LG 42PG6000

...when you look at the LG is the absolutely _stunning_ looks it possesses. Piano black bevel surrounding a 42" screen, all beneath a single sheet of anti-glare glass. More than just the beautiful effect it produces, as if the TV is a single flat pane, it genuinely makes the image feel bigger because it's not hemmed in by bulky edges. The bottom of the TV tilts backwards, with a single silver smile in the corner for the power button. The stand ...
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Featurewise, the LG can't be faulted. It has an astounding number of connections - 4 HDMI ports (v1.3, the newest standard), Component, Composite, SCARTs, easily enough to satisfy anyone but the most technologically insane. A built in digital TV tuner that picks up TV & radio, as well as an analogue tuner should you need. A remarkable invisible speaker system that seemingly uses the frame itself to project the sound. A stand with a very ... more

I am completely and utterly incapable of making any meaningful purchasing decision until I have researched absolutely everything about the relevant area, so believe me when I say, my decision to buy this TV was not taken lightly! With any luck I can pass off some of my gleaned knowledge to you now in my 2100-word review below ;)

The Background

Before you can understand how I came to this decision, it needs to be put into context. A couple of friends pulled out of a snowboarding holiday this year, leaving me with £600 spare and a distinct need to comfort myself with gadgetry. As I'm about to move in with my girlfriend, my inner technology snob has kicked in and I refuse to go back to plugging my Xbox 360 in through SCART (bleurgh). As such, the hunt was on.

Initially I budgeted £500 for an LCD TV because, like many people, I'd heard horror stories about the problems of plasma TVs. When the telly I originally had in mind was no longer available (I waited one day too long and Argos' offer ended, jumping the price up £185 :S ) I started seriously considering plasma. Extensive research and poking around real-life shops soon showed the problems are nothing like they are reputed to be - problems still exist, but the same holds true for LCD TVs as well. There are plenty of summaries available on the internet, but essentially - plasma TVs produce darker blacks than LCDs and deal with motion better (sport, games etc.) but need more care taking over them to get the most out of them.

As the main reason I want a HD-Ready TV is for gaming on my Xbox 360 & Wii, plasma offered more advantages in terms of the picture quality produced - particularly with the motion blur issue. My other key uses are watching DVDs (via an upscaling Toshiba SD380, review coming soon) and Freeview television via the inbuilt digital tuner. Looking through the options available, sub-£500 are the cheaper brands of television (Bush, Acoustic Solutions etc.) but for less than £600 you can get much better named brands - Panasonic, LG, Samsung are all easily available at this price. As such my budget crept up irrevocably.

The Decision

So why the LG? Well, firstly, an honest disclaimer - I was actually going to buy the Panasonic Viera TH42PX80, but stock disappeared too quickly as the range is being replaced by the new generation of Vieras. In a way, I was glad of this - I'd spent 2 or 3 days completely incapable of making a decision between the Panasonic and the LG, so this made it for me!

The first thing you'll notice when you look at the LG is the absolutely stunning looks it possesses. Piano black bevel surrounding a 42" screen, all beneath a single sheet of anti-glare glass. More than just the beautiful effect it produces, as if the TV is a single flat pane, it genuinely makes the image feel bigger because it's not hemmed in by bulky edges. The bottom of the TV tilts backwards, with a single silver smile in the corner for the power button. The stand is a beautiful curve in the same piano black.

Featurewise, the LG can't be faulted. It has an astounding number of connections - 4 HDMI ports (v1.3, the newest standard), Component, Composite, SCARTs, easily enough to satisfy anyone but the most technologically insane. A built in digital TV tuner that picks up TV & radio, as well as an analogue tuner should you need. A remarkable invisible speaker system that seemingly uses the frame itself to project the sound. A stand with a very useful 30 degree swivel on it so you can always face the TV.

Modern TVs bear much more in common with computers than their CRT progenitors, and any LCD or Plasma TV will run a software engine to improve the image. This is often the key difference between the cheaper brands and the more respectable named sets. The LG uses the proprietary "Dual XD" engine to clean up standard definition inputs (such as TV), process images to 100Hz (increasing the smoothness of any images) and manage the colour settings. It has Cinema, Sport & Game presets you can quickly switch between that alter the settings to suit your activity.

It's worth noting that this set is not a Full HD, 1080p set. If you don't know what that means then you don't have to worry about it. For me, it wasn't a dealbreaker - the Xbox360 is the only true HD source I have, and that only works at 720p/1080i rather than full 1080p (like the PS3). 1080p can often reduce the quality of standard definition sources because it has to scale the source up so much more, so this HD Ready (1024x768 resolution) set suits my needs much more than an expensive Full HD set, particularly given the price difference of hundreds of pounds.

All these features speak of a TV priced closer to £1000, but amazingly you can find it (March 2009) as cheap as £570 online and £650 in your local Curry's - where you may even be able to haggle. A TV of this size, this quality, this fully-featured, at that sort of price point, is quite frankly a miracle. Listen closely when you buy this TV and you may hear a choir of angels in the background.

Getting the TV

The TV itself comes in a huge box, chiefly because it's a huge telly. Make sure you transport the box standing up at all times - the glass on plasma screens can't support its own weight, so if you lay the box down and drive over a bump you can crack the screen. This meant borrowing my parents 4x4 for me as it wouldn't fit in the back of my VW Golf - I'm not kidding when I say it's huge!

The stand is already fitted to the TV so when you lift it out of the box (with the help of a friend - the weight isn't a problem but the dimensions make it awkward for one person to do alone) you can place it straight onto the cabinet, plug in the provided power cable and your aerial cable, and you're finished.

Turning the set on for the first time, you'll be asked to confirm a few basic details with your remote - country, time etc. - and then the set will automatically scan for all available channels. At that point, you're ready to go. You can honestly have this TV up and running 5 minutes after you've opened the box, and it is incredibly simple to do.

Using the TV

The remote that comes supplied with the telly is light and comfortable to hold, and has a logical layout. It allows you quick access to a digital guide (which is laid out very well) and quick switching between the different AV modes (cinema, game, sport). The menu is beautifully designed, using pictures for the main categories and then moving onto short lists of options. Everything is placed logically in the menu and you'll never struggle to find an option. Despite this simplicity the wealth of configuration options available is enormous, although never overwhelming.

You can switch between the different inputs with the one input button on the remote, and it will skip through all the ports that have something plugged in - if a port is empty you can't select it, which is such a simple yet brilliant idea.

The picture quality out of the box is impressive but it is worth spending a bit of time tweaking it, if you're up to it - it's honestly not a complicated task, so long as you understand how brightness & contrast etc. affect your image. Marvellously, the TV remembers these settings individually for each input, so you can have the freeview setup differently to the DVD player setup differently to a games console - very useful!

Standard Freeview looks crisp and colourful, so long as you're not too close to the set. Get within 3 feet or so and you can start to see some digital noise where the TV is having to scale the image up - it is literally having to invent more image to fill the screen. This is a problem for any large TV though, LCD or plasma, and even more pronounced on a Full HD 1080p set. Compared to its contemporaries the LG performs exceedingly well in this area. In general you shouldn't be sitting close enough to notice the noise anyway - a 42" TV generally needs you to sit about 8 feet away. If you're going to spend the majority if your time closer than this then you should get a 37" or 32" TV instead.

HDMI inputs produce astonishing images, even from the upscaling DVD player. Edges are smooth and sharp and the colours are frighteningly good, popping out of the screen. Dim the lights down, stick a disc in and you won't be able to stop grinning at the quality of the images you get. Motion is smooth with none of the blurring or lag you get with LCD.

Issues

Obviously, no TV is perfect, and making your choice is essentially deciding what sacrifices you are willing to make.

The chief problem with plasma is something called Image Retention - if a static image (a tv channel logo, or display in a game) is shown on screen for a long time, it can leave a ghost of that image on the screen for a while after. In much the same way as your eyes take time to readjust after you've stared at a bright light, the plasma sometimes takes a while to clear itself of the memory of these images. This becomes less of a problem as the TV ages as the plasma is less susceptible after the first few hundred hours. During the first 200 hours it is recommended that you turn the settings down to halfway to ease the plasma in - having the brightness & contrast set at 50 does somewhat reduce the prettiness, but it pays off in the long term. You can switch it up sometimes though, if a David Attenborough documentary comes on TV I often whack the settings up to enjoy it fully :)
The LG also comes with a number of features to help prevent temporary image retention - it can shift the plasma about to stop individual pixels burning out more than others, and it also allows you to invert an image or even white out the screen. Another useful technique is setting up an analogue channel with no signal and displaying static for a while to help the plasma clear this image retention.

I've read reports that the LG can have quite bad retention but I've never noticed it to be that bad on my screen - it perhaps depends on the screen you get, so if you get major problems it could be worth reporting your set as faulty.

The sound is excellent for a flat screen, particularly with the Clear Voice technology used by LG, but at the end of the day it is still a flat screen TV, and will never have sound quality to match a pair of decent speakers.

The documentation is quite brief as well, but given how easy the set is to use you genuinely don't need a phonebook size manual - I've barely glanced at mine.

Other problems you'll hear about plasma TVs include a buzzing noise that they all make, but unless you're actually a bat, you can only hear this when you hold your ear within 3" of the back of the TV. You'll certainly never hear it while you have sound on. The heat produced is often mentioned as a factor as well, but I believe the manual states that 4" of space surrounding the edge of the telly (not the back) is sufficient.

Summary

At long last, we reach the end of my far-too-lengthy review. Congratulations on getting this far.

Overall - I'm absolutely delighted with this telly. I'm very picky with my picture quality from years of staring at Photoshop agonising over minor details in photographs, so I trust my eyes. This is my first plasma screen so I can't comment on how it compares to other plasma sets, but against the 32" LCD I'm used to at my parents house, the improvement is staggering.

It does take a bit more care than an LCD does - particularly during the first 200 hours - but if you're willing to take a bit of time and attention the rewards are astonishing. If you're trying to setup your retired parents with a flat TV you might be better with an LCD to keep it simple, but this TV simplifies everything so much that anyone who knows how to plug the TV in will be able to use it to its fullest extent.

Other Sources

I could list endless sites that I used whilst making my decision, but the two pages that summarise it best are the product page at Amazon and a review at HDTVTest.co.uk:

1. http://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-42PG6000-Widescreen-Plasma-Freeview/dp/B0014IVF1K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1236607764&sr=8-1
2. http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/LG-42PG6000/ 

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