Olevia 237T 37" LCD HDTV

Our one Black Friday purchase was an unplanned one, but I just couldn't pass it up the deal. We purchased an Olevia 37" LCD HDTV from Target.com on the day before Black Friday for $535 out the door and have been very happy with it so far. It's a 1366x768 Sharp-made panel, but the picture is so vibrant at 720p/1080i that I can wait until 1080p and 120 Hz/LED backlighting become more common and standard feature sets in the future (and therefore drop in price).

The set has two HDMI inputs, two component video inputs, a VGA input, and two S-video/RCA inputs. It also has built in NTSC/ATSC/QAM tuners with a 1600:1 dynamic contrast ratio and 8 ms response time. HD through the Comcast HD-DVR connected via HDMI looks great, as well as the Xbox 360 and HD-DVD connected via VGA. The primary reason that I used the VGA cable for the Xbox 360 is that the VGA upscales regular DVDs to 1080i and the HD-DVD player can output at full 1080p resolution (although this TV will downconvert to 1080i, but for the future I'm set). The second reason is that the VGA connection enables native resolution playback of content at 1366x768. Assassin's Creed looks amazing on this TV. The Wii over the component connection looks awesome as well, not to mention the widescreen aspect helps too.

As an amateur videophile, I'm pretty happy with the features on this set. I've even calibrated it using the Vikuiti LCD TV calibration DVD. The only thing that is annoying is the remote control - I can't make it work with the HD DVR so I have to fiddle with two or three separate remotes! Maybe a universal remote may solve this problem. Another issue is that standard definition television does not look nearly as good as the Sony.

So, what happens to our Sony CRT TV? The TV is so massive (168 lbs.) but I love the TV since the HD and SD picture on it is still superior in my opinion. But alas, we don't have space in our house so we have placed it on sale online. The great thing about the LCD TV is that I can carry it myself as it weighs only 50 lbs. For the price that we got it for, it can't be beat!