Customer Reviews

LG 42LB5D 42-inch 1080p LCD Flat Panel HDTV

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have been researching TV's for quite awhile trying to determine the best one for me. I have watched the technology continually improve and am amazed by the progress. I finally decided to take the plunge and purchase a television and was certain I was going to purchase a DLP set. I made one of my many trips to the local electronics store to do more comparisons of certain models I had picked out and had not even considered an LCD TV, let alone an LG television. I was walking along the displays when my girlfrined actually pointed out the TV to me. I took a brief look and didn't see anything special and it was only upon closer inspection that I discovered what an awesome TV the LG 42LB5D is.

First, I set all of the neighboring 42" Televisions to the same HDTV signal (which anyone can do- just select the input on the tv's until they all show the same signal). I was never a fan of LCD TV's due to the pixelation in fast scenes-usually sports. This TV did the best job of displaying fast-moving sequences with very little pixelation, even better than the nearby Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, and Sharp models. My curiosity was piqued. I don't know if it is because of the proprietary software they use to render the image or if it is because the LCD panel has a 5ms response time. In case you don't know, a 5ms response time for an LCD panel is very, very fast. Alot of the other manufacturers have an 8ms response time. The faster the response time of the panel, the better it is able to render fast changing images.

Next, I switched the channels to a standard definition signal. Since most of what is on cable and satellite is broadcast in SDTV, it would be a good idea to pick a TV that does a good job of displaying that signal without making it look so bad. This television does an amazing job of displaying SDTV signals. Of course, it'll never be as good as a plain old CRT TV, but it does one heckuva job! Now I was getting really impressed.

The colors were bright and looked as good as the brand new Samsung LNT-4265, though the Samsung had a little deeper blacks. I don't think the extra few hundred dollars I would have had to pay would be worth that. Especially considering the better pixelation performace I noticed on the LG. (Pixelation annoys the heck out of me, by the way.)

I started checking out the specs. It has a clear QAM tuner that allows you to receive digital cable signals without the cable box. That usually means you can get all of the local network (ABC, CBS, NBC, CW, PBS) hi-def and secondary digital channels for free over your cable line (as long as you're not using a cable box connected to your TV). After I took it home, I found I had all of those channels. It has 3 HDMI inputs. It accepts 1080p via HDMI, Component, and VGA inputs. The VGA input was especially important to me because I have the XBOX 360 HD-DVD player and the only way to view movies in 1080p is via the VGA output from the 360. If not for that, I'd only be able to view my HDDVD's in 720p or 1080i.

I am incredibly pleased with this purchase and I gotta thank my girlfriend for noticing it or it would have slipped right past me. I know to take a review from a website with a grain of salt because you never really know who is writing it. The only thing I can tell you is to find a store that has one on display and do exactly what I did. I guarantee you'll see what I'm talking about.

Buying a new TV is akin to spending half your weekend buying a new car. Its exhausting. After a lot of studying of consumer Reports and visiting a half dozen retailers, and fighting off the geeko sales people who know little, we settled on the LG. I was nervous about buying a piece of equipment from a manufacturer I've only heard of but have never had the pleasure of letting them into my house. LG equipment tends to be a bit better in cost and I think I've figured out at least one reason why. It has nothing to do with quality or ease of use either. Your first clue is after you open the box up and see whats inside. Nothing except the set, some packing and the small accessories box which contains bare bones essentials, just what you need, not what you don't. The power cord for the set (gotta have that), the remote (more about that in a minute) and an operators manual. Thats it. Have a nice day. The manual is a shortened version of the big 100 plus page version that you can download off the LG website which is by the way, easy to navigate. I recommend you get that. Its got some info thats helpful, plus if HD is a bit too wild west for you, it helps you understand what all the buzz words are about. The manual that comes with the set tends to be a bit too brief in places. The power cord is somthing you may want to consider replacing at the outset. Yes, I'm sure it meets all the UL requirements and whatnot but I have a problem with electrical cords that shine like they came from a kids toy. It didnt seem to have that "heavy duty" look and feel to it. You'll need some cables too if you haven't got them already. Component Video types are the way to go and you may as well cough up some bucks and get the HDMI cable as well. About 75-90 bucks. Don't go cheap on this piece of wire. Its all digital and it needs to be quality. Digital signals have no tolerance for just an "ok" connection. 1080P is all but here and thats where that cable will be used. The monster brand is overpriced but they do build a damn good cable. LG Tech support. Great! I had some setup questions (mostly around the remote) that I needed to get answered so I gave them a call. A couple of prompts later and you get a real voice. Speaks English and lives in Alabama and not a foreign country where they change their names to sound hip and American... Very polite, professional, patient (thats a biggie with me) and didn't have to keep putting me on hold to go ask his supervisor a question about my question. I gave him the model number and bam-bam he knew everything about that set like he owned one himself.. Perfect. Thats the way to keep a customer. One of the reasons I wont buy a Toshiba anything ever again. They lost the help-the-customer-be-happy" formula a few years ago. Also a reason that Toshiba products are slowly disappearing from retailer shelves..but I digress.
Ok so what about the "experience". Excellent picture. After you do a few tweaks from the on screen menu ( piece of cake) its ready to rock. First class picture quality all the way. AND, just like it looked in the showroom. If you're going to go with the on-board audio, its "ok". It won't blow your eardrums out but it's passable. LG is a company thats been slowly getting it right and I hope they dont mess it all up with deteriorating quality and bad customer service like some others TV manufacturers. I prefer doing business with tech companies that dont make me mad and slam the phone down. Service after the sale is what keeps me coming back to any manufacturer and if LG keeps it together and doesn't implode like some other brands have done that we all know about, then they're going to be around awhile.
***UPDATE***
I've had this unit a bit over a year now and everything is still A-OK.
No problems. None. The picture is still as crisp as the day I brought it home and the settings stay put where there suppose to, and don't drift and need tweaking and retweaking like some other models do.I still reccomend this system as a superior TV for the medium to medium large living room. Tip: Like any electronics, keep it clean. Dust and home entertainment systems are best buddys. If you ask any service tech what causes failures and generates service calls, its more often than not dirt-caused.

I researched a lot of HDTVS and even took one back before I settled on the LG, and I've had it six months. The picture was fantastic, due to the 10,000 to 1 contrast ratio and the "engine" that converts even SD signals into near HD picture. I have Dish's HD package and the picture is great for both HD and SD, and I also use the OTA tuner and the picture from OTA HD signals is also fantastic - using an inexpensive radio shack OTA antenna. What sold me on this TV was the great picture, first and foremost, that it was 1080p, that it had 3 HDMI inputs and a PC connections. The TV is easy to configure, and the remote is great as well. I have no complaints at all. The sound is also pretty good -- I unhooked my home theater system to use the LG's speakers, which IMHO seemed better.

I did some research before I went and bought a LCD TV. I was torn between this one and a Sharp. I am glad I went with this one. I think what sold me was the 10000:1 contrast and the 5ms response. Although there is a Sharp out there with a 4ms response, the contrast wasn't there. I am very happy with this TV. The reviews I have read on other site about this TV have been outstanding, and that is why I bought it. Just shop around for it, some sites have unadvertised internet only specials and knock the price down even more. It was very easy to put on the wall too. I would recommend this TV to any one.

After seeing HDTV in my friend's house, I have to get one. After two days of quick research, I settled on this TV for the brand name (we have several LG cell phones) and the reasonable price. I bought it online so it is about $200 below national chains. It took about five days to arrive. I hooked it up and let it scan with the cable. It got all the analog but the CADTV side seemed to get some channels with pictures and sound go in and out. I seemed to recall a Comcast brochure stating the local HD channels are provided for basic limited service. I have basic extended service so I should get those along with the analog channels. The two splitters installed by the builder (before using Comcast)have markings 5MHz-800MHz and 5MHz-1GHz. I moved`the cable around to bypass the 5MHz-800MHz splitter and finally got two good HD channels, ABC and Discover, with the clear QAM tuner. Other channels went in and out. Suspecting this cutting off the high frequency for the HD channel, I bought a digital splitter (5MHz-2.3GHz) from Home Depot with enough out connectors to replace both old splitter. Wow, got very clear 20+ unscrambled digital channels with seven or eight HD channels including ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, PBS and Discovery. Pictures with the HD channels were fantastic, and just perfect, even when you are close to the set. To watch Std. Def. channels, you have to stay about ten feet away, then it is just as good as the other 50" Hitachi analog TV I have. The LG replaced a 27" in the sunroom. Now I have the urge to replace the Hitachi also in the family room.
I also hooked up the PC secondary monitor output to the RGB terminal. Played Netflix "Watch it Now". I got the full 1080P resolution and the picture from the internet streaming is very close to HD. Picture is as clear as HD but the color is not as vivid. Of course, this must be due to some compression necessitated for internet streaming. As a PC monitor, its white is whiter and the black is blacker than my CRT monitor. Fonts are crisp and sharp. I have to turn up the volume for the sound, but I believe this is because of the inadequate sound strength fed by the PC. The sound is very clear even I turned up the volume to 2/3 of the volume bar.
I hooked up an external hard disk to the USB terminal. With the MediaHost, the pictures which were from 5M and 12M digital cameras have never looked as good as on this TV. Color is at least five times more vivid than the computer monitor. The pictures have more depth. Details on the big monitor just stand out so much better. This is the best way to show digital pictures, but expect a delay of the TV responding to your clicks on the remote compared to using a PC, another way to show pictures.
The regular DVD player also shows better picture with the component input than the analog TV. I have not used HDMI inputs in this one week of ownership so I cannot comment on that.
I am sure there are other HDTV's as good as this one, but now I think the LG TV is just perfect. I read many comments complaining about the inability to adjust pictures and audio. Acutally, if one uses USERS setting instead of the predefined ones, one will be able to adjust just about everything.

LG is well-known in Asia and LG.Philips LCD is the second largest LCD manufacturer in the world behind Samsung. They made the most durable cell phone I've ever owned, the C-2000. My experience plus the Consumer Reports recommendation is why I made my HD conversion with their new 42" TV.

I've had excellent results with HDTV programs on this set. 1080i programming is nothing short of amazing. Blacks are blacker than most LCD sets out there and colors are often brighter than in real life.

You have to get an HDMI cable- a simple $25 cable from Fry's really helped to minimize pixelation during HD sports programming from my Comcast cable box. If you use a cable splitter, make sure you have a 5MHZ-2GHZ or higher splitter, or you may lose HD programming for the QAM tuner.

A DVI to HDMI cable hooked up to my computer's video card allows me to view online programs and Netflix streams in their full HD glory.

Out of the box settings were oversaturated for most programs, a little manual tinkering while watching HD channels worked wonders. There are a lot of customizable options to achieve your ideal picture. You get 2 customizable user settings in addition to the standard ones.

The remote is nicely laid out with easily accessible picture settings. Once you finish customizing, it's only seconds to change to your preferred format for any program. One caveat- it is not a true universal remote. It does not recognize Motorola cable boxes.

Standard definition tv was disappointing, but paying $600 more for a Sony was just ridiculous. The 480p upconvert from the cable box made it more tolerable. After 72 hours of burn in, the picture quality was much improved.

I do not yet have a HD-DVD/Blu-ray player, but will post the results after the industry decides on a standard.

Overall- I highly recommend this TV. Expect a decline in quality of standard programming (most non-major network shows). The trade-up to HD programs will leave you dreaming in HD.

I'm writing this review after owning this TV since it was put on store shelves in 2007. I have had no problems out of it, aside from the glitch that was in the original firmware. When looking for a TV at that time my goal was not to break two thousand for a 42 inch 1080p, and also have 1080p input via the VGA due to the lack of HDMI on the XBOX 360 at that time. I will list some positive, and negative points of this TV:

Pros:
-Support 1080p over component, VGA, and HDMI.
-Vivid colors and very crisp picture quality.
-Handles SD content very well.

Cons:
-Black Level is not deep.
-"Dynamic Contrast" is very obvious when doing it's task, is best when off.
-HDMI has issues with the Pre-June 2007 firmware and PC mode.
-The noise reduction filter is lackluster at best.

Additional Points:
-BAD CUSTOMER SUPPORT!
Thanks to the AVSForums, it was discovered the HDMI issue with PC mode over HDMI was a firmware issue. This issue could be resolved by turning the TV off and back on when using the HDMI, but that is not a very convenient solution. When contacting customer support about this, they not only lied about there being a newer firmware, but I was also told by one of the agents that I was "making up" these issues because they had the TV and did not have any of the issues I was having >.>...I was able to fix the issue at a later time due to someone on the AVSForums sharing a unlinked webpage on the LG site having firmware upgrades and instructions. Although, this was not shared until about 1 year after owning the TV.

Breakdown:
When this TV came out, it was the only TV under two thousand with 1080p support on component, VGA, and HDMI. I am a happy owner of this TV and the overall quality and build of this TV is great, but at its current pricetag on Amazon (new and used) it is not worth the cost. With the same money you can buy a better TV that isn't almost 2 years old and outdated based on the newer sets.

Reason for Rating:
Even though the TV may be outdated if you are looking for a TV now, the fact that it is and has been a great quality TV. After almost 2 years of using this TV, it has earned a 4 star rating based on it's overall performance.

I've had this TV for over a year. Money can't buy happiness, but rarely has it come this close for relatively little. Other reviewers point out the inconvenience with selecting inputs. That is correct; I expect new designs to do better. However, unless you are constantly jumping from one input to another, that is a minor issue. HD cable, my (cheap) Sony DVD player, and input from my computer all look fantastic.
Also, other reviewers suggest avoiding cheap HDMI cables, wanting you to spend at least $75. Digital does not need overpriced cables (you can buy a very decent computer video card for $75, and it is a lot more complicated than some wire and connectors). My several dollar cable has worked perfectly.

This television is fantastic!! The picture is sharp, it has plenty of input ports, and the price is not too expensive. Then, I added HD to my satellite provider, and it took a great picture and make it phenomenal! I would highly recommend this item to anyone looking for a HDTV.

I have had my LG 42LB5D for one month, and so far I love it. The picture and sound are both excellent. I have seen some complaints from other reviewers about inconvenience with selecting inputs (you have to scroll through all available inputs with the remote), but it takes about 5 seconds and I don't consider it a problem. The TV arrived on time (I bought from Amazon and it was shipped from TigerDirect) and was easy to set up. I am using a Tivo HD DVR, a Playstation 2, and a standard DVD player. They all look and sound great. None of these devices takes advantage of the 1080p capability of the LG 42LB5D (the Tivo maxes out at 1080i), but the HD channels look fantastic on the TV (especially football!). I did a lot of shopping around and research before buying, and after using the TV for a month I think I made the right choice. This is an excellent TV at a very reasonable price.