My Niece got one Sunday. A 32" slim, LED illuminated, less than 60 watts power use model.

The idiots at Westinghouse decided that, owners should have to get a tuner activation code just the turn the thing on for the first time. Either call the 800 number, but not on Sundays, or visit the web, give your email address, zip code... only she doesn't have internet at home. So a phone call to a friend and talking her thru the process we get a code.

Second, You can't manually add a channel unless the tuner can actually lock the station in. Which means, you better know where to point the antenna before trying to add the channel.

By now I'd have taken it back to Costco.

What? Thats just insane.

It looks like that you must activate it if you want to use ATSC/QAM at all. The tuner doesn't get enabled until you do this. Is this tuner for cable usage? If so then other devices seem to want activation as well. MCE needs/needed a special PID/code to have digital cable tuners enabled.

They do allow you to it via SMS as well from the manual I looked at but not everybody has a cellphone. The example picture of the TV screen doesn't mention the SMS option though.


Agreed.

Call and web were all that were offered in the on screen interactions.

I suppose if we had bothered to crack the manual the SMS method would have sufficed.

And no, there was no apparent way to bypass the activation screen, unless there is some secret IR knocking that will do the deed.



PS. The other thing that had to be sent in was the set's serial number.

Aside from the issues above, it's a very light weight panel.
Don't know if that counts as good or bad. Can be lifted by one hand, if you can get a secure grip, which you can't because the back is convex.

It actually uses a power brick sized about like most laptops use.

This doesn't, but I do wish more of the ultra thin panels had provisions for picture frame mounting in addition to vesa.

What is the benefit to Westinghouse in requiring tuner activation?

Instant return, wouldn't go any further with it. They're idiots.


That part is amazingly commonplace. I think most of the early generation (2000-2008) USA DTVs work like that, and it pisses me off to no end that most software also seems to emulate that chosen interface. Ugh.

Newer TV sets from some brands now seem to allow direct tuning, provided the remote control actually has a dash or dot button on it -- needed to compose the ATSC (DTV) channel numbers. Eg. 17-1 rather than simply 17 when tuning.

My Westinghouse 32" lcd does not require this. However, Westinghouse doesn't actually make anything, they just buy it from others, so I'm sure the led and lcd tvs are from different mfgs.

I'm amazed how all the good old American brands are now being drug through the mud. If it's a American brand, you can be pretty sure it's crap...

Unless you're talking about computers, mobile phones, tablets, OS software and application software, including games. Oh, and in case of TVs, Vizio's new stuff is fantastic, at least at their high end. I wouldn't trade my 55" LCD for anything in the same bracket from Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung or Sony.

Before I see an objection, yes, the electronics are assembled overseas in various other countries. But that helps make them better, not worse.

Not on this one. Trying to tune an unprogrammed channel yields only the nearest programmed one.

PS. The specific model is this one.

I'm surprised that Vizio is "American", as their stuff was all over Taiwan before I saw it here.