Well, after listening to yet another Amazon CSR vociferously misinterpret the documentation provided for this TV (and again refuse to accept its return), I've gone ahead and disputed the charge on my credit card. The credit card company's instructions to Amazon are to arrange for return of the set or provide proof that it works as advertised. I've already got documentation from Syntax that says the documentation is wrong, so I'm pretty sure this will be a slam dunk.

Of course it's an Amazon issue. The vendor has an implied warranty that the product work as specified and advertised, at least in my home state. On-line, catalog and mail purchases are qualified as "local" purchases, so Maine consumer protection statutes apply.

I didn't give my money to Syntax, I gave it to Amazon. If they're going to act as a sales agent for a product, they're expected to handle issues caused by their misrepresentation of that product's features.

So, you ARE returning it.

So, when I said "you get what you pay for", I was right, FWIW some of the reviews on Amazon.com DO mention your problems, so your product research alarm bells should have started ringing there...

There is no such thing as a good quality 30" LCD for $1100.

What? I didn't get what I paid for. The TV did not have the advertised feature. Which is why I'm returning it . . .

The first two things I would have done, if I actually did the research, was Google "Olevia zoom" after reading the red flags at Amazon. Then I would have seen the first two links returned telling me again that the zoom didn't work.

Then I would not have bought it and would have avoided all this hassle.

Also, moving forward in your research, please do the math so you don't end up trapped again. 16:9 works out to 1.78 ratio. The resolution of the 30" is 1280x768 (1.6666). That's 15:9, not 16:9.

The real 16:9 should have resolution 1280x720 (oliva 27") or 1366x768 (Oliva 32").

So, I also suppose you can go after them that way. Good luck... and please research more thoroughly going forward. ^

So, you mail ordered a no-name Chinese TV that's on perpetual closeout at tigerdirect based on a feature that is physically impossible to accomplish and now you think you're getting screwed? That isn't the word I would use.

Huh? Zooming a 4:3 image while maintaining aspect ratio is not physically impossible. I have a 57" Hitachi RPTV that does this quite nicely.

Reports on the quality and features of televisions are something for which I generally go to Home Theater web sites. The Syntax TVs are mostly well received given their price points. The Amazon reviews also showed them as a good value. But once you've read a dozen or more positive reviews, you most likely come to the conclusion that what you're purchasing is OK.

For cryin' out loud, I'd already examined the owner's manual of the TV before I purchased it . . . it had the feature I wanted listed. Why should I disbelieve it, and more importantly, why should I be given grief by the vendor when the product does not perform as documented?

Because, as others have pointed out, you get what you pay for. You bought a no-name TV and are SHOCKED that it doesn't perform as reliably as a top-of-the-line, name-brand unit. That's why these things are cheap, because they don't do fancy things. The fancy things they claim to do are often huge stretches (no pun intended), and still often don't work at all.

If something's too good to be true, it usually is.

You're assuming the pixels are square.

You know, I'm going to try and remain civil here. As I've pointed out numerous times (you seem to be conveniently ignoring this), I DID NOT get what I paid for.

As far as "fancy things" are concerned, I'm not expecting any. Performing as per the documentation is a pretty fundamental thing, and that's all what I want. If it did that, I'd be quite happy with the set. My complaint is with one, SPECIFIC feature that is implemented incorrectly and does not perform as per Syntax's published specifications.

The general concensus on home theater and electronics fora is that the Syntax line is a good value. I would agree except for the fact that it doesn't have a specific feature as documented in the owner's manual, and it's a thing of value to me. I do not believe it unreasonable to expect a vendor to make good on the features touted, or accomodate those via a refund of the purchase price when they can't be.

Wow, that's original.

What's most interesting is that most of the people here telling me to just "suck it up, you can't expect good quality at this price" are probably the first to whine to their respective airlines because they want compensation for the busted lav on the last flight they took on a deeply-discounted fare.

Where do you come up with this stuff? FWIW I mainly fly on paid J and F tickets and have only ever complained twice to an airline in my life, both times on eleven thousand dollar tickets when they messed things up.

Reality is different. I was in the market for an LCD last year, and came pretty close to ordering the Syntax 30". In the end I opted for an A brand TV instead.

I really don't mean to offend you with the "you get what you pay for". all I mean by it is that you opted to purchase a no-name brand with virtually zero history in making TV's. I don't mean to offend your choice, or your intelligence, just the choice of brand.

When you got the TV and something didn't work the way it was meant then my first reaction is "makes sense", it is a very cheap and very unknown brand, so something is meant to be wrong.

In the world of electronics if something is this much cheaper than the closest competitor then it is pretty much always a sign that something is wrong.

If this were an A-name brand then you would most likely at least have some kind of support from the company, in the case of Syntax it seems you were simply told to quit complaining. They didn't take responsability for their actions.

IMHO your view of the matter is wrong, it should have been more along the lines of "I bought a really cheap TV, and it turned out that it was cheap for a reason"....

I hope the new model tv you get makes you happier, really I do.

Whatever he does, it sure won't be at the price point of the first TV. He tried to do it on the cheap, and that's what he got. No surprise here.

I think you're failing to understand that we're saying (at least I'm saying) is that one of the things you pay for with a name brand is reliability, honesty, and predictability. You chose to go with a no-name brand which are deeply-discounted because they don't offer these important features, and you're now finding out how valuable these features are.

You can take this as personally as you like, but no one is ignoring anything here except you. You wanted Sony quality at Sorny prices, and you should actually be grateful that you learned of the quality in time to return it or dispute the charge. It would be much worse to learn of it in 91 days when your purchase protection ran out and you find that those pixels start dying out quickly.

Like, Scott, I wish you the best of luck. It would really be great if you could get something for nothing. I can't afford a good LCD TV, which would be about $15,000 for what I would consider acceptable. I'd be at the store tomorrow if I could get what I wanted for half that, but it doesn't exist, at least not from a manufacturer I would trust to deliver on their promises.

I have to chime in and agree with OP on this one, as I see the opposing arguments as rather silly.

Suppose you wanted a cheap mp3 player. You don't need to store photos, you don't need a display, you don't need a smooth-as-silk touch-click-magic controller. You find a $50 512MB mp3 player and the literature says it does what you need - plays mp3 and wav - no aiff, atrac, ogg etc - that's fine, all I want is an mp3 player

So it shows up and:

No screen - OK, I didn't expect one
30 day warranty - OK, it's a low end model, no surprise
kinda cheap looking - I get what I pay for
kinda clunky in operation - ditto
doesn't play mp3, only atrac - ????

Fine, so you return it (I think there's still more to the story that there's such trouble returning it after many posters have reported no trouble getting Amazon to accept returns), but don't expect to get everyone on the internet to get all worked up over it. If there's a valid reason that you can't return it, then accept it and learn for next time.

And, yes, I'm sure all of us have eaten the cost of cheap products that ended up not working as advertised. That's how we learned.

My $.02 - Amazon as a vendor/dealer sold you the television you ordered as represented by the manufacturer/brand. The television received DID have this feature, correct? It just didn't work because of the faulty implementation by the manufacturer. Amazon sold you the product you ordered with the feature you wanted; however, the manufacturer failed to deliver on the promise of the utility of that feature.

As for the mp3 player example, I think it is slightly different...
in my scenario, the mp3 player will play mp3s, but they just sound like they're under water, or maybe it only accepts 32kbit encoding (real low quality). You got the MP3 player. It plays MP3s. It just doesn't live up to your expectations.

That is why we have all these reviews and message boards to refer to when we're making an investment.

Now, don't let me sound like I'm jumping on the "you shoulda got a sony" bandwagon... My family is in retail (not me, yet, though) and we got one of the new sony dlp televisions and it had the strangest problem, not decoding video signals other than 480i intermittently. Ultimately, as it was a problem with Sony's implementation of their feature, Sony was responsible for the problem, repair, and replacement. Sony has a better reputation because they tend to offer better support for their customers when there are issues.