Never have I seen such schizophrenic reviews as with this TV and on this website: "It's great," "It's the worst TV ever," "I love this TV," "I will never buy LG again!" I have had the 42 inch version for a little over a week now and thought I would weigh in.
Let's start with the most common complaint: the sound. The sound has adequate volume, but it doesn't have any richness or bass to it. When I was in the bedroom and my wife had the sound up so loud I couldn't concentrate on my work (I work out of my home), I had to ask her to turn the sound down. So, yes the sound is bad, but not as bad as people make out. The volume is adequate, and the sound is OK for watching talk shows, Dr. Oz, and the morning news shows. In reading various TV reviews, lousy sound is by far the most common complaint. Flat screen TV speakers just can't match larger speakers. Of course a sound system makes this a non-issue, but I realize that some folks spent all they could afford on the TV and don't want to go out and spend another 200 - 300 dollars on a sound system or bar. NO PROBLEM. The thing that is so nice about this TV is that it has an audio out 1/8 inch port. This means any computer speakers can be used. You can even turn off the TV speakers, set your computer speakers on "variable" and the volume control on the remote will control the sound coming from your computer speakers. I hooked up a CA 2.1 system (two speakers plus a subwoofer) and it increased the sound quality about a zillion times. And I only paid about $20 for these. Go to ebay and type in the search box "2.1 speakers" and you will have all kinds of choices. Try the Logitech or Altec Lansing for very nice speakers (25 - 50 dollars) or for especially good speakers get the Klipsch ones (60 -90 dollars). Or if you can't afford this, go to some garage sales when the weather turns warmer and you'll soon see a system. I plugged in some ancient speakers I bought this way for $3 and the sound went from bad to great. So there is no reason to diss this TV over the sound.
The picture is not great coming out of the box, but after tweaking the settings it becomes very, very nice. Probably Samsung has it beat by a bit, but this TV is nothing to sneer at. Watching HD streaming shows from Netflix is so pleasurable, compared to the non-HD TV we had before. Even old Andy Griffith shows on DVD look really nice when run through my upconverting DVD player. I watched the Dallas Cowboys get beat by the Giants on Sunday evening (a real heartbreaker) and the picture was beautiful. The TrueMotion was doing its thing and there was no blurring at all that I could notice. The passes, long and short, were very clear, along with everything else.
I suspect the reason some are criticizing the picture is that out of the box it is nothing to brag about. The reason is simple: they have the energy saving feature turned on and the backlight settings turned very low. Apparently LG is so eager to be environmentally-correct they give as default settings the lowest energy-using settings possible, which is pretty stupid, in my opinion, and leads to a lot of bad reviews by folks who don't bother to try to adjust the settings.
IF YOU WANT A NICE PICTURE THE FIRST THING TO DO IS TO TURN THE ENERGY SAVING FEATURE OFF AND TURN THE BACKLIGHT UP TO AT LEAST 80 OR BETTER. Here are settings I find useful, for you to try: energy saving - off, backlight - 85, contrast - 90, brightness - 55, sharpness - 65, color - 71, tint - 0, color temp - cool, fresh contrast - medium, fresh color - low, noise correction - medium, gamma - medium, black level - not an option with these settings, eye care - off, real cinema - on. You may find settings you like better, but I can pretty much guarantee you will like these settings more than those that LG has established.
And the nice thing is that each picture mode: standard, cinema, sports, and game are all user-adjustable. So you don't have to accept their settings (and their settings are really awful).
Speaking of the picture settings, some have complained about not being able to adjust the TrueMotion. This is technically true, but according to a review by Finkel (and it sounds right to me) they have set TrueMotion at full power in the Sports mode (so no blurring of baseballs, basketballs, etc.), partial power in the cinema mode, and completely off in the game mode (so it doesn't slow down the fast input). So by changing your mode you change the degree of TrueMotion.
Summary: this really is a nice TV, but you have to fool with it a little to get the picture right. There's not much you can do about the internal sound, but you have so many options for speakers, it's hardly a worry. Unless you get a "clinker" most folks should really enjoy this TV. After reading so many of the reviews, it reminds me of Rodney Dangerfield: "I don't get no respect."
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This TV is not just a great deal. It is more than fine
I have had a Toshiba Regza LCD, an LG both plasma and LCD 47'' and 2 TCLs (32 and 40''). A couple of days ago, I purchased this beautiful LG LV4400 for a little under $500 here on Amazon. Despite some bad reviews about how poor the picture is or how bad the sound quality is to the extent of comparing it to a plastic transistor radio!Pros:----I have to say that starting by the box it came in, this TV is just beautiful. It is so slim (being an LED lit LCD) and it even come in a slim beautiful box that matches that. Nice touch LG.Then the assembly of the stand (it is a swivel by the way which is a nice feature for a sub $500 TV) was very easy, just assemble both pieces of the stand first then attach that to the TV. You will use all 8 supplied smaller screws. The single larger screw is to attach the stand itself to your table if you like to do that. I find no need for this as the stand is pretty stable.I was able to hook up all the devices that I have in under 1 min and I was up and running.The very nice thing is that the analog audio input could be used to hook up a wireless headphone like the one I have. And then using the menu you have the choice to either make the sound level affected by the volume control on your TV or not. The default setting is to not be affected by the sound volume level on the TV set which I find very nice as I can mute my sound on the TV and I still get the sound on the wireless headphone. Great for watching at night when everyone is asleep. The speakers on the TV are not muted but you have an option to turn them off if you like in case you are using this analog output to connect to an AV receiver (there is a digital optical output for that if you like) or outside speakers. That was very nice and you do not see this functionality in many TVs out there.Now to talk about the picture quality and the sound quality. The picture is a bit warm and reddish when you first open this TV for the first time. You would want to go into the main menu and not the Qmenu and set the temperature to cold and then go about and set brightness, contrast etc... to your liking and then go into the advanced setting where you can even tweak the picture even more. Believe me, once you are done with that, the picture quality is just awesome. Check the picture that I am adding for this TV for a dark lighting shot from the movie 'The Others' (showing Nicole Kidman) on Netflix via ROKU.As for the sound, it is not great but I didn't expect any better sound from such a thin plastic enclosure. But the sound is not also bad or transistor like as other reviewers are claiming (I understand that people have different standards). To me, the sound is very acceptable and clear and I am very satisfied with it. Again, you still have the option to hook up to external speakers both digital and analog and this way you would have a perfect experience.It is nice that it has a game mode. Most TVs have this but for example the SONY NSX GT1 for some weird reason lacks such a mode!Cons:-----The only downside for this TV is the lack of 'Expand picture' in the 'picture Ratio' menu. There is a zoom but it doesn't do the trick for those older movies on Netflix that would display in 4:3 format and there is nothing you could do on this TV to change that as far as I know. The other TV that I have (TCL) has a 'Format' button where you can choose a setting called 'Expand' which does all the magic of expanding this resistant 4:3 picture to fill your pretty 16:9 HD display. The TCL TV is the only TV set that I have seen this very nice feature in.Also I would have liked 1 extra HDMI input to have a total of 4 HDMIs instead of just 3.Aslo note that the component input shares the audio input and one of the video inputs with the composite input so you only have a choice to use one or the other and not both at the same time.There doesn't seem to be a way to skip unused inputs. And you can't manually name inputs as well, you choose name from a list like Game, Set top box, Satellite, PC, etc...Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to rename channels.On the remote control, the 4 way arrows are placed at the bottom of it which throws the remote off balance when you try to use it as when you click input and then move your fingers all the way down to the arrows to select an input. It is just a bad design. Otherwise the remote is okay and simple to find keys on.Bottom line:----------Despite these shortcomings, but for the price I paid and the features and quality that I am getting, I am more than willing not only to live with this TV but to really enjoy it. It is a great TV at a great price.
