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LCD TV Reviews
LG 47LH90 LCD HDTV
Scott Wilkinson  |  Oct 12, 2009
Price: $2,400 at A Glance: Excellent color, detail, blacks, and frame interpolation • Mediocre shadow detail • THX mode not as close to correct as it should be

Black Is Back

As you no doubt know by now, LCD HDTVs command the lion’s share of the flat-panel market, outpacing plasma by a wide margin. This is due, at least in part, to the fact that LCDs are generally brighter than plasmas, which draws more attention on the showroom floor. They also consume less power, which makes them the greener choice.

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CES 2010
LG 480Hz LCD
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 05, 2009  |  Published: Jan 06, 2009

In what seems like a blizzard of interesting product announcements, LG Display—the company that manufactures the glass for LG's and other companies' LCD TVs—has announced it will unveil several hot items at CES. First among them is an LCD panel with a refresh rate of 480Hz, four times that of 120Hz panels. What's the point, you ask? Isn't that just meaningless marketing numerology? Perhaps, but perhaps not. I intend to find out for myself, so stay tuned.

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LG 50PG60 Plasma TV
Scott Wilkinson  |  Oct 20, 2008

As most home-theater enthusiasts know, THX has a long history of certifying audio products to conform to certain standards of performance in order to reliably replicate the content producers' intended experience at home. This was a natural outgrowth of the company's original mandate to do the same thing for mixing stages and commercial cinemas.

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CES 2010
LG 55LHX
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 08, 2009

Joining the nearly ubiquitous trend toward thinner flat panels is LG's 55LHX LCD TV, which is just under 1 inch thick with a screen size of 55 inches. It features 240Hz operation and wireless HD capability operating in the 60GHz range and offering a data rate of 3Gbps. Thin is definitely in!

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CEDIA 2011
LG 55LW9800 Nano LED-Backlit 3D LCD TV
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 09, 2011
LG doesn't have its own booth at CEDIA this year, but the company did launch a new flat panel in the THX booth with virtually no fanfare. The 55LW9800 3D LCD flat panel incorporates the company's new Nano LED backlighting, in which a extremely thin optical film—the "nano" part—diffuses the light from the LEDs more evenly than previous designs. As with other recent LG LCDs, this one uses passive-polarized glasses for 3D, and it's THX-certified in both 2D and 3D modes. In fact, a THX rep told me that, in a faceoff with many 3D TVs, everyone tended to gravitate to this one as the most comfortable to watch. The 3D effect was superb on the underwater footage they were showing, though I could still see the line structure endemic to passive-polarized 3D LCDs.
LG BD300
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 03, 2008

At CES last January, LG announced a strategic partnership with Netflix, but no details were revealed. Now, it can be told that LG has been working on the BD300, the world's first Blu-ray player that can stream content directly from Netflix. There are currently 12,000 movies and TV episodes available for streaming, out of over 100,000 DVD and nearly 1000 Blu-ray titles. All streaming content is standard-def, and the final resolution depends on the speed of your Internet connection.

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CES 2010
LG BD390
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 08, 2009

In addition to many TVs, LG also introduced two new Blu-ray players, the BD370 and BD390 (pictured here). Both are BD-Live ready (the BD390 has 1GB of internal memory), and both can stream content from Netflix, CinemaNow, and YouTube via Ethernet as well as access content on networked DLNA servers. The BD390 can also stream via WiFi, and it has 7.1 analog outputs.

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CEDIA 2010
LG CF3D 3D SXRD Projector
Scott Wilkinson  |  Oct 01, 2010
LG first introduced the CF3D projector at CES last January, but as one rep told me, "now it's real" and expected to ship by the end of the year for $15,000. The CF3D is unique in that it uses two completely separate SXRD imaging engines and lamps—one for each eye—and a single lens. Also, it uses passive polarization, so it needs a special silver screen and inexpensive polarized glasses. Another unique feature is a built-in camera that monitors the projected image and automatically adjusts the convergence and light balance between left and right. The CF3D can accept four 3D formats—frame-packed, frame-sequential, and frame-compatible side-by-side and over-under.

Although the demo wasn't perfect, I have to say that it knocked me out in certain ways...

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CES 2010
LG Comes Out Swinging
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 07, 2009

As in years past, LG had the distinction of holding the first press conference of CES—at 8:00 AM! Many new products were announced, including nine new lines of LCD TVs and three new lines of plasmas with a total of 30 new models in all. Among the LCDs is the 55LH90 pictured here, which uses LED backlighting to achieve a claimed contrast ratio of 2,000,000:1 as well as a 240Hz feature that combines 120Hz frame interpolation and backlight flashing. Other notable technologies include wireless HD built into the LH85 and LHX series LCDs that can convey uncompressed 1080p/60 at a maximum date rate of 3Gbps.

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LG Display FPR Polarized 3D
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 05, 2011
LG Display, a subsidiary of LG that manufactures LCD panels for its parent company as well as Toshiba and Vizio, held its own press conference today to introduce its Film-Pattern Retarder (FPR) technology, which allows the use of passive-polarized glasses with 3D TVs. Among the benefits of this approach are much less-expensive glasses that are lighter in weight and require no electronics, higher brightness and refresh rate, and no crosstalk. Of course, the main disadvantage is that each eye sees only half the available vertical resolution—540 lines instead of 1080, though the company reps argued that the brain fuses each eye's image into a "full HD" image.

The demo included several side-by-side comparisons with active-shutter glasses. For example, as seen on the right in the photo above, you can lie on your side and still watch 3D with FPR glasses, which use circular polarization, whereas shutter glasses completely darken at 90 degrees as seen on the left.

Another demo tried to illustrate how shutter glasses produce flicker while FPR glasses are flicker-free; from what I saw, this was extremely subtle. More pronounced was the comparison of crosstalk in several still images, which was obvious with shutter glasses and absent with FPR. Finally, a comparison of brightness revealed that passive 3D is indeed brighter than shutter glasses, though surprisingly, Tom Norton thought the shutter glasses display was actually brighter. We both agreed that the passive display looked more washed out and less punchy, and I thought the passive image was a bit softer in all cases, which would be worse on a larger screen.

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