Westinghouse Digital: The SK-40H520S from Westinghouse Digital is not the sexiest TV I have seen in recent months. But nor is it the ugliest. It actually has a very decent design that is simple and black. The 40″ LCD features a 1366×768 pixel format so that means 720p HD content. Don’t worry about the lower pixel count as most folks can’t tell the difference when watching 1080p or 720p HD content at the recommended distances.
The response time of 8ms is on the slow side. Couple that with a 60Hz frequency and you might bump into a bit of motion blur when watching sports or other video content that has a lot of stuff moving fast. However, viewing angles are as good as LCD TVs get at 178/178, though I would still recommend getting the seat right in the middle. The 2000:1 contrast ratio is very good but there are only two HDMI connections. If you need more, you need a HDMI splitter, which can cost a bit of money. Surely you do not need more than a satellite TV connection and a PlayStation 3 (which includes a Blu-ray player)? At least that’s what Westinghouse Digital was thinking. But they were right to cut cut cut costs and here we have a 40″ 720p LCD TV for just $599.99 at Overstock.com. Quite a bargain.
Dimensions: 39.8 x 25.5 x 3.7″ (w/o stand), 39.8 x 27.3 x 12.1″ (w/stand)
Weight: 65lbs (w/stand), 55.1lbs (w/o stand)
Price: MSRP US$1299.99
Amazon.com: The Toshiba Regza 42RV535 is a 42″ LCD TV sporting a 1920×1080 pixel format. That means 1080p HD content with no scaling. The 42RV535 features a Cinespeed LCD panel that has a response time of 8ms or less. ATSC, NTSC and QAM tuners are built in and there are four HDMI ports. Gizmodo just pitted five HDTVs under $900 and the Toshiba 42RV535 came out on top:
Its picture has a clarity that the plasma didn’t quite touch, both in dark scenes and its colors were truer to life. Overall, we feel it’s the best buy for the money…
SimCraft Corporation announced on December 8, 2008 that it will be unveiling its racing simulators at the 2009 CES show in Las Vegas. The booth will be located at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), Booth #25311. The APEX racing simulators come in two packages. The APEX SC830 is developed to train real professional racers and offers three degrees of freedom: roll 40°, pitch 25°, yaw 40°. The APEX SC320 is for the hardcore gamer with two degrees of freedom: roll 20°, pitch 20°. Of course if you’re a REAL hardcore gamer the APEX SC830 is for you. Christopher Ciesielka says this about the APEX racing simulators: “APEX offers as close to a real racing experience as possible without actually strapping yourself into a racecar.”
The APEX racing simulator looks to sport three Dell LCD monitors. These do not look like they are wide aspect ratio but rather 4:3. Of course putting three of those together will make it very wide. If I’m guessing right, we’re looking at 4800 x 1200 pixels simulating racing reality so you can burn rubber without having to spend a dime on actual rubber.
Update: SimCraft is currently building and planning to bring to CES 2009 the APEX SC830 with a Dell 3008WFP! That’s a 30″ LCD monster! The three-monitor setup is powered by Matrox’s Triple Head 2 Go system. Not the fastest GPU on the market but for a tri-monitor setup, I guess that would be a simple way to go. SimCraft should get talking with DisplayLink to get even more monitors hooked up!
And if you’re a fan of Sarah Fisher, who is the first woman in North American motorsports history to win the pole position for a major-league, open-wheel race, head on over to SimCraft’s booth on January 8, 2009 from 2-4pm because she is scheduled to make an appearance. She’ll also be there to race humiliate you in the simulators.
Update 2009.02.26 4:16PM PST: Just got finished playing around with Premiere and finished the SimCraft video. My friend James is at the wheel of a 6-axis APEX SC830 racing simulator from SimCraft worth $44,000!
CXC Simulations announced on December 22, 2008 that it will be joining Intel at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show to help promote Intel’s Core i7 CPU. There will be two Motion Pro II Racing Simulators that will be featured at CES. The simulators incorporate Core i7 CPUs and the base model includes a 46″ 1080p LCD, paddle shifters and is a full-motion system. The price? $26,000. Each simulator is configured to order and CXC offers comprehensive and continuing support. The Motion Pro II Racing Simulator feature “precise timing”, a full-motion system that is intense and accurate, “tactile transducers”, “force-feedback controls”, 5.1 surround sound and a “1080p high-definition video display”. You can choose from a myriad of cars including vintage, F1, GT, NASCAR, sports cars, off-road, open-wheel, rally, race boats, etc. There are more than 350 cars and 750 tracks to choose from. Take that Gran Turismo! (Of course, Gran Turismo can be had for considerably less.) If you want the ultimate, you’ll need to pay the price of entry ($25,000 in this case) and make sure not to eat right before saddling up on a Motion Pro II.
The JVC LT-42P789 is an interesting LCD TV. First off, it has an iPod docking station. I think that’s pretty ingenious since a lot of folks have iPods (with a lot of audio, pictures and videos). JVC made a big hoopla over the company’s extremely low power consumption and stated that its “LCD models are the most efficient in their class”. For instance JVC is tied for most efficient TV in the 32″ class; swept the first four places in the 40″-42″ and 46″-47″ classes; swept the first three places in the 50″-52″ class. But the interesting thing is that JVC forgot to mention the exact models. So I went rummaging around the Energy Star website. Rummaging is not an exaggeration since the site seems to have been developed when 36″ TVs were the largest ones. And even when you order results by “On Mode Power”, the list bears no semblance to any order. But I did find several JVC models: LT-42EM59, LT-42P789, LT-42SL89VA, LT-42X579 and LT-42X899 were the ones that came up on the first screen (1 of 168). Of those I decided to focus on the LT-42P789. Power consumption analysis after the break.
On the Energy Star site, LT-42P789′s “On Mode Power” is rated at 111.1W with a “Standby Power Consumption” rated at 0.3W. The 111.1W is quite a bit lower than the competition. For instance, Philips’ 42PFL3403D/F7 (who decides on model numbers for Philips?) has a 151W On Mode Power rating while sipping 0.13W while in standby (here’s the Energy Star page for that). But. There is always a but. I don’t know about you but my TV is on standby most of the time. Our kids watch maybe 2-3 hours of TV per day (too much!) but the rest of the time it is on standby. So if I did a very simple calculation comparing the LT-42P789 and the 42PFL3403D/F7 (I want to slap the person who came up with these terrible model names!) here are the results. Actually, let’s add in a model each from Samsung (doesn’t have a 42″ model so LN40A330-135W/0.65W), Sharp (LC-42D65U-170W/0.4W) and Sony (KDL-42V4100-158.06W/0.07W).
The graph above shows how much total wattage each of the LCD TVs consume when watching a certain number of hours. For instance, if you had the Sony KDL-42V4100 and watch 4 hours of TV and the rest of the day it stays in standby for 20 hours, the total wattage the KDL-42V4100 consumes is 633.64W, the second highest of the bunch. Interestingly Sharp’s LC-42D65U consumes the most (cyan color). The dark blue line represents JVC’s LT-42P789. It is pretty clear that the LT-42P789 has a distinct advantage over the four other 42″ models (Samsung’s LN40A330 being a 40″). The more you watch the bigger the savings! Of course if you don’t watch very much the savings are still there. Whether you watch a lot of TV or almost never, you will certainly get electricity savings from JVC’s LT-42P789. There are a few other 42″ JVC models with the exact same power consumption rating that I found on the Energy Star site and it might be worth your time to search through their database if power consumption is an important factor in your purchasing decision.
