Syntax Olevia LT30HV 30-Inch HD-Ready Flat-Panel LCD TV
Initial offering of this TV was horrible - has it changed?
Back in April of last year I went looking for a LCD and first tried out the Olevia which was returned immediately, I then bought the Sceptre LCD which has been fantastic.  Below is part of a review I wrote on the AVS Forum website.  I think it touched on all the shortcomings of the Olevia.    Sceptre 30\\" vs. Syntax Olevia 30\\" the results are in....   I see there are a few threads with folks asking and comparing the Sceptre LCD at (...) and the Syntax Olevia LCD. I had the Olevia for a week and I just got the Sceptre yesterday. I think I'm the only one who's had both, so here is my experience that I posted on one of the threads. I hope this will help those wondering which one to buy. If you don't want to read the results, Olevia sucks and the Sceptre is great so far.    -------------------------    I went looking for a LCD at a good price. It had to have PAL support since I'm going to use it overseas. Found 2 options, Sharp and Olevia. Sharp 22\\" was expensive and was only EDTV, so did some research on Olevia. Well there really wasn't any info out there at all. They mostly do motherboards, LCD is a new venture for them.    Here is my experience... The spec's on the Olevia were nice on paper, the price was right....    Setup was easy, my wife did it while I was at work. My first thought was that the brightness wasn't very good. So I did some adjusting and got it to look alright, but still not thrilled. I hooked up my Toshiba DVD via component input and played a few movies. Traffic, Finding Nemo, Usual Suspects, LOTR, Final Fantasy, COPS, and a few others. Finding Nemo looked the best, and I just credit that with the fantastic job that they did making the movie in the first place. The reds were really overblown everytime, and it was still not the best brightness. The listed contrast ratio is 700:1 when I originally bought it, now I see it's up to 750:1 and I wonder how they came to that conclusion, I figure it's more like 400:1 in reality. Overall color, contrast, and brightness are subpar.    The quality of the remote was the dealbreaker for sure. The volume would change when hitting the channel button, the volume would increase when you hit the down volume regularly. When I pressed track forward on my DVD remote it would change the volume too!! When that happen I knew that using my Sony commander remote wouldn't make a difference. The remote on the Olevia is absolute junk, they must have spent $1 on making it. The 2 items that drove me to return it was when switching from DVD (via Y, Pb, Pr) to the TV input the screen went PINK with a couple lines of static (I could hear the TV audio)! The only solution was to turn it off and on. Then I e-mailed Syntax Olevia with my problems to see what they would say, my message got bounced.....    I hope this review will help people make a decision whether or not to buy the Olevia (I had the 30\\" not that makes a difference compared to the 27\\"). I did some more reading and found the Sceptre Naga III ....It has PAL support and Sceptre is an respected LCD monitor manufacturer. Dell offers their monitors on their website and last year Wired magazine rated their 17\\" LCD TV as a best buy.....    So from my experience with the Olevia and the Sceptre, the Sceptre is a far better LCD. It's not even close IMO, so if I were you I'd scrap plans for the Olevia and buy the Sceptre. And for the record, I'm not just comparing as joe schmo, I'm an engineer and work in non-linear video editing and photography.