By SRRAE
on 4th Apr 2007
SRRAE's Ratings
| Value for money | 9/10  |
|---|
| Overall value | 9/10 |
|---|
 SRRAE's recommendation |
Good Points
Superb Picture Quality
Very stylish
Lots of TV Inputs
Integrated Digital Tuner
Lots of features to play with
Bad Points
Sound is a little flat.
General Comments
I reluctantly really wanted a LCD TV. It's almost an oxymoron. The thing is, every time I went to a store to look at them I was discussed by the quality of the picture when playing normal TV, which lets face it, 99.9% of all TV content in the UK is still standard definition. What is the point of getting a LCD TV if you are going to get inferior quality for most of its use?
However, who doesn't want a nice sleek LCD screen in their living room? I decided to bite the bullet and get one any way. A classic case of my heart ruling my head.
I bought the LG 32LC2DB TV for just over £500 delivered. I decided to get the 32inch screen as I didn't want it to take over the living room.
First impressions when I first put the screen on the TV cabinet, was it was larger than my previous TV which was also a 32inch widescreen, but a CRT. It sits a little higher and is a little wider, and the screen looks a lot larger. The unit is jet black, with a small metallic belt which runs a long a few inches below the screen. The TV controls are easily reached, located on the right side of the screen, keeping all the clutter off the front of the unit. On the left side of the screen, a easily accessed video and left & right audio composite, perfect for plugging in your video camera or games console. On the back are 2 scart in sockets, 1 out scart socket, HDMI, PC VGA, another Video and audio composite set, TV aerial in and out, and RGB input for high def and even an optical audio out. There are probably more but this is all I can remember.
The first switch on of the TV, we were welcomed by a message saying it will setup the channels. We let it work its magic and a few mins later all the local channels where tuned in and in order. The image quality even on analogue aerial was impressive. None of the artificial blocks around people or objects which you notice when looking at LCD screens in the shop. The most impressive part was the colour definition. Bright vibrant colours, which crisply project from the screen with not the slightest sign of them bleeding into each other. I could not believe the colours.
When watching cable the quality was even better. The fuzzy, crackly picture of standard definition which you see when the TV is in the store, is a world apart of what I actually got. There is no pixelisation at all on the screen. If there was any, it was because that is what my cable is sending, not what the TV was producing. The TV does a great job of up scaling the picture to fit on the screen. Standard Definition TV programmes does not look like HD, but they do look like fantastic quality standard definition.
The LG comes with a hoard of features to annoy the rest of the family as you try to watch. There are lots of picture options, to change the colours, sharpness, brightness etc. You can also disable and enable things like the XD, one of LG features which said to increase the picture quality. Changing from on to off I could see little or no difference, what does it do? No fear, there was a feature to see the picture with it on and off at the same time. One half was the live TV was with the feature on and the other with it off, and there you could see what it was doing. It added depth to the colours, and made people's skin have a healthy natural look, not a false Hollywood look. A nice feature.
The TV also has a PiP (Picture in Picture) feature where you can watch more than 1 TV input at the same time. The screen can be split in half, showing a different input in each half eg. Your games console on AV2 and digital TV. You can also make have 1 programme on the full screen, and a small box in the corner showing the other. This box can be moved to other locations and changed in size real time. Overjoyed with this feature (which I will probably never use) I also found it can display up to 4 inputs at once. One takes up over half the screen, and the others are shown in small screens going down the right side. Being male I love this feature but have only found 3 practical uses for it. 1) To show off to my gadget loving friends. 2) Annoy people when they are trying to watch TV. 3) To watch more than 1 sports event at the weekend. It may solve many arguments when one child wants to play PS3 and one wants to play XBox360.
The TV remote is easy to use. Navigation buttons are large and easy to find with your thumb. The remote is also so able to control your LG DVD player and VCR. I feel it would have been better to change the VCR to a Sky remote setting or Cable TV. Even though, it's nice and easy feature.
The only down side of this TV is the sound. There seems to be very little base to it, and it seems a little flat. You do have the option to change sound via an equalizer to make it to more your liking. The sound is not bad, its just not impressive. The rest of the TV is superb but the sound makes it short of being near perfect, and with a price tag of around £500, you would be extremely lucky to find better at this price.
All in all, an extremely impressive TV. I can't wait to get the HD films playing on this.
