~Official Olevia 747i/742i owners thread - Page 8

Thx S!th

My son luvs Gears of War (looks like a lot of fun), while I'm a COD/COD2 man on the PC, I just bought a device to map my trackball and Belkin 52 to the Xobox, but just have'nt got round to doing it yet.

Ok so I just set my Dish Network DVR to 480i, now DISCHD come out as a small sized display using 1:1, but with Aspect and Full screen setting it dtarts to fill the screen. Now is this still HD or because I turned the Dish output to 480i I am now loosing something. The picture looks great. SD channels do appear smoother.!!!

Well I just played a normal DVD thru Xbos 360 set at 1080p over the VGA connection, the 747i said it was receiving a 1080p single, so is the Xbox upconverting the DVD, if so it was doing a fab job as the picture was really good, better than my Zenith.

Given all of the clouding, banding and other issues with the new generations LCD panels, my last hope for a truly great lcd set seems to be the 747i. I posted about my frustration with all the other top brands, and the 747i was recommended to me. The reply claimed that everyones eggs had disappeared. Is that true, and would you all purchase the 747i again? Thanks for any input.

Oh, and the apparent SD viewing quality of this set would be a big plus to me too.


John

Yesterday I ordered the 747i from a small TV shop in Bonita, CA.

Price about same as others here on this forum.

I have a digital camera and will post pics with Xbox 360 and Wii (no PS3 or HD STB).

They said I should have it by end of this week.

Sith I was playing the DVD in the Xbox not the HD DVD player.

My eggs are completely gone after a steady week of usage. Other than minor light leakage visible on the lower corners when watching a dark screen (or a 2:35:1 movie with black bars) I have zero complaints. No banding (unless you feed it a grey screen), no clouds, no "ghostbar." I spent a year looking for a 1080p LCD HDTV that would't make me feel like killing myself for choosing a set that would compromise the things I wanted the most (PIP options, passable SD performance, 1:1 pixel mapping, etc.) and other than the fact that its 47" and not 52" like I wanted (decided five more inches in size weren't worth sacrificing the SD smoothing performance of the Realta HQV) I have no regrets. I would purchase this TV again and, if I were wealthy, would buy similar sets for my friends and relatives to show them how much I love them. Go back to the entire threads and see the pictures that I posted. A lot of them are for SD material and speak for themselves (although the pics just don't do justice to seeing the set in person). Don't become too attached to SD though. As I type this I'm watching the Arnold Palmer invitational on NBC and NASCAR on ABC (both 1080i via PIP) because the NASCAR picture quality is just so fracking stunning to watch... and this coming from a pointy-headed intellectual liberal from NYC that looks down on NASCAR!

Wow, just checked pricing, the 747i is pricey!

That's assuming the Buy.com price is as good as it gets.


John

With the updates to the Xbox 360 OS (which are automatically downloaded when logging on XBox Live or when booting a new game that comes with it, like "Gears of War," that won't work on the 360 without it) all Xbox games can play up to 1080p (or lower if your set isn't 1080p) via component and VGA. Regular DVD's (on both the 360 drive or the HD-DVD add-on drive) can only be output as 1080p by VGA connections, which aren't subject to the studio copyright restrictions that force all DVD players (including the 360) to output DVD's at 480i. I hooked a three-year old 480i Panasonic DVD recorder (cost me $450 back then) via component cables to the 747i using the same scenes from the DVD's I used for the tests with the 1080p VGA connection (see pictures in the previous page). Result? Nearly identical PQ on both. Guess the VGA upconversion of the XBox 360 must be tremendous. Either that or the 747i is as adept at converting 480i from a DVD into the set's resolution as well as the more trouble-free 1080p VGA fitting into the set. 1:1 = WOW!

It's a brand new set John. You should have seen what the MSRP of this set was when it was expected to show up in mid-to-late 2006: $4,500+. Since it was delayed for nearly half-a-year (giving 1080p models from Sony and Sharp a chance to get valuable market share) Olevia has dropped the MSRP to $3,500, and online retailers like buy.com have lowered that to what you can currently get it for. If its too pricey for you I'd wait a few months to see if it drops a few hundred dollars and then pounce on it. The alternative would be to go with the just-released Samsung LN-T5265F that has a 15,000:1 contrast ratio and offers 1:1 pixel mapping, but its performance with SD material is likely to be as average or bad as previous Samsung LCD's. After a year looking I'm pretty certain the Olevia 747i is the best set for both 1080p and SD viewing (at the expense of blacks and contrast ratio, which are only average to mediocre and not great like the Sammy and Sharp 1080p LCD's), and since its new that comes at a price premium.

I'm a poor person John (make less than $35K per year) but watching quality TV is of premium importance to me. Based on that the price I paid for my 747i (about $100 away from the buy.com price) was not the best, but I don't regret it because this is one of the HDTV's I can honestly say is worth the price premium (flaws and all). YMMV.

Ok this set needs a settings/tweaks thread, should we start one?

I applaud your priorities in life dad! Having a television that produces a great picture is indeed a necessity of life, I share your opinion.

My comments about the 747i's price were based simply on surprise at the actual street prices. It's fully $550.00 more than a Sony Bravia XBR2 46 inch at the best current street price from a reputable vendor. That price essentially sets the standard for high end pricing. The new 92 series Sharp 46 inch is also available at that same price point. I wouldn't have believed that Olevia could price themselves at the same level as the other two, much less that much higher.

And please understand, this is, in no way, a negative comment regarding the 747i, or it's quality, only relative pricing.


John

What's wrong with this one? Just because we're talking about how much we like the set doesn't mean we want to talk TV performance. Also, the absence of a numerical scale on the measuring gauges and the fact the set comes already calibrated out of the box (6500k temperature) means in my case that the TV needs little to no adjusting. In fact, only the selection of Lighting on the remote control (Bright, Medium or Dark settings) is pretty much all the tweaking I do. I only mess with the Brightess and Contrast settings drastically when I hook the Xbox 360 with a VGA cable, which washes the picture considerably with the 747i's default settings. For regular HDTV, TV and DVD viewing Brightness I keep at approx. 35% into the gauge (from left to right), contrast near 75-80%, color down to 45%, Tint unchanged, Sharpness unchanged and Color Temp at 6500K (9300K is too much like Cool setting on other TV's and Natural too close to 9300K for my taste).

That's the beauty of the 747i. There are a ton of customization options for those that feel inclined to tweak the TV, but the picture already comes out of the box pretty much OK (and calibrated to boot) for those of us that just want to plug the TV and start watching.

Ok, I agree VGA is washed out, and the 6500k is near perect. The only thing that confuses me is how and when to scale down DVD players to get the 747 to do the upscaling.

I just hooked up my PC with a 7900GT GPU thru DVI to HDMI and it would do 1080i like a champ, played COD2 with no problems at all, but when I tried to set the output to 1080P the screen kept jumping about once a second, couldn't get it to stabalize. Any ideas?

Also the display was perfect at 1:1 mapping, but when I turned on game mode it got fuzzy!!

Attached are pictures with egg-shapes with no signal and banding with grey background

Yikes, looks like the "banding" on my 747i isn't isolated! dmkara, have you noticed any (and I do mean ANY) instance of "banding" with your 747i while watching regular TV/HDTV/video in it? Since I discovered "banding" on the grey screens of my SA 8300 HD-DVR I've spent an obscene amount of hours looking for it when I'm playing games, watching sports, etc. I've given up, I cannot see the "banding" from the grey screen during regular use. Apparently its not as bad as the "banding" on the newest Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD's, which often jumps out at viewers during regular shows.

I don't own this TV, but my understanding from other AVS threads is that since you have a 1080p LCD, you can't be looking at anything other than 1080p on your set. It is therefore implied that realtaHqv is taking the source (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i o whatever, as indicated in the TV's info display) and always converting it to 1080p. By hook or by crook, scaling, adding letterbox bars, whatever, the TV's processor is must create a 1080p image in order to display it on it LCD.

If my mental model is correct, then, the only time the realtaHqv is *not* doing its anything is when your source is already 1080p. In every other case, some amount of conversion is being performed in the TV's processor. Unfortunately, the TV cannot give you the entire picture (so to speak). It only knows what was presented at it input, not what the original media was. (An exception to this is when it is tuning OTA HD channels.)

Forgive me if this is already well understood. When we have a some media input to a source (DVD player, cable box, satellite tuner, etc) connected to the TV:

media ----> source ----> TV ----> your eyes

we have three possible resolutions. The media resolution (DVD: 480i, cable box: varies by programming, etc), the source output resolution (possibly the same as the media if the source device is/can be configured to "native", though often set to be something else) and the TV's resolution (always 1080p in your case).

With the Syntax's high quality processor, it would seem you'd want the source to do as little conversion as possible to the media resolution, thus allowing the TV to the most. In the case of DVD, you'd want the DVD :

DVD disc --(480i)--> DVD player --(480i)--> TV --(1080p)--> your eyes

This also explains your later issues with you DirectTV box.


Earlier, apparently, you where happy with the results. At that time, possibly, this was happening:

Sat program --(480i)--> Sat Receiver --(480i)--> TV --(1080p)--> your eyes

where the TV was doing all of the conversion and producing a satisfactory result.

I'm unfamiliar with DirectTV H20 settings, but perhaps they where changed from what might have been "Output Native" to something else, "Output 1080i" lets say. So now we have all but lobotomized the TV's scaler:

Sat program --(480i)--> Sat Receiver --(1080i)--> TV --(1080p)--> your eyes

relying instead on what is probably a crap scaler in the H20, producing your unsatisfactory result.

Given the media's resolution is controlled by a third party, in some cases you could have this occurring, yielding a less than optimal result with no work around:

Original material --(480i)--> Sat program --(720p)--> Sat Receiver --(720p)--> TV --(1080p)--> your eyes

This might occur, for instance if the satellite broadcaster "promised" 720p but only had 480i material. I don't know about DirectTV, but I think this sometimes happens on OTA digital stations and cable.

-Steve

Guys, I posted a review of the 747i on CNET's website: http://reviews.cnet.com/Syntax_Olevi...1713&tag=uolst. If you own the set, like it and want to spread the word about its good or bad aspects make sure to post a brief summary of what you think of it on CNET. Like it or not CNET is widely read so the more accurate a picture we can paint of this set to J6P's coming across CNET looking for info the better the 747i will fare.

Please do. The alternative is for somebody that knows what he/she is doing to open their 747i from the back and peek around looking for the panel manufacturing serial number. Interesting info can be discovered that way. Back when I was seriously looking at buying a JVC LT-FN47 1080p LCD one of the owners (and fellow AVS Forum member) laid his set on top of a mattress, unscrewed the back and looked around with a flashlight. He discovered that Samsung supplied JVC with the a glass that only covered 72% of the NTSC color gamut (versus the 92% color gamut glass Samsung was supplying to both itself and Sony for their 1080p models), a further reason I held on buying a JVC HDTV.

Well I fixed my flickering 1080p PC display, I changed the Sync Width (haven't got a clue what that is) lowered it and that fixed it, so now I play COD2 in 1080P Woow...

I assume that's the PC version of COD2 you're referring to Techaholic (not the Xbox 360 version)? S!TH, thanks for the info about the panels. Chi-Mei is the other LCD glass manufacturer that does panels in 47" size (for Vizio, Westinghouse, Toshiba, etc.) and I honestly don't think the 747i glass in front of me looks like it came from them (i.e. the blacks aren't perfect but they sure ain't washed out). Its gotta be a top-tier LG-Philips glass by default and process of elimination.

Yes dad it's the PC version of COD2, the display is crisp and there is no ghosting what so ever. Web pages are as clear on the 747 as on my Gateway 21" really impressive. Now back to the Dish Network receiver, should it be set to 480i or 1080i for the 747 to do its magic? (still confused).