Amazing Picture At A Bargain Price

What Is It?

The 42LC7D is the "entry level" 42" LCD TV from LG. It is, however, far from a stripped down, or bargain basement piece of equipment.

Too Many Choices

If you walk into a big box store these days, you will often be confronted with an entire wall of flat panel TVs, and a confusing amount of information thrown at you. Although rear projection sets are still available, it appears that LCD and Plasma have emerged as the two main contenders. Both can produce stunning pictures, and each have strengths and weaknesses. My preference is LCD, as you will see.

Unpacking

The first thing you will notice about this set as you are unpacking it is how light it is compared to a plasma.

Unpacking and mounting a plasma is clearly a two person job, whereas you could probably get by with just one determined person with an LCD. The 42LC7D is finished in an attractive black gloss finish that is protected by easy to remove plastic strips. I didn't need it on the wall, so I placed it on a coffee table.

Connections

With 2 HDMI connectors, 2 component and 2 composite/S-Video connectors, you should have no trouble attaching your associated equipment. I have an older Denon receiver that has only component video connections, so everything passes through that before going to the LG. Because I do some periodic testing of beta software for the DirecTV HR20-700 and 100 DVR, I also have an HDMI connection to the LG from the DVR in addition to the component one. That makes it pretty easy to do an A/B comparison between the two. Quite frankly, even though HDMI has a theoretical advantage, I see no difference between it and a component connection.

Picture Quality

Although marketing departments are extolling the virtues of a 1080p display, this model is a "mere" 720p. In theory, a 1080p picture will be more finely detailed. However, is it in actual use? I spent a long time comparing a 42" LG 1080p versus the 42" 720p that I eventually bought. Standing between 6 to 8 feet away from the screen (to approximate the viewing distance at home), I really couldn't tell the difference between the 42LC7D and its more expensive brother. Perhaps you will be able to, but I couldn't justify the higher price.

The LG comes with a variety of pre-set video settings: Daylight, Normal, Nighttime and 2 user configurable ones.

I'd describe the Daylight setting as the proverbial "torch" setting. Though it is the default setting out of the box, it produces an overly bright, contrasty, over-saturated picture. The "Normal" one isn't bad, but you will get better results by using one of the two "Custom" settings, and changing the parameters yourself, either with a calibration disk like Avia, or at the very least the THX setup tests found on some DVDs, such as Star Wars.

You can also adjust the color temperature from a cool blueish cast through a warmer red.

The LG replaced a 6 year old CRT based Mitsubishi rear-projection system (which required periodic convergence tweaking). Since it is a fixed pixel display, there is obviously nothing to converge. That in itself made the most impression on me. Pictures are well detailed, and nicely saturated.

A progressive scan system such as this handles motion very well, which is one of the reason networks like Fox and the Disney family (ABC, ESPN) use the 720p broadcasting standard. The picture is remarkably free of motion artifacts.

The XD engine in the LG produces, for the first time in my experience, a very watchable SD picture. The scaler and deinterlacer can take a 480i source and turn it into a very passable 720p output. It isn't HD of course, but it looks so much better than an unprocessed signal.

Of note is the texture of the LCD screen. Its matte finish reduces or eliminates room reflections. This is another big difference between an LCD and a plasma set. Plasmas tend to have a highly reflective screen that can produce very distracting room reflections.

An LCD set may exhibit a "screen door effect" (SDE), where you are aware of the individual pixels. From a distance of 6 to 8 feet, I see none of that.

What I especially like about the picture the LG produces is the total lace of "silk screen effect" which most rear
projection LCD sets produce. SSE looks a little like the sparkles on freshly fallen snow and is caused by the texture of the screen itself. It can be distracting at times. My Sony KDF 50E2000 has that.

Contrast Ratio

The LG has an 8000:1 contrast ratio. In practical terms, this means that it is in the middle of the price/performance range. If you aren't careful with your settings, blacks will appear more of a deep gray. This would be especially noticeable in night scenes, or scenes set in deep space. What I have found is that by reducing the backlight, and being conservative with the brightness and contrast settings, I can get a picture that is actually fairly close to a CRT based image. That's pretty impressive for an LCD. Plasmas typically have the edge on that.

Off Angle Viewing

When viewed dead center and at eye level, the LG produces a, to use an overworked word, stunning picture. However, move too much to the side to up or down, the picture begins to wash out. That is just the nature of an LCD. Be aware of that when planning where to place it, and how may people will be viewing it at one time.

Sound Quality

I can't imagine anyone buying this set and not connecting it to at least a 2.0 sound system. However, if that is not something you are intending to do, the sound quality on this LG is acceptable as long as you don't need things very loud and you don't mind a somewhat hollow sound due to the lack of true deep bass response. There are user adjustable setting, but don't expect too much from the built-in speakers.

I tried attaching a pair of Klipsch 2.1 computer speakers to the audio output, but unfortunately, the LG doesn't provide a "variable" setting for the output jacks, only a fixed one. As a result, you can't control the volume of an external set of speakers with the TV's volume control.

I have the set connected to my home theater system, so it isn't a problem for me. There even is a toslink (optical) out on the LG, so you could actually pass true Dolby 5.1 to a receiver if you so desire.

Tuners

This LG has both a QAM and an ATSC tuner so you can view unscramble cable channels (assuming you subscribe to cable), and free HD over the air broadcasts in your area. Just select the EZ Scan setup option and the LG will go through testing its various input sources for channels.

Summary

If you want a reasonably priced, high performing flat panel LCD set, can't really tell the difference between a 720p and a 1080p picture, and will be viewing this directly from a distance of 6 to 8 feet, I think you should give this LG some serious consideration.