Sceptre X37SV-Naga Widescreen HDTV

Aesthetically speaking, the Sceptre X37SV set itself exudes quality, not what we were expecting frankly considering the product's relatively affordable price. Looking at the front of the display you can see that the housing of the panel is made of clean looking, dark grey plastic. Inside of which is a black border surrounding the LCD screen. The front measures 45x26 inches in size and the top of the panel curves backwards to give it a rounded look at the top. One part we aren't too fond of is that the top left corner has "ATSC HDTV" silk screened in white using tacky lettering, and the right corner has "X37" in white and red. The front would have looked much cleaner had the writing been excluded or done differently so as not to stand out so much.

At the bottom of the display, we have the silver Sceptre logo in the middle and the button labels and power light on the right. The buttons on the set include the channel up/down, volume up/down, source PC, source AV, and power. The buttons themselves are under the set and can't be seen unless looking from underneath. Placement of the buttons is not very user friendly, since you have to feel around to find the correct button, but they work fine in the event you can't find the remote.

Looking at a side view of the screen you can see just how thin this TV is, measuring only 4.38" in depth. Also visible are the screws which connect the front and back parts of the screen.

The back of the set is the same color as the front with ventilation slits. In the middle is the Sceptre label with the warning labels and serial number of the set. Around the label are four wall-mounting screw holes, which are in a 400x200 mounting pattern. We have no need to wall mount the set yet, so this feature was not tested, but those interested can purchase a mounting bracket separately. To the left and right are the side speaker cable outputs for those that will use the included speakers. At the bottom are all of the inputs, with clear and easy to read white labels.

Let's take a look at all the inputs. First we have the ATSC tuner which allows you to connect an antenna and receive free over-the-air HDTV broadcasts. The only limitation of this is being close enough to the broadcasting stations, which we are not at our particular location (over 60 miles away). In later versions of this set that are currently shipping, the ATSC tuner was upgraded with QAM support. QAM allows the tuner to also pick up unencrypted HDTV over cable. If your cable company provides this, all you need is the basic cable subscription to receive local HD and digital stations. We were unlucky again, as our cable provider did not provide this service. We were able to briefly test it at another location though, and can report that the QAM tuner did work correctly on our set and was able to display digital, and local HDTV stations over basic cable.

Next to the ATSC tuner are the 'headphone out' and 'PC audio in' connections. Then to the right is the HDMI/HDCP/DVI in connection. Using the provided DVI-to-HDMI cable, you can connect a computer and support a full 1920x1080 resolution with a perfect pixel-to-pixel match. If you have an HDMI capable device, an HDMI cable will carry both the digital video and audio signals to the set. Next is the unlabeled port, which is thought to be a USB connection for firmware updating. This is not user accessible though. The VGA port also supports full 1920x1080 resolution with no overscan. We would have liked to have seen an optical sound out and more than one HDMI input on this set, as external HDMI switchers are rather expensive (over $100).

The next set of inputs contain the component in, RCA line out, AV out, subwoofer out, and two sets of S-video/composite inputs. Again, more than one component input would have been nice. Last is the NTSC connection, which allows you to have both regular cable TV and HDTV connected at the same time.

The stand that comes with the set is also made out of the same material and color as the display case, with a black insert in the front. It came already connected to the display. To disconnect the base for wall mounting, there are 9 screws holding it to the set. Our only minor issue with the included stand is that it's very basic, and doesn't allow for rotating or tilting of the display. While not a problem for us, it could be an issue in some situations.