Olevia LT30HV user reviews

4.0 stars

"C|Net is too harsh on this display, here's my 2cents ..." on March 23, 2005 by rrshadow

Pros: Nice picture quality, great value, many inputs, removable speakers

Cons: Subtle ghosting during high movement scenes, the screen design and remote design aren't going to win any industrial design awards

Summary: As another reviewer pointed out, here's a link to a full review of this TV: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1642839,00.asp

A good number of LCD TV's are unable to "render deep blacks" because of how LCDs work. However, the default screen settings of this display aren't optimal. Drop brightness (I think I have mine at 40ish), increase contrast (no greater than about 75 though) and increase color saturation (a lot if you want to mimic plasma, but I have mine at about 60-75) to get a much better picture on this display.

It's true, the remote control lacks an "OK" or "Cancel" button but it's really not that hard to realize that the menu button acts as the "cancel" button and that the right-arrow is the "ok" or "select"-- the benefit of this is that your fingers don't have to move far to run about the menus.

Some of the VGA input settings will cause a green sparkly effect due to the onboard graphics chip. But that was due to the resolution I had my desktop set to as it was really not the best for the LCD. I played a bit of Halo2 on this screen and it's nice. (waiting for Xbox2 with HDTV output!) If you're really nitpicky about ghosting then you might want to pass on this screen and pay twice as much for a plasma but the ghosting is minimal in comparison with other LCD TVs and you get used to it real fast (if you can even see it to begin with). I'm normally a real stickler for ghosting but the value of this screen won me over. Besides, this TV is going in the living room to also watch movies in which is does very well.

The included speakers with this unit seem a bit lackluster but they are just fine for TV/movies or games. But, they are removable which is quite handy for when you get a real surround system and want just the TV screen and a narrow border around it.

Additionally, as this is a monitor/TV, you really don't _NEED_ a windows driver to get this to work in Windows. Out of the box, just adjust your display's resolution to something less than 1280*768@60Hz if your display properties doesn't give you 1280*768 by default. (You might need to tell windows to use a generic plug-and-play monitor if your current monitor profile doesn't even let you do that) To get 1280*768 you'll need to download a shareware app called PowerStrip < http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm > and setup a custom resolution of 1280*768 with a refresh rate of 60Hz. You can use other resolutions, but your LCD will have to either interpolate or squish the image to fit the actual pixel resolution of the screen.

Oh, and don't let Frys try to sell you the $200+ "protection plan". You will not develop "broken pixels" overtime as anyone who has ever owned an LCD (laptops anyone?) will tell you. This isn't a car.

Updated
If you have HDTV, you're much better off using a DVI cable than the YPbPr cables if you have option of using DVI. Additionally, if you're planning on hooking up, say, an Xbox to this monitor, save yourself the ghosting misery and spend the $20 and get the HD cables (assuming you've already switched your HDTV over to DVI to free up your HD component jacks). I switched my HDTV and Xbox over to better video sources (as described above) and practically eliminated any visible ghosting in my HDTV sources and immensily improved my Xbox gaming experiences. This LCD TV is an excellent purchase for your money! (And LCD TV's use nearly half the power usage of Plasmas so you're saving more money each month too .)

Here's a good review on how different video sources affect video quality on the LT30HV: http://hometheater.about.com/cs/television/fr/olevialt30hva.htm