Sonny Corinthos

Wally World has this HDTV for only $588.00 online. Has anyone ever heard of this brand before? What do you think? Deal or no deal?

It would be going in the bedroom so I don't want to sink a lot of money into it. Thanks for any help you might have for me.

Sdallnct

Never heard of the brand. And doesn't seem like that good of a deal. Check at the usual "deal" sites (including the deal forum here at DVDTalk) and personally I'd keep an eye out for a Olevia, Visio or Westinghouse. These are "2nd tier" brands that certain models have be very well received. Especially for the price.

I use a 27" Olevia in the bar and it works fine. No problems at all.

stevevt

I had a recent experience setting up and using an 32" Olevia LCD. It was your basic but new model.

It was pretty bad -- very, very slow to respond to commands from the remote, and the picture on both SD and HD was noticeably worse than what I'm used to on my 32" LG LCD set. I might have been able to live with the picture, especially if I hadn't ever seen anything better, but if I weren't using a cable box or other external tuner, there's no way I would put up with the slow response.

SoSpacey

westinghouse is a pretty well reviewed 2nd tier brand. i had a 32" for my bedroom that looked great but i had to return because it was just too big for the room.

look out for an open box at best buy.

Sonny Corinthos

I found this on the AVS Forum. It doesn't help a lot but it was worth a try.

Sdallnct

And what is the price difference between the LG and Olevia?

The OP was obviously willing to make compromises which is why he linked Wal-mart off brand. Sure I recommend a Sharp, LG or some other top TV. But your not going to find one for the cost the OP appears to be looking to spend.

stevevt

In my mind, the OP was asking "How are those inexpensive TVs?" and "How are they for they money?"

I offered my opinion.

If I were buying any LCD TV today, I'd want to be able to try it out before I bought it. Either that or grill somebody who owns that exact model.

Mr. Cinema

This one is a 32", but it's $799. I believe Insignia is Best Buy's brand.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1153998665554

Spiky

I wouldn't be surprised to find that the LG is a superior set. But I'm sure you could have improved the situation by calibrating the TV. And most remote issues like that are solved with a good remote. I find Sony TVs in particular to have poor remotes that barely operate the TV, as soon as I use my universal everything is fine. It would be great if every remote was perfect, but they quite simply aren't.

stevevt

To clarify, the issue was not with the remote's range, it was with the set, which would take a long time to register most commands. Didn't seem fixable to me. I don't doubt that the set probably could have benefited from calibration.

jonw9

I see there is an Olevia 32" LCD on sale this week for $699 w/ built-in HD tuner, HDMI and I believe 1080i.

THe add shows model 232T but I can't find much more information on it. I was thinking it would be good for the bedroom.

Any experience or opinions?

SoSpacey

How about the 5xx series Olevia in a 37" model for the same price, no tax or shipping?

http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/721490/

jonw9

It shows shipping is ~$45.

It does look enticing though.

jonw9

I measures, and the 37" wouldn't fint in the bedroom cabinet, so I went to Target and purchased the 32" and saved 10% by opening a target card. The display was good, but there were a couple of negatives.
1) I could not program my TiVo remote to control the set, very frustrating.
2) There was no way to disable unused inputs, so you would have to always cycle around.

This weekend (Sunday) I went to BB and say a 32" Westinghouse (LTV-32w6) for the same price, so I bought it. I ended up receiving a giftcard for 20% of the price. I set it up next to the Olevia. First thing I tried was the TiVo remote. It worked so the decision to return the Olevia was pretty much made. Working with the menus on the Westy I found you could skip unused inputs, plus it has backlight control, plus you can disable the power LED. The Olevia has a blue stand-by light you could almost use to read with. 3 more bonuses for the Westinghouse. I had one lock-up last night when I was flipping through OTA channels. I had to pull the power plug to reset, but other than that I enjoy the set much more than the Olevia.

Another negative I just remembered, it that Westinghouse Digital does not support user firmware upgrades. There is an USB port in the back, but they will not provide the files to use, you must send the set in. A weird thing is that they disabled the PIP in the newer firmware. This does not concern me, because a)one if the inputs had to be HDMI and b)I don't used that feature, but I believe the box of BB description mentions this feature.

EDIT: Another thing I remembered, but doesn't bother me. The Westy has only 2 screen settings, regular and full. One is well...regular, 16:9 or 4:3 depending on the source, the other stretches the image and crops a bit of the picture. The Olevia had like 5 0r 6 , including 2 zooms. Also, the remote is not overly sensitive. I need to be pointing directly at the screen for the commands to register. This is for both the TV remote, and the TiVo remote.