LG 50PX4DR-H User Manual

EGear

Performance Review

BY GRANT CLAUSER

Plug and Play Plasma

LG PLASMA TV WITH BUILT-IN DIGITAL VIDEO RECORDER

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The 50-inch 50PX4DR plasma TV from LG is a great example of chocolate col-

liding with peanut butter to make a most appealing candy combo. This big flat panel display is not only a sexy-looking wallmountable plasma TV (with antenna and cable HDTV tuners), but it also includes a built-in 160 GB hard drive and an on-screen program guide which turns the whole thing into a digital video recorder—it’s essentially like having a high-definition TiVo without the extra settop-box or the extra monthly fee. A few other interesting perks make it even more mouthwatering.

Plasma TVs are the lust-for product of the day, and DVRs are life support for busy TV watchers. The former allows you to have a large, high resolution display without taking up the space of a player piano, while the latter lets you go about your real life by digitally recording all of your favorite shows for viewing at a more convenient time. As the owner of two DVRs, I can attest to the technology’s addictive nature—once you get used to watching TV on your own schedule, the thought of going back to the old way sends shivers down your spine.

This particular combo is an industry first for plasma, though the concept was pioneered several years ago when Panasonic put a ReplayTV DVR into a 36-inch analog TV. That product was a wonder at the time, but so were DVRs, and the price was a bit steep for what people thought a 36-inch TV should cost, DVR or not. At $7,999,

LG’s plasma/DVR is in line

LG 50PX4DR Plasma HDTV/DVR

$7,999

1366x768 resolution

5000:1 contrast ratio

1000 cd/m2 brightness

nine-format memory card reader

Digital photo and MP3 playback

ATSC, QAM and NTSC tuners

CableCARD Picture-in-picture XD image engine

60,000 hour panel life Two 15-watt speakers

SRS TruSurround

HDMI

IEEE 1394

Burn-in prevention

www.lgusa.com

with what one would expect to pay for a good plasma TV anyway, so the price isn’t much of a shocker. This model, by the way, is one of a line of plasma/DVR combos from LG. There’s a bigger 60-inch version, and both sizes are available in the silver finish shown here or in black.

As a plasma TV, this model has a good selection of standard and unique features. LG says it has addressed concerns about plasma panel lifespan and image burn-in. The company rates its panel life (the amount of time before the panel’s brightness is reduced by

half) at 60,000 hours—about 20 years of normal use. To defend against burn-in (when static images get permanently stuck in the panel’s phosphors), LG shifts the image up, down, left and right, imperceptively, a pixel at a time, so static images are never really static and don’t get stuck. The set will also flash a negative image on the screen to counteract any burn-in that might have occurred.

The 50PX4DR features built-in, non-removable speakers—if you plan on making this unit the center of a home theater system, you’ll have to put up with the built-in speakers staring at you anyway. If you’re looking for a simpler solution, the two 15-watt speakers will more than satisfy. They won’t provide the surround experience of a true home theater system, but as TV speakers go, they sound quite good, and are enhanced by SRS TruSurround XT audio processing.

On the video side, you have the basic controls, plus LG’s Easy Set option, which offers pre-determined video settings for different viewing situations—movie, sports, night time and video game. If you’re smart, you’ll avoid these and customize video settings yourself using a set-up DVD like Video Essentials or Avia. Using just the basic controls, I was able to get the TV to a 75K color temperature, which isn’t perfect, but close enough. A full calibration would require use of the service menu, which a typical user can’t access.

Instead of Faroudja’s DCDi system for video processing, which LG has utilized in the past, this model incorporates the company’s own XD engine to clean up video signals. In watching DVDs and standard TV signals, XD did a very good job filtering out MPEG artifacts, reducing video noise and enhancing black-level performance. There are seven aspect ratio options to control the shape of the picture on the TV, but the button on the remote to change aspects is hidden in an awkward place under a flip panel. There are two RF inputs for antenna and cable plus a slot for a CableCARD, which you can use instead of a cable set-top-box.

Connection options include composite, S-video and component

EGear

Performance Review

(two), plus PC RGB, two HDMI inputs and two IEEE 1394 jacks (for connecting a DVD recorder, D-VHS or digital camcorder). Audio connections include a digital input and a digital output, plus standard stereo ports.

The heart of the product isn’t the hard drive, but rather the user interface, specifically the on-screen guide. If you have to scratch your head and refer to the manual to figure out how to record a show or find one you’ve already recorded, the product isn’t fulfilling its duty. While ReplayTV and Windows Media Center adherents may put up a fuss, the real king of the DVR world is TiVo. It’s made the process of finding and recording shows, and then finding recordings, so easy that my six-year-old daughter is already pretty proficient at it.

The TV Guide On-Screen feature provides the program guide and on-screen recording interface. In order to use the guide to check listings or schedule recordings, you must initialize it, then turn off the TV and leave it alone for the night while it populates channel listings. In my case, it actually took about two days for the program guide to fill in all of the blanks. Once that’s done, you can scroll around to see what’s playing and schedule recordings. The remote itself is adequate, but the buttons are small, with many hidden under a panel; there are no direct access buttons for switching inputs, either.

TV Guide On-Screen is no TiVo, but searching, recording and accessing recordings is fairly intuitive. It stores up to eight days of data. In the guide screen, you highlight a program you want to record and use the record button (or enter button) to indicate your recording preference. There are actually three ways to access your recorded shows: you can find them through TV Guide On-Screen, by pressing the recorded programs button on the remote, or by pressing the X Studio button, which brings up a number of other options as well. You can search for programs in standard genres—drama, comedy, mystery, et cetera—to find something in the future. The guide works well most of the time. There were some places where it had no information, and it’s not quite as intuitive as TiVo’s service, but you don’t pay an extra $12.95 a month for it, which you do with TiVo and some cable company equivalents. At 160 GB, the hard drive can store about 13 hours of high-definition or 63 hours of standard-definition programs.

Like some other new TVs, this one reads camera memory cards

Terk HDTVlp Antenna

For this review I used a Terk HDTVlp indoor antenna. Why indoor? In our office where much of the testing takes place, there is no roof access. At my home, I can get up on the roof, but I don’t want to. Small indoor antennas are more convenient because they don’t require me to risk my neck on the roof. The HDTVlp is only about five-inches high and 27-inches long, so it doesn’t take up much room, and can easily be hidden behind something. The HDTVlp is both UHF and VHF, bi-directional and includes an integrated low-noise amplifier for digital signals. It’s a bit unconventionallooking—not your typical rabbit ears. As stated in the review of the 50PX2DR plasma, this Terk antenna provided exceptional results. It pulled in more than 40 TV signals, 24 of which were digital signals. Of course I wanted to make sure it was the antenna, and not our 12-story location that did the trick, so I took the HDTVlp home to use on my own HDTV tuner. My home antenna is a Zenith Silver Sensor, another good indoor antenna. With that I can get seven digital channels. When I hooked up the new Terk and ran a channels scan I was able to pull in 12 channels. The difference was impressive and had me sold. Of course, my Silver Sensor is a $20 antenna and the HDTVlp is a $130 antenna, but considering that the HDTV programming you get off the air is free, that’s not such a bad deal.

in order to display instant slide shows. LG goes a bit further than most in that this set is compatible with nine different memory card types, so no matter what camera you use, it should be able to read the card. The set also reads MP3 music files from memory cards and plays them either through the built-in speakers or connected external speakers. The card slots are behind one of the speakers, but the TV swivels on its base so you can easily access them. You can even load pictures or music onto the hard drive. All of this is

accessible through the strangely-named X Studio button, which brings up a menu from which you select TV recordings, music or photos; you can also get into the other TV menus and the guide from there.

To get started with the TV, I first hooked up a Terk (by Audiovox) HDTVlp indoor antenna. Using the menu to scan for available digital signals was easy. From our 12th-floor location in downtown Philadelphia, I was able to pull in 24 digital signals from as far away as Atlantic City, Allentown and Reading. I attribute these amazing results to LG’s excellent tuner, Terk’s very effective antenna and our high location with no surrounding obstructions. Of course, less than half of the channels were actually broadcasting in HD, but those that were came in perfectly. You can also get HD via cable and a CableCARD.

I spent some time tweaking picture controls before really watching anything. High-def pictures looked fantastic—as good as I’ve seen on a plasma. Colors were intense without being over-saturated. Detail was very realistic and contrast was quite good, even in darker scenes. For DVD, I watched a bit of Alien Resurrection and an IMAX film on the Amazon. Both looked great, particularly the Amazon scenes of jungles and exotic animals. The dark, murky Alien Resurrection was wellconveyed, from saliva dripping from the alien’s mouth to the space station’s low-lit hallways.

Flat-panel TVs are compelling on their own, but this one goes beyond any I’ve seen. It does so much more than just offer a good picture; it’s by far the coolest plasma I’ve ever used. Sure, the feature does come with some compromises compared to TiVo, but it more than makes up for it in other areas. The list price of the package is a bit more than those of many 50-inch plasmas, but at the time of this writing, it was available for $5,999 from some major retailers, which puts it in line with the others. Plus, you get all of the bonus features.