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The LTV-32w6 is one of three 32-inch LCD televisions that we tested that cost less than $1000 (as of 12/8/06). Price is its main draw, but the image quality is good enough that budget buyers should give it a look.
In our image quality tests, the LTV-32w6 scored second best overall among our test group, just slightly behind the $1600 Toshiba 32HL66. Westinghouse's set displayed sharp pictures with natural tones, whether the source was HD or standard definition.
The LTV-32w6 has an attractive and relatively thin charcoal-gray cabinet, which resembles the cabinets on last year's Sharp LCD TVs (except that those were bronze). The LTV-32w6's base does not allow swiveling or height adjustments, and a speaker panel stretches across the full length of the bottom of the TV. The sound generated by these speakers is okay, except that the amplifier behind them is pretty weak; I turned the volume all the way up and still had no problem sitting just six feet away from the set.
Westinghouse touts its "SpineDesign," where the connectors are located on both sides of a wide, tall panel behind the screen. This location does make it easy to connect devices to the set, but the connectors are located near the top of the base (and the top of the screen), so you may be able to see your cables if you're viewing the set from an angle, especially if you use stiff cables. Westinghouse markets the set as having four high-definition connections, and that's true--but one of them will have to be a VGA connection from a PC. It has only one HDMI input and two sets of component inputs.
The set comes with a generic-looking remote control--a lightweight, silver device with several buttons that don't control anything on the television we tested. For example, the remote has a picture-in-picture button, but the set doesn't have that feature. It has buttons labeled with TV jargon such as "YPbPr1" and "YPbPr2" instead of easier-to-understand terms such as "Component 1" and "Component 2," and it has a separate input button. The TV's screen menus, which are attractive enough, also carry the YPbPr1 and YPbPr2 labels; you can customize the labels, but you only get eight characters, so you'll have to be happy with, say, "Compone1."
You'll find a pretty good number of color controls in those menus; you can adjust hue, saturation, sharpness, and backlight strength, and you can adjust color temperature in either broad terms (cool, neutral, or warm) or in finer adjustments for red, green, and blue.
Overall, the LTV-32w6 gives you a nice picture for a nice price. Just be sure to budget for a better remote control.
