Plasma Television, 50 inch Display, HDTV-Ready Television, Resolution: 1366 x 768 pixels, 1000 cd/mē Brightness, 10,000:1 Contras...
Reviews
LG 50PY2R 50 inch HD plasma TV review
| Design |
| This is a decent looking plasma TV by all accounts. To start with you’ve got this marvellous 50 inch plasma screen facing you, which believe us, really is large and surrounded by a piano black frame. And what makes this LG HD TV larger still is the surrounding frame which houses the speakers making the LG 50PY2R look enormous. The design is new and aesthetically beautiful as you have the main screen sitting on top of another screen. Because of its size this is a rather heavy TV and would need some seriously sturdy bracket to hold it up. Having said that it does come with a stylish stand to support it. The connections are all hidden away on the side of the plasma making it easy to attach your peripheral gadgets and you’ll find the Scart sockets at the back. What is really nice is the panel at the bottom of the screen which tells you what you are watching and through which device. As well as a good looking plasma TV you also get a decent remote control which continues the coloured theme of black but also adds some colourful buttons for navigation. |
| Setup/Installation |
| Setting up is simple. It takes less than 15 minutes to have the LG 50PY2R plasma out of the box and ready to work. |
| Features |
| There’s plenty to keep you happy here with the 50PY2R TV although one thing that is missing which seems to be standard on HD TVs is a digital tuner. Now we don’t really see it as a problem as we’ve got access to a Sky HD box but it would seem some of you don’t. If you don’t have Sky you might also want to be made aware at this point that connectivity isn’t great on this TV and if you have to plug in a Freeview box as well as other gadgets you may might find a few problems. There’s only one HDMI input which is a bit remiss of LG considering this is their flagship plasma and in addition there’s only three Scart plugs, a S-Video and composite video plug. There is a D-Sub VGA however to attach your PC to the plasma and also a socket for the SD card. While the connectivity isn’t impressive the picture quality is. The 50PY2R has a native resolution of 1366x768 and a contrast ratio of 10,000:1 as well as a brightness rating of 1000cd/m2. The LG comes with the XD Engine II image processing which provides improved clarity of picture and colour. There’s loads of extras for you to individualise your colours and adjusting flesh-tones etc as well as twin tuner picture-in-picture, DCDi de-interlacing IC, a line doubler and three anti-screen-burn measures. Sound comes with a SRS TSXT pseudo-surround mode that allows you to tweak speaker sounds to give you the perfect surround sound. |
| Performance |
| For such a big TV the 50PY2R is a fantastic TV. Operation of the TV is simple thanks to the easy to follow on-screen instructions as well as the remote control. Thanks to the XD Engine II image processing the picture quality is really very good. The black levels are great and when the screen is supposed to look black, it actually does - and thanks to the wide greyscale you can actually distinguish the shadow details giving darker areas a more three-dimensional aspect. There was little noise, grain or dot crawl on the pictures. Obviously the best images come when plugged into a high definition source, but to show that this really is a good TV you got decent images even using terrestrial TV sources – with clear colours, realistic flesh tones and bright, sharp images, although none of this was as good as in HD. There was almost no jaggedness over contours and the edges were free of ghosting and there was a smooth, blur free motion when following action shots. Sound quality wasn’t bad for such small speakers and as with the colours you can decide exactly what sound you’ll get out of the plasma TV. |
| What's In The Box? |
| LG 50PY2R plasma TV, remote control, manual |
| Overall Opinion |
| For such a big plasma screen the image quality on the LG is fabulous and there’s no doubt at all that the LG 50PY2R 50-inch plasma is an attractive looking TV. With very good picture and sound quality the only thing that’s going to let this TV down is the lack of a Freeview digital tuner and a second HDMI port. But if neither of these bother you, for the price this is an outstanding TV for its size. |
| Pros | Cons |
|---|
| Big screen
9-2 memory slot
Easy to use
Advanced picture processing | Only one HDMI socket
Stingy connectivity
No integrated digital tuner
|
Reviewed by on 3:31pm Mon 11th Sep 2006
| Factor |
Rating |
| Ease of Use |
4/5 |
| Durability |
3/5 |
| Style |
5/5 |
| Service & Support |
3/5 |
| Value for Money |
5/5 |
| Recommend |
1/5 |
| Overall |
4/5 |
