Help, Opinion needed ASAP about lcd tv

[MightyMoose]

I would love some opinion about a tv that is on sale at CompUSA tomorrow http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=317988&pfp=cat1 . It's called Syntax with a 27 inch display and it will be $699 tomorrow (after rebate). I respect people at this forum and I would like to buy this but need help to decide if it's a good buy, Thank you

[moyekj]

Looks like a fairly decent product given the price AR. A couple of limitations which may or not be a problem for you:

1. Only 1 component HDTV/progressive input available. DVI provides another HDTV input but depending on your HD source DVI may not be a possibility in which case there's not a progressive input left over for your DVD player. I swore for my next purchase I'd want at least 2 HDTV/progressive inputs available in addition to DVI/HDMI.

2. I see a button to cycle through inputs to select an input, but no way to specifically select a specific input directly. This makes it tough or impossible to program macros in a universal remote control to automatically setup for DVD/RTV/HD viewing for example.

3. Only 3 aspect settings available: Full screen (16:9), 4:3, and Zoom. Typically there are quite a few other choices available.

[icecow]

I got the following link by putting in googles search box this: "Olevia LT27HV 27-inch LCD review"
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Olevia+LT27HV+27-inch+LCD+review&btnG=Google+Search

Start reading reviews on it.

Looks good at first glance (after 5 min of reading). It's sold many other places at $999 (on sale from '$1700'') including target.

The first review I read at "consumer guide" (whoever they are) rated it a 'best buy', but the review had no date. Link here:
http://products.consumerguide.com/reviews/product.epub?productId=27669#FullReview

Amazon.com carries it on sale for $999 ('save $700'). Here's the link. You can find the manual at the this Amazon link too; you should read that.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000233YDK/002-3255733-9201665?v=glance


Start reading reviews bro!

hope you appreciate my 5 min of reading and 5 min of writing. cheers

[icecow]

One other comment. It's says 'HDTV Ready'. I believe that means it doesn't have a standard tuner and scaler. One of the best features of a HDTV is being able to take regular TV signal in and scale it up to HDTV resolution in an intelligent way that offers a great pseudo-HD picture. The thing is if you are using a ReplayTV that isn't availible anyway. Perhaps you can do some quick research on a scaler that takes in analog and scales it up. Most of the HDTVs that scale only scale up standard tuner signal and not what is connected to the HDTV's analog inputs (as pointed out by the article in the BaysideBas thread).

You may--just may be--able to have your cake and eat it too (speculation). Perhaps the stand alone analog scalers are cheapish because of lack of demand/unawareness. [disclaimer: maybe just maybe] Or maybe just maybe there is a DVD player that not only scales the DVD picture before sending it to the HDTV, but also will scale any analog port plugged into the dvd [I'm doubting it though)]


A stand alone analog scaler would go between the replaytv and the HDTV and make the RTV picture look better.

Hmm, or maybe it would just make straight out more sense to just get a HDTV PVR.

I'm not sure if I know what I'm talking about. Comments?

[Slack]

Originally posted by moyekj

2. I see a button to cycle through inputs to select an input, but no way to specifically select a specific input directly. This makes it tough or impossible to program macros in a universal remote control to automatically setup for DVD/RTV/HD viewing for example.

Lack of discrete codes is not a porblem for Harmony Remotes.

[mhargr03]

Originally posted by Slack
Lack of discrete codes is not a porblem for Harmony Remotes. Indeed. The only slight downfall is that when you press your 'Watch ReplayTV' button, you need to keep the remote pointed at the TV until it cycles to the appropriate video input. This downfall is countered by the fact that Harmony remotes (at least my 676) have a great IR range (I can point mine straight up at the ceiling and it will still change everything appropriately - contrasted with the ReplayTV remote which must be pointed very near to the IR receiver). I actually had to extend the time between commands sent to my Toshiba 24AF43 because for some reason it takes longer to switch off of the TV input (as opposed to going from Video 1 to Video 2, for example).

[MightyMoose]

Originally posted by icecow
...hope you appreciate my 5 min of reading and 5 min of writing. cheers Yes, I greatly appreciate your time. I did a lot of research yesterday, today I went to CompUSA to see the display. The picture was nice and bright, but it was also fuzzier than some of the other displays, but I hope that was because all settings were far off from people playing, also I was comparing this unit to others that were triple the price and some of those were no better than the one that will be on sale tomorrow. What I particularly liked was that the speakers can detach, what I didn't care for was the silver color and the cabinet seemed a bit cheap looking. I think I will get it, that is if they aren't sold out. I checked, the store I'm going to had 5 on stock.

[icecow]

More tidbits of opinion.

Last saturday I got the LA Times Sunday Preview and saw an mp3 player(iriver 256/fm/recorder for $60 after rebate(the one on which I was playing donna sumer in the F Connector thread) in the sunday ad on saturday. I called on saturday to see how many they had in stock. He said 5. He told me I could get that price 'today' (on saturday). I ended up pricematching at circuit city. ug, to make a long story short, if you are really interested in that TV set consider ways of securing it.

Stategy A:
You Could buy it tonight(but not open it) and pricematch it to their own ad tomorrow. Of course you would have to call up and ask a lot of questions to make sure it worked out.

Strategy B:
Show up to CompUSA 15 min early15 min is a pain to wait (unless you have an mp3 player, PPC or laptop), but 15 min should shoe you in. I wouldn't want to wait in line on black friday, but on an unspecified day like tomorrow, doing so could cinch the deal. If it is a good deal there might be 6 at the door when they open.

I sound compulsive, but with all that research, time and emotion you've invested the 15 min is nothing. Who cares if you are the only one that buys one the first hour.

blah blah blah

[MightyMoose]

Originally posted by icecow
...Stategy A: ...Strategy B:... I'm going for Strategy B, I'll let you know what happens. Another stategy if "B" fails is to try to pricematch this someplace else, but I don't have too much time to run around and see who sells it and if they pricematch, I searched online and can only find the tv at resellers that don't pricematch.

[gjerdery]

Hi, I purchased a Syntax Olevia a few weeks back from the CompUSA website when they were running a similar deal. Here's a thread on the "Plasma and LCD Flat Panels" forum that has some more discussion on Syntax: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=434105&perpage=20&highlight=SYNTAX&pagenumber=1

For the price I paid, I'm fairly satisfied. The standard cable tuner in mine is actually a little worse than the Replay tuner on some channels. I do have to do a little fumbling at this point with progressive component inputs, which I did't think through before I purchased. I wasn't sure about the silver finish at first, but hey, it matches the Replays!

I also have a Harmony remote, which takes the edge off of not having discrete inputs, but the setup Harmony downloaded to my remote wasn't quite right and I've had to do quite a bit of learning to get it to do everything I needed.

Again, for $700, this is a decent LCD.

[Jeff D]

I picked up one of these last year for $400 (AR/PM) so it wasn't bad deal for a bedroom TV.

I've been dealing with Syntax on some of the issues, features and short comings of the set.

Couple of notes...

1) DVI and VGA inputs do NOT do overscan. Not an issue for PC hookup, but for TV it is. I have no idea why this is the case because the DVI input has HDCP which means they designed it for TV input and TV input NEEDS overscan!

There's also some other issues with DVI/VGA input and HDTV, my 3 hdtv receivers (two sony and one RCA) all have issues with 16:9 broadcasts consiting of 4:3 pillar boxed images. The set can't display this correctly, usually results in the image displayed on the right side of the screen with a black space on the left side the size of 2 pillar bars. There's other "scale" problems I've seen, but I can't reproduce those consistantly.

The set does ok with component input.

2) Limited inputs, one VGA, DVI, Component Progressive, Component Interlaced, Svideo and composite. I hear there will be changes on the component inputs with future sets as in each input will be configurable.

3) No descrete commands for the inputs (as speculated), sucks for someone that has become use to having a way to direct input. I hear this is a big problem for existing users and may change in the newer models. Hell, they could change this with a firmware upgrade!


4) Another bad point I discovered... the "service menu" key sequence wasn't too hard for a 1 year old to figure out. He got in and I went to get out, had the "reset factory default" selected. Text said press right to do the reset, I grabbed the remote and pressed LEFT. Guess what... that was the same as pressing right, and the set was reset! Reset is a true reset and not the settings after calibration at the factory, but a generic default. Sad... I had my user settings recorded, but nothing about the internals, as I had never seen them.

5) The Menu also has some issues like when adjusting the settings you can't get rid of the "full" screen menu. Tough to use calibration images to calibrate the set if your menu obscures the calibration image.


The set is nice, and the picture is pretty good. Be sure to check for dead pixels. The rules on "defective" screens is 7 or more dead pixels. You may not want to look for these because once you know about them all your attention focuses on them.

For $400, I don't worry about it.

[icecow]

He said $700 after rebate.

He could always put the money in the bank for 3-6 months and have the $$ ready for the next deal. Lots of sets are flowing and the old-generations are moving off the shelves, very active. LCDs are only getting cheaper.

I'm playing the devils advocate to make him think hard and serious :)

[MightyMoose]

I did plan "B", got there 10 minutes early. There was a mad rush of onle one person, me so I got it no problems, well slight problem, they couldn't ring it up at the price of $899 (there is then a $200 rebate). It kept ringing up at $1099, I had to show them their ad and they adjusted the price. Thank you all for help. I wonder JeffD, was your $400 purchase the same 27 inch HD receiver that I got? Wow!

[Jeff D]

Cow, I was talking about the price I paid and that I don't worry about it.

MM, yes the same set Olivia 27" Syntax.

BTW fry's (bay area) has it on ad again, out the door again for $799 for those that want it. And those with fry's nearby... do the PM! Fry's usually has lots in stock too.

[Clay Schneider]

Just curious -- how does one find out about 'next day' sales at compusa? [I seem to have a hard enough time finding out about sales the same day...]

Thanks!

[MightyMoose]

Originally posted by Clay Schneider
Just curious -- how does one find out about 'next day' sales at compusa? [I seem to have a hard enough time finding out about sales the same day...]

Thanks! They emailed the next day sales to me. I guess you need to register at their site, but use a smam email address. I don't know how good a sale this was, I paid $699 (after rebate) and JeffD paid $400 for the same thing.

[icecow]

Here's a fatwallet thread. You might be able to get another $100 off by pricematching. I didn't look at it thourguoly, you can do that.

http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/461924/

[moyekj]

Originally posted by Jeff D

1) DVI and VGA inputs do NOT do overscan. Not an issue for PC hookup, but for TV it is. I have no idea why this is the case because the DVI input has HDCP which means they designed it for TV input and TV input NEEDS overscan!
My 30" Philips LCD also suffers from this problem - no overscan for DVI connection, OK for component connection. The biggest problem is that the technical specs on these sets never make any mention of overscan and you would generally assume they do.

[Jeff D]

Originally posted by moyekj
My 30" Philips LCD also suffers from this problem - no overscan for DVI connection, OK for component connection. The biggest problem is that the technical specs on these sets never make any mention of overscan and you would generally assume they do.

Does the Philips have DHCP too? If so that's is about the dumbest thing I've every heard. Having worked with TVs on a development level I can't understand the logic here. Does the Philips also have VGA and what about oversan there too? I would think it would be fine if VGA didn't allow overscan because you'd kinda think that would be for a PC input even though there's lots of HDTV components (for the last 5 years) that use VGA for HDTV.

Man, just give the user an option (no matter how confusing it would be...) you could even hide it in a secret menu, but at least give the user the power to do it!

I'm still working with Syntax to give feedback for the future products. I may be an above average consumer, but I've got a pretty good idea of what folks will encounter.

[moyekj]

Jeff yes the DVI has DHCP - it's connected to DCT6412 which uses DHCP. That same DVI input also supports VGA (using DVI->VGA cable), but only up to 1024x768 @60Hz, so obviously no overscan on it either - really dumb as you mentioned. It also only has one progressive component input and I have a whole host of other gripes about it - really one of the most unsatisfactory expensive ($2,000 about 1 year ago) purchases I have made in recent memory. To top it off, most SD (analog or digital) looks like crap. Thankfully DVDs and HD recordings look very nice on it and that's what I use that TV the most for as well as recently down-converted OTA HD via RTV which looks pretty good. This was my first digital TV and I was new and clueless about HD at the time I bought it and have learned some lessons the hard and expensive way.
My next purchase of an HDTV is not going to be enjoyable because I'm going to be very thorough and based on some of the things I've learned the choices are not going to be many, and all the meantime I'll have to fight my wife about another expensive purchase.

[sfhub]

I think the dual use of DVI for AV and PC will give some of the lower-end
and/or first generation models problems with stuff just like you mention.

Where HDMI is more designed for AV than PC, the opposite is true for
DVI where it existed for PCs before AV started using it. Stuff like color
space differences, overscan capabilities, etc. are all potential problem
areas.

The Sharp Aquos line decided against automatically figuring out what
kind of input you have coming in on the DVI port and give you the
option of Digital PC, Analog PC, Digital AV, and Analog AV, each with
the appropriate settings and controls for the particular usage.

Hopefully Syntax will listen to JeffD and I'm sure other people's comments
and fix these problems in the next release. Even better if they offer
JeffD a unit to "beta" test to replace his current one.

[Jeff D]

hub, yeah... I've asked to be in the beta group, nothing yet. =(
I've also mentioned I'd be happy to improve the firmware for them too, but no bites on that... go figure.

I love how sharp has the four options, that's a very simple way to do it, and I think that would work perfectly.

I agree on not auto-detecting, that can be so tough to get right, better let the human decide.

[MightyMoose]

We have been using this tv for 2 days. I am very pleased with the picture. It is sharp, the colors are pleasing, the brightness is also pleasing. I only get an analog cable signal. Up close the picture is a little snowy but at a normal viewing distance that bit of snowy look cannot be seen. I wonder if this is normal for an analog signal. I am happy but not thrilled with the sound. It is good but not as full as I would like, but I know I can fix that if I do away with the speakers on the tv and use an amp and make a home theater. I tried Cambridge Soundworks Model 10-A speakers in place of the speakers that come with the set but I don't think the 10 amps on this tv are enough for those speakers. I know I gave up a lot of features for this tv, but since the picture seems very good and the price, I think this tv is a keeper. BTW, this will come as no surprise to anyone, but when I switch from the built in tuner to the Replay tuner, I lose some picture quality. Thank you to everyone for your input to this thread, it helped me make my decision.

[Jeff D]

BTW, I didn't mention it before... I was never a fan of of LCDs I always thought the picture was horrible. I then decided it was due to the crappy feeds that the stores used to demo units. Some displays have bad response times which is also a huge factor.

I then decided to look at my PC LCD monitors and volia I figured out what the issue was, the display feeds were horrible. Bad sources do look bad, but good stuff like HDTV looks great.