The Short Form

Price $3,500 / olevia.com / 866-965-3842

Snapshot

A standout LCD that looks great with both standard- and high-def sources.

Plus

•Crisp picture with vivid, natural color •Top-notch upconversion of standard- and high-def programs •Effective noise reduction •Good looks

Minus

•Poor picture uniformity at off-center seats •Odd onscreen menu system

Key Features

•1,920 x 1,080-resolution LCD HDTV •Silicon Optix HQV video processing •Dual built-in HDTV tuners with high-def PIP •Inputs: 2 HDMI, 2 component video, 2 composite, 2 S-video, VGA; 2 RF; RS-232 •46.3 x 38 x 13.3 in; 143.3 lb (w/stand)

Test Bench

With Dark Room backlight and 6,500 K color-temp settings, the 747i's grayscale tracked within ±590 K of 6,500 K from 30 to 100 IRE - below-average performance. Red, green, and blue adjustments in the user menu improved performance considerably, resulting in ±252 K tracking from 20 to 100 IRE. Color decoding measured +5% red on HDMI and -5% green on component-video inputs. 1080i/p and 720p test patterns were fully resolved via HDMI and component inputs. Screen uniformity was average, with a slight darkening visible on gray full-field test patterns (but not regular programs) and a noticeable drop-off in contrast when watching from off-center seats. As expected given the set's HQV video chip, it breezed through deinterlacing, film mode, and noise-reduction tests on both the standard- and high-def Silicon Optix HQV test discs. Full Test Results

SETUP Olevia really gives you the goods for tweaking the set's picture. You can adjust settings for each input and select 6500 K and 9300 K color temperature modes with red, green, and blue high and low user adjustments. You can also select among Dark, Medium, and Bright Room backlight settings via a convenient button on the remote. I did most critical viewing in the Dark Room mode.

Other adjustments include horizontal/vertical image position; cropping (which turns overscan on and off); and noise reduction. A submenu includes black-level expansion, a white peaking limiter, and contrast enhancement. I didn't find these useful - especially black-level, which eliminated shadow detail from images.

Although the 747i's numerous picture adjustments are a good thing, its onscreen menu leaves something to be desired. After I hit Menu on the remote, a rolling 3-D hexagon popped up onscreen. This object's facets contain various submenus, and after a few fumbling attempts I eventually learned to navigate them with the remote's arrow keys. Not exactly user-friendly. What really threw me, though, was when I selected a facet for adjustment and its color outline switched from green (the universal symbol for "proceed") to red. It was totally counterintuitive; my first time out, I had no idea what adjustments I was making to the TV! And without numerical indicators on the adjustment sliders, there was no way to record what picture settings worked best for future reference.

PICTURE QUALITY After a few tweaks to the 747i's User 6500 K mode (see Test Bench - Coming soon), I launched into my viewing regimen. Since this set's main selling point is high-quality deinterlacing and upconversion, I started with DVD and cable TV. DVDs had a crisp, stable appearance that held up exceedingly well in fast action scenes. The upconverted picture looked about as good as that from my Toshiba HD DVD player, and that's saying a lot. Although analog cable stations never look a fraction as good as high-def, the set's noise reduction helped smooth the picture without robbing it of desperately needed detail. To my memory, CNN Headline News never looked quite this good on a bigscreen LCD.