Review: LG 42SL9000 42-inch LCD TV

LG's 42SL9000 42-inch LCD TV might well come to be remembered as one of the sets that put LED backlighting firmly on the map.This chic 42-inch set is decked out in an elegant 'frameless' design and comes with the sort of spec sheet that should have home movie fans instinctively reaching for their wallets. It would be easier to list what features this set hasn't got. Aside from the full HD panel and 100Hz processing, the TV can be set up for use with Bluetooth devices such as wireless headphones, or for accepting and playing back music or movies from suitably equipped multimedia devices.The connections roster includes four HDMI ports, which, while not an industry best, is probably more than most normal people will ever need. As well as the usual smattering of component video, Scart and digital audio options, plus an Ethernet port for wired transfer of JPEG or MP3 or video files. The thing to which LG would really like to draw your attention, though, is of course the LED backlighting.The system used here is edge, rather than direct lighting, which scores highly for cutting panel-depth (this one measuring an improbably slight 29mm) and contrast, not to mention efficiency when compared to conventional cold-cathode systems.Direct-lit systems, particularly RGB-dimmed ones, might claim ultimately superior performance, but you pay significantly more for them and they'll come in a much chunkier case.And finally, you can even set it up so it 'knows' (via Intelligent Sensor 2) whether or not anyone is in the room watching it in order to help cut down energy wastage. If there's no one in the room, it'll switch itself off. The sternest test of a display can often be how well it copes with the humbler stuff, and the lowest common denominator in the video department is standard-definition Freeview.While clearly not the most nourishing diet for a set such as this, digital terrestrial broadcasts polish up rather nicely.Whereas many thoroughbred sets seem to regard this sort of thing as beneath them, the LG is able to unearth its (limited) strengths and iron out many of the weaknesses.Detail, for a start, is not bad at all. The pictures are neatly scaled and fore and background information is picked out carefully.SD Freeview qualityEdge discipline is also good; all too often bog-standard broadcasts are a shaky, mottled mess, with all manner of ghosting, blocking and edge-noise, but the 42SL9000 manages to keep most of that in check when delivering solid, well-ordered images that, watched from a sensible distance, are clean and easy on the eye.And, while there is clearly a lot going on to make them this way, the images never have that strained, overcooked look that indicates processing systems working at the very limits of their abilities. Colours are accurate, with everything from the drab, real-world tones of daytime programming, the garish hues of children's television and everything in between handled with equal dexterity.Mass-produced studio-bound fare such as the Jeremy Kyle Show, often look nasty, with the hash lighting combining with the modest production values to hideous effect.Here, though, the worst excesses are kept in check and the skin-tones on display, so often rendered as a kind of mottled, tapioca sludge, look at least as if they belong to human beings rather than waxworks.The lack of digital dross around edges or corners is also notable and there is little or no colour bleeding. There isn't much to put the set's black level capabilities to the test, but more of them later. One flaw that announces itself with Freeview and goes on to reappear, to greater or lesser degrees with more sophisticated source material, is motion judder. Any slowish, deliberate pan, particularly at right angles to any on-screen straight lines, causes noticeable judder.It won't ruin your enjoyment of what is an otherwise decent performance, but does pencil in a faint question mark against LG's 100Hz MotionFlow system. HD picture qualitySwitching to high-definition broadcasts is like shifting up several gears at once. The detail is suddenly so exacting as to be almost unsettling.When watching standard def, the brain seems to be expecting a certain degree of imperfection and adjusts itself accordingly so that what you end up watching seems to be an immediately acceptable facsimile of reality.With HD on a set as good as this, the level of detail on display means that mental leap is no longer required and for the first few seconds one is taken slightly aback by the extra degree of detail.While having more to look at is undeniably a good thing, the side effects aren't always entirely welcome. Sports presenters are unceremoniously outed as careworn middleaged men with dandruff, while live-action characters on children's programmes can suddenly look less like cuddly characters from a madcap faraway world and more like actors in slightly shop-soiled suits with visible bobbling. Watch something that was made with HD in mind, though and prepare to be well and truly dazzled.Prestige BBC nature documentaries look fabulous, with the swooping helicopter shots of savannah ice sheets of which these sorts of programmes are so fond taking in an almost mind-boggling amount of detail and texture.So much so, in fact, that you will find yourself missing large chunks of narration as you marvel at just how far into the Grand Canyon or across the Pacific Ocean it is possible to peer.The fur on Arctic Foxes, the pollen on a honey bee's legs and the shimmer and sparkle of water running over rocks all deploy the XD Engine and every one of the panel's 2million+ pixels to marvellous effect, making you wonder how you managed to get by with plain old standard def for all those years. ColoursColours are also exemplary. The 42SL9000 is able to flip between the drab antiseptic tones of BBC hospital drama, Getting On, to the ochre, dustbowl hues of The Human Journey's African-set stages without skipping a beat and without showing any kind of preference for either end of the spectrum. Aerial shots of the English countryside in the recent Rivers series, while not as spectacular as some of the more exotic locations, are absolutely spot on, with the sort of greens, browns and greys that are hardwired into the native imagination receiving a nuanced, satisfying treatment. Blends of one shade into the next are seamless, without any visible banding or separation into areas of varying saturation and the whole palette hangs together more or less perfectly. Black levels are also impressive, transcending LCD's usually rather tepid approximations and resolving varying degrees of darkness, rather than merely suffusing gloomier pictures with a single, uniform shade. Motion, however, still looks a trifle suspect. A sequence of surfers riding the Severn Bore from left to right across the frame in Rivers contains more than a little bit of glitching. Again, it's not sufficiently pronounced to spoil the overall effect, but once noticed is hard to ignore completely. DVD upscalingGoing back to DVD after Freesat HD feels like something of a retrograde step, but the 42SL9000 scales up the reduced resolution to something close to, if not a dead ringer for, hi-def.The careering mountain-side car chase at the start of Fast and Furious, for example, is rendered in enough detail to make you heart leap as you discover the scale of the drop awaiting the runaway petrol truck and the colours are rich, faithful and utterly cinematic. Crank the quality back up to Blu-ray and everything good about HD broadcasts applies, with the native 1080p source adding a bit more eye-popping detail on top.The motion issue remains, but given both LCD and Blu-ray's well-documented difficulties in this department, it would seem churlish to knock a mark off for this hardly crippling flaw. Now that flatscreen television pictures have equalled, if not surpassed CRT sets in just about every department, the only thing that still has us occasionally hankering for the bulky old sets of yore is the sound quality.Ray-tube-driven sets might have weighed a ton and occupied about a quarter of your living space, but those large echoey cabinets not only provided the physical space in which to mount decent speaker drivers, but also the several cubic feet of air for it to bounce around in.The advent of flatscreens, particularly the most recent superslim generation, has robbed the average television set of any approaching decent audio. So when you audition an LCD that's no wider than a cigarette packet at its widest point and with no visible speaker grille to boot, hopes for a rollicking audio ride are, naturally, on the low sideMeaty mid-range The LG manages to exceed, without entirely confounding expectations: there is a surprising amount of volume at your disposal, with enough welly for most normal-sized rooms at around 50 per cent of the way up. The muscle is not, however, backed up by any appreciable depth, with little or no low-end rumble to underpin things like explosions.The sound also gets a little harsh when cranked, with mid-range and treble stuff, becoming flat and shouty. You can go most of the way up before things really start to deteriorate, though and general fidelity is good, although the audio 'image' is locked rather too closely to the screen, existing in two dimensions rather than three.The various pseudo-surround sound options on offer do little to alleviate this and tend to push less aggressive components of soundtracks, like dialogue, towards the back of the mix. Still, measured against its peers, the 42SL9000 has a perfectly workmanlike sound system that will cope easily with broadcasts and won't by any means disgrace itself with movies.It would be a shame, however, not to do those excellent pictures the courtesy of matching them up to a decent home cinema system for anything more challenging than your everyday TV viewing. More than a thousand pounds is towards the pricier end of the scale for a 42-inch flatscreen these days, particularly when you consider what Panasonic can do with plasma for this sort of money.You would expect something suitably high-end for your cash and that is exactly what the LG 42SL9000 provides.It can do everything you could every reasonably ask of a television, packs one of the best performances currently available and wraps it up in one of the most desirable chassis we've ever seen. That is manages all of this while remaining so democratically user-friendly makes that grand or so seem very well spentBrilliant interface LG set a standard a while ago that several manufacturers lost no time in following.The wonderfully clear, 'tablets' interface employed on the company's recent sets is an absolutely joy to navigate, with clear, unambiguous graphics marrying up with a logical, intuitive system architecture and an excellent (backlit) remote control that a five-year-old could use. Helpful touches including a Picture Wizard and a simplified manual saved to the set's built-in memory ensure that even the least technically minded viewer is able to get the set installed and adjusted to his or her liking without difficulty.An almost bottomless set of 'advanced' options await the more adventurous videophile, however, with options such as colour temperature, gamma and black level adjustment and colour gamut sitting alongside a comprehensive array of pre-sets and modes. We liked: The 42SL9000 is one of the most imaginatively featured sets around at the moment.With state of the art panel spec, class-leading processing and an impressively effective LED backlighting system, plus all sorts of genuinely useful touches such as Bluetooth connectivity and one of the best operating systems ever.Detail and colours are superb, black levels are good and the whole is wrapped up in a super stylish cabinet. We disliked: Blacks are still a little short of the effortless profundity achieved by plasma and there are motion glitching issues with which to contend.Audio is a little weedy, with little sense of depth. It is also rather expensive, but this criticism only applies if budget is your main concern. Verdict: A lovely looking, extravagantly specified and immensely capable set that should appeal to discerning casual viewers and demanding videophiles alike.This review was written in conjunction with:What Video & Hi-Def TV magazineRelated LinksTechRadar's reviews guaranteeMore HDTV reviewsSubscribe to What Video magazineRelated StoriesReview: LG 22LU4000Review: Panasonic TX-L19X10Review: Cello C2698DVBRReview: Panasonic TX-L37G10Review: Philips 37PFL9604

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