borders on theft.

I purchased this HDTV just over a year ago. Out of the box I was impressed with the picture and thought I had received an amazing deal on this value-priced 1080P HDTV. Then after about a month I started having problems with the HDMI connections. More often than not the TV would not recognize the DVD player connected via HDMI unless I restarted the TV with a powercycle. Over the course of a year between my wife and me we put maybe 500 hours on it, which is quite low. About two weeks after my one-year warranty ran out I was watching TV, hit one of the "Favorites" buttons and the TV became stuck on one channel. I pushed nearly every button on the remote and got nothing, so I tried holding the power button in for 10 seconds to do a power-cycle restart. The TV restarted, the white Westinghouse symbol popped up for a few seconds and then the screen went black while the power lights remained on. Unplugged/replugged in the TV several times and got the same results.

Emailed the Westinghouse customer service a couple times and was told they'd never heard of this issue before. Googled the issue and found a few others with the same problem, but no solution, so I called up Westinghouse for help. Took a looong time to get through, but finally got someone to try a couple fixes with me...no luck. As soon as I mentioned the TV was a couple weeks out of warranty the phone call came to a drastic halt and was told I had to find a local repairman. Thanks for the $1,500 brick Westinghouse!

Took the TV to the only LCD repairman in the area and he told me I should have bought a Samsung or a Sony because Westinghouse uses cheap crappy parts. TVs been in the shop for almost three weeks now. Repairman thinks it's a bad circuit board.

Learn from my mistake...buy something else!

UPDATE: Just sold this broken piece of junk off for $200 on Craigslist. Not only did I have problems with this TV but also a friend of mine (weird bar down right side of screen), his parents (won't turn on), and another friend (can't remember the issue).

I picked up one of these from Crutchfield about a year ago and just love it. I should say, I just love the price! I took a look in Best Buy where they had one side-by-side with several others and honestly couldn't really seem much of a difference between the LCD sets when watching general TV. But the price was a full $1000 less than comparable models. I think when you look at price and look and performance, if you are at all price conscious, you will really like this LCD.

I got this T.V. a few weeks ago. Paid $1050 for it and it is a great set. The 1080p is good. The only thing I do not like about it but it doesn't make a difference is the SD Quality. I got it for PS3 games and Blu-Ray that are 1080p not in SD. I would recommend this set for anyone that is on a budget and wants a decent LCD.

Great TV, IF you get one that stays working. Great sound, great picture, great tuner and inputs, great in most every respect. Spotty reliability, and pee poor service if you need warranty service. Get it cheap and get a 3rd party warranty and it'd be reasonable, just do not leave yourself at the mercy of Westinghouse.

After WH support saying that someone will call in 4-5 days, that plus a few and still no call. Then finally get through to the local service, and guess what? No action at all! "Well we have thousands of customers, and there's just me" says the receptionist. 2 or 3 weeks to get the part, after they order it too! Then just the one part WH phone support thinks it is, if they've guessed wrong and the power board happens to have taken out the other board or the screen I could literally be looking at months.

The set is almost wonderful! A percent or two on better engineering, a percent or two to go ahead and ship boards out when called for and 2nd day air etc and things would be fine. Instead they run a seriously mickey mouse repair method to save a few bucks, and guarantee that customers buy something else next time. WH management makes the Big 3 CEO's look like geniuses..

Got it at Costco, and fortunately after the warranty repair problems they took it back despite being outside the 90 day direct return period. If they hadn't been decent I'd have been screwed at least for weeks if not 2 or 3 months.

Great stuff if it stays working, but you'll be quite sorry if you get one of the bad ones. Costco stopped carrying a couple weeks after my purchase, they and several other retailers had a good price and sold them off 6 months ago. No need to wonder why.

I see that most of the 1 star reviews are from people that had problems, which is understandable. However, if it works likes mine, it is a 5 star tv for the price. (update, I have this for 1 month now, watch my bedtime shows about 2-4 hours every night with it without any problems. There was a power spike 2 weeks ago in the house that took me 5-8 tries to unplug and power back on, but eventually it worked. Oh well, still a 5 star rating until is stops working.)

I got mine from the local BB, and it works. I wanted a 120htz tv, but it costs 30-80+% more. For the price, I could not resist this one; plus, the convenience of getting it on the spot makes it more tempting.

I have bought a 32" westinghouse lcd tv for my mom several years ago, and it seems to be running. Also Westinghouse seems to have one of the higher quality picture in the low-cost tv range.

My next tv after this one may be for the 60" sony xbr 120hz, but only when the prices come down. This will be good to tie me over until then.

I have a 1080i hd-dvd player plugged into the hdmi (I think there is 4 possible) connection--works great, no skipped frames. My dvd player is plugged in with components (2 possible); my sat/directv is plugged in the video (only 1 possible).

Nice features:
auto shut off when there is no signal

automatic switch when there is a new signal (I can watch the TV, but when I turn on the DVD player, sat, or hd-dvd, it automatically switches over without fiddling with the tv. however, when I turn off the hd player, it goes through auto-off because there is no signal--it doesn't try to find another available signal.)

the internal hd tuner picks up my local channels with rabbit years. (I have an amplified antennae which works better, but I was able to use another non-amplified antenna to get all of my local channels. The rabbit years are pointed funny to get better reception than the amplified ones, but it works.)

I can still see that the samsung / sony's get a better picture from the color tricks that they do; however, if you do not have the higher quality tv sitting next to this one when you are watching it, it is hard to tell the difference when you are standing 6 feet away.

Pros:
47" big screen, cheap price, high quality picture in the low-cost class

Cons:
only 1 video input (I personally would rather have 2 video input and 3 hdmi instead of 1 vid and 4 hdmi).

the "energy off" produces a low freq hum. (this off mode is also set off when you use the sleep function). I simply turned off the energy feature--however, the hum after I used the sleep function still annoys me when I wake up in the morning. (maybe when I get older, I will become deaf to lower frequency noises--ha!)

Overall, I am currently giving this a 5 star. Rest assured, if this thing breaks on me within 2 years, I will definately take it down to 1 star (or less)!

I bought this back in May 2007 when it first came out because the death of my previous TV put me in a bind. Had I waited to see some more reviews, I probably would have purchased a different model. First the pros:
* Good price for a 1080p of this size.
* Sharp, bright image image. Seems to resolve pixel-for pixel on HDMI.
* Does 1080p over component, which is good for those of you with older Xbox 360s.
* Plenty of inputs.
* Digital and analog tuners use a single cable.
* No significant response-time problems
* Low weight and small footprint mean you can place this on many kinds of stands and movie it without too much difficulty.

Now the cons:
* Image brightness is a bit uneven, though not awful. The upper corners are a bit brighter than the rest.
* It crops 480p signals in wide mode about 5% each off top and bottom and less at the sides. This is true for both component and HDMI. High-def signals are framed correctly.
* HDMI is finnicky. My PS3 wouldn't be recognized at all for a while, then got so it would freqently blink out. Running the HDMI through a receiver resolved this, but it's something to keep in mind if connecting directly to the TV.
* Can't be calibrated quite correctly. I couldn't get color bars on spec no matter what I did, though it comes quite a bit closer than many cheaper TVs. I got red and blue close to right, though still visibly off, but it has a significant green push that can't be adjusted out.
* The TOSLINK out seems to down-mix everything to 2-channel. This means you can't watch HDTV in 5.1 without an external tuner. I have no idea why it would do this as it requires alteration to the signal.
* If there's a power outage, or you unplug the TV, you lose all your calibration settings. You'd better write them down somewhere.
* The worst problem is the black levels. Blacks actually glow. There is no shadow detail to speak of. Many video games were unplayable until I cranked them to just not look dark anymore. Kristin Kreuk's hair is just a void in the picture, as is the case for any other dark-haired actor. This really cuts into the benefits of high-def presentation.