Olevia LCD TVs ( New tuner question )

Does anyone have experience with them? I am thinking about buying this one.

Olevia 337H 37" LCD HDTV without tuner


I plan on hooking up a 360 to the VGA and a PS3 to the HDMI. It supports 720i/p and 1080i.

It also has good reviews on Amazon. Does anything see anything wrong with this TV? I wanted to spend around $600, and this is $650AR. Are there any better ones in this price range? Something like a 32" would be fine, I just saw this 37 and it's pretty cheap.

I have been looking at reviews from different sites, and I can't find a bad one. I know that doesn't mean a whole lot because most people don't know what they are really talking about, but everyone seems satisfied with it. I also read that there is a firmware upgrade that makes this TV accept 1080p signals. So a 37" LCD HDTV that accepts 1080p for $650.



EDIT If I have an old VCR laying around can I just plug in an antenna to the back of the VCR input (coaxial) and just plug the VCR output to the back of the TV and watch TV that way (composite) ? Will it still look just as good? (I know it's going to look fuzzy already because of the antenna).

For a budget LCD, they're not bad. Pretty popular on the various hot deal forums, as they go on sale a lot.

As far as being "upgraded" to accept 1080p input, it doesn't mean a whole lot since it's a 1080i panel. It will still de-interlace the input and display as 1080i, so you're not really gaining anything unless you have a device that can ONLY output 1080p (which is pretty much unheard of).

Alright thanks.. they seem to get great reviews everywhere too.

It's driving me crazy figuring out if I want to buy one with or without a tuner. I might want to hook it up to cable in the future. Also I might want to plug in an antenna. A 32" with a tuner is more expensive than the 37" without one.

i'd go without the tuner. if you get digital cable they'll give you a cable box anyways.
i almost bought this tv but it was on backorder so i went with viewsonic instead. but i did a lot of research and it does get good reviews everywhere.

btw, this tv (actually the 537h) is available from my site. 21 referrals.

I have an Olevia 37 inch LCD, they're great for HD material (TV and video games) but mediocre for non-HD as many LCDs. I have a tuner but I don't use it with an antenna much anymore since my cable station carries all the local channels in HD now.

Newegg has lowered prices on many Olevia models, so you can take a look at all their models there too. You can get the 237V, which has a tuner for $760 with a coupon, but I don't think it's worth paying $100+ for the tuner.

thanks for the sugguestion.. I am still questionable. Is there any other way to get local stations without a tuner? I'm guessing not but I guess I have to decide if I need the tuner!

[quotec3e9850212="BD2006BD"]thanks for the sugguestion.. I am still questionable. Is there any other way to get local stations without a tuner? I'm guessing not but I guess I have to decide if I need the tuner![/quotec3e9850212]
Without a tuner you can't get any sort of TV signal, you'll have to have an external tuner/source of some kind (cable/sat/OTA).

[quotea75b389b0c="BD2006BD"]thanks for the sugguestion.. I am still questionable. Is there any other way to get local stations without a tuner? I'm guessing not but I guess I have to decide if I need the tuner![/quotea75b389b0c]
If you're not sure then I would just get the tuner (I thought you were leaning to go without for some reason). The one on newegg costs a bit more but there are no rebates. Syntax is notoriously slow with rebates.

If your TV is going to be used in a room without cable, an antenna would be useful, but otherwise if you have access to cable with all local channels in HD I don't see the reason to get it. You can always buy a separate tuner in the future but the cheapest I've seen them go for is about $100.

Also check if your area gets good antenna HD reception by going to antennaweb.org[]antennaweb.org.

Another reason I don't use the TV's tuner is because I have a tuner on my HTPC.

If I have an old VCR laying around can I just plug in an antenna to the back of the VCR input (coaxial) and just plug the VCR output to the back of the TV and watch TV that way (composite) ? Will it still look just as good? (I know it's going to look fuzzy already because of the antenna).

Thanks a lot for posting about newegg! I didn't even think to look there. They have even better deals on recertified tvs. Not to mention the 3 day shipping.

Technically, yes, you can use a VCR tuner. However it will look like crap on an HD set with a composite connection. Composite is the lowest quality connector format after coax, limited to NTSC resolution of 240 lines. Displaying such a low-quality signal on a high/fixed resolution LCD panel generally results in pretty crappy image quality, especially if the panel's scaler is sub-par.

[quote10868ffe32="BD2006BD"]If I have an old VCR laying around can I just plug in an antenna to the back of the VCR input (coaxial) and just plug the VCR output to the back of the TV and watch TV that way (composite) ? Will it still look just as good? (I know it's going to look fuzzy already because of the antenna).
[/quote10868ffe32]
That tuner isn't ATSC (which is what HD broadcasts use) so you wouldn't get the digital HD signals, just the plain old analog channels. At that point, it won't matter what kind of cable is used since the signal itself won't be very good and look like crap like dmorris said.

If you don't have cable for the set, you might want a TV with a tuner.

Yes, I should have clarified that the VCR is for analog NTSC broadcasts only. And if you don't have cable, then you're starting with an already lousy OTA signal, compounded by the low-resolution output, which means the image quality will look worse on that set than it would on a small CRT.

HDTV's look amazing when fed a quality signal -- even SD (depending on the TV). My SXRD and my plasma both do well with quality SD signals. But feed such a TV a low-quality signal, and the flaws will be far more noticeable than on a regular old-fashioned tube set.

Hey, I read this topic, I'm also thinking about getting a TV without a tuner - http//www.pricegrabber.com/p__Syntax_Olevia_327V_Silver_27_8ms_HD_LCD_TV,__27772808

Anyways, I just wanted to be sure, I can just plug my cable into a VCR and run it to the TV this way, right? It doesn't really matter to me about the quality of the cable, I'm primarily getting it to play PS3, but it would be great if that was all I had to do to get cable

Oh, and hows the TV looking?

I've got an Olivia 332H and its been a great TV so far, picked it up from BeachCamera.com for about $525. No tuner but to be expected at this price, the picture is sharp and it looks great hooked up via DVI to my laptop.