Say you're a relatively new TV company trying to make a dent in the U.S. market. When selling a product that's become as intensely commoditized as flat-panel LCD sets, you'd do well to find a hook, and fast. Blowing out units at ultra-cheap prices is one way to go, and Olevia has made national headlines for doing just that and shaking up the flat-panel biz. But it's taking a surprisingly different tack with its new high-performance 1080p panels, including the new $3,500 Olevia 747i 47-inch LCD HDTV.
Cosmetically, the 747i looks as good as (if not better than) any other LCD I've tested. Like sets from another high-end brand (one that begins with S), the entire front is covered by a glass sheet, but in this case the glass extends only out to the bezel edge and not beyond, giving the panel a more compact, subdued look that I prefer. The set comes with bottom-mounted speakers that can be detached or remounted on the side.
A wide range of inputs is located on the TV's side panel. Besides a pair of HDMI jacks, you get two component-video inputs and a VGA connection that doubles as a third one. There's also an RS-232 port for home control systems. And it has both optical and coax digital audio outputs to route Dolby Digital from off-air high-def broadcasts to an outboard receiver. There's even a subwoofer output!
There's nothing extraordinary about the Olevia's remote, but it's backlit and well-organized. My main gripe was the tiny keys near the bottom — I had to pull my eyes off the screen for several seconds to make sure I was hitting the correct one. You toggle through the set's 11 inputs with the Source button, which can be time-consuming. Likewise, you toggle through the display modes with the Aspect button; choices include a 1:1 option that displays the incoming signal with no scaling.
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The Short Form |
| Price $3,500 / olevia.com / 866-965-3842 |
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Snapshot
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| A standout LCD that looks great with both standard- and high-def sources. |
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Plus
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| •Crisp picture with vivid, natural color •Top-notch upconversion of standard- and high-def programs •Effective noise reduction •Good looks |
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Minus
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| •Poor picture uniformity at off-center seats •Odd onscreen menu system |
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Key Features
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| •1,920 x 1,080-resolution LCD HDTV •Silicon Optix HQV video processing •Dual built-in HDTV tuners with high-def PIP •Inputs: 2 HDMI, 2 component video, 2 composite, 2 S-video, VGA; 2 RF; RS-232 •46.3 x 38 x 13.3 in; 143.3 lb (w/stand) |
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Test Bench
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| With Dark Room backlight and 6,500 K color-temp settings, the 747i's grayscale tracked within ±590 K of 6,500 K from 30 to 100 IRE — below-average performance. Red, green, and blue adjustments in the user menu improved performance considerably, resulting in ±252 K tracking from 20 to 100 IRE. Color decoding measured +5% red on HDMI and —5% green on component-video inputs. 1080i/p and 720p test patterns were fully resolved via HDMI and component inputs. Screen uniformity was average, with a slight darkening visible on gray full-field test patterns (but not regular programs) and a noticeable drop-off in contrast when watching from off-center seats. As expected given the set's HQV video chip, it breezed through deinterlacing, film mode, and noise-reduction tests on both the standard- and high-def Silicon Optix HQV test discs. Full Test Results |
Other adjustments include horizontal/vertical image position; cropping (which turns overscan on and off); and noise reduction. A submenu includes black-level expansion, a white peaking limiter, and contrast enhancement. I didn't find these useful — especially black-level, which eliminated shadow detail from images.
Although the 747i's numerous picture adjustments are a good thing, its onscreen menu leaves something to be desired. After I hit Menu on the remote, a rolling 3-D hexagon popped up onscreen. This object's facets contain various submenus, and after a few fumbling attempts I eventually learned to navigate them with the remote's arrow keys. Not exactly user-friendly. What really threw me, though, was when I selected a facet for adjustment and its color outline switched from green (the universal symbol for "proceed") to red. It was totally counterintuitive; my first time out, I had no idea what adjustments I was making to the TV! And without numerical indicators on the adjustment sliders, there was no way to record what picture settings worked best for future reference.
PICTURE QUALITY After a few tweaks to the 747i's User 6500 K mode (see Test Bench — Coming soon), I launched into my viewing regimen. Since this set's main selling point is high-quality deinterlacing and upconversion, I started with DVD and cable TV. DVDs had a crisp, stable appearance that held up exceedingly well in fast action scenes. The upconverted picture looked about as good as that from my Toshiba HD DVD player, and that's saying a lot. Although analog cable stations never look a fraction as good as high-def, the set's noise reduction helped smooth the picture without robbing it of desperately needed detail. To my memory, CNN Headline News never looked quite this good on a bigscreen LCD.
A new Blu-ray release of Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate provided plenty of good material for scrutinizing the 747i's picture. In a scene where Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) snacks on Cup o' Noodles with a side of NoDoz in his messy apartment, the set's crisp resolution brought out the full range of detail in the cluttered surroundings. The Olevia's impressive rendering of shadow detail also helped to illuminate background objects in the dim environment and convey the dense, claustrophobic feel. On most scenes, the TV's black level was fairly deep and satisfying. However, in very dark shots, such as that of a grocery store exterior in the robbery scene that begins the movie Four Brothers, the picture tended to lighten and flatten out somewhat — a phenomenon I've witnessed on many other LCD sets.
Another scene from The Manchurian Candidate showed off the set's rich yet accurate color range. As congressman Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber), one of Marco's fellow Gulf War vets, sat in his roomy hotel suite, I easily detected the differences between his pinkish skin and the more yellow complexion of his mother (Meryl Streep), as well as the various beige tones of the room's surfaces. Flower bouquets in the background, meanwhile, displayed a range of intense hues. Well-illuminated scenes like this really popped on the Olevia, demonstrating very satisfying contrast.
BOTTOM LINE At $3,500, the Olevia 747i 47-inch LCD HDTV is priced competitively with other high-end LCDs in its size range. And although it has some ergonomic quirks, if you watch lots of standard-def TV (and there's still a lot of that out there), this set has the processing power to make those programs look better than they would on most other LCDs. It also does an excellent job of upconverting DVDs and 1080i HDTV to the panel's native 1080p resolution. Add in its good looks and flexible, wide-ranging picture adjustments, and the 747i gets my solid recommendation.
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