LG 42LF7700 HD TV Click here to WIN an LG 42in Freesat HD TV worth £900 LG might not be the first name that comes to mind when selecting an HD TV set – the massive marketing campaigns of Sony, Toshiba and Samsung have seen to that. However, its new 42LF7700 set provides impressive image quality and admirable ease of use at a competitive price. …
I'm not quite sure what you expected upscaling to give you. It can't create resolution that's not there in the first place. There is almost certainly some kind of digital filter in there to interpolate from 544 pixels up to 1920 for those crap SD sat channels that only provide 544 pixels of horizontal resolution, and a similar vertical filter to interpolate from 576 lines to 1080 lines. Perhaps LG just don't use that as a pointless marketing term.
... but back to the bad old days of pre-PVR Freeview, with a swanky digital signal and no way to record. Is there really anyone out there who only watches TV at time of broadcast? Yes, you can get a Freesat recorder, but there's umm, let's count them... one, right, and adding another £300 RRP to the already rather expensive bill.
Nice looking telly but I can't understand why you seem to make a big thing about being able to plug a computer (in this case Mac Mini) into the TV via DVI to HDMI. I mean it's part of the HDMI spec to be able to convert from DVI to HDMI. This is exactly how I have my home cinema PC plugged into my TV, bog standard NVidia Geforce 7300GS card with DVI into a DVI to HDMI cable (about £5 from eBuyer.com) and then into one of the HDMI sockets on the TV. Sure I don't get audio over DVI on this particular card but I just have an optical cable plugged into my home cinema receiver (which doesn't have HDMI anyway).
I can see the benefit of having Freesat HD built in, but to be honest I bet you could get a 1080p TV and a separate Freesat HD box (about £150 for a Humax box) for less than £900, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if you could get a Freesat HD PVR and 1080p TV for less than £900 if you shop around.
Rob
Rob
I'm not sure what the Ethernet port is for but given that my LG set has Bluetooth and a USB port for viewing photos and playing music, and also given that LG's sets run on Linux, it could be something quite interesting! My set also has an RS-232 serial port for external control.
"...the 42LF7700 also has a hybrid TV tuner that will allow you to connect a standard aerial in order to pick up either conventional analogue channels or the Freeview digital service."
Does it really have Freeview?
Also, the ethernet port may be non-operational, but is still part of the Freesat spec.
The Ethernet port is mandatory on Freesat devices, and will eventually be used to provide services like iPlayer, and enhanced interactivity.
iPlayer on Freesat is supposed to come later this year; the set could conceivably use the port for other things, like DLNA, but it should at least enable iPlayer.
Really though, unless you're desperate, why buy a new TV this year? Next year's models will have support for DVB-T2 and FreeviewHD as well
There's a difference between simple 'scaling' - increasing the size of the SD image to fill the larger HD resolution screen - and 'upscaling', which does indeed attempt to effectively increase the resolution of the original SD image (with the emphasis on 'attempt'...). The 42LF7700 does the former, but not the latter - though that's hardly a major criticism of a set in this price range.
As for the Ethernet interface - LG will only tell us that it's for 'future use with Freesat'.
Ethernet port is a prerequisite for Every Freesat Device. My Humax Freesat PVR has one also. Currently useless, potential mooted purpose is for a BBC iPlayer type interface. Maybe LG will make theirs more versatile?
Upscaling engines make a huge differnce when blowing a lo-def signal up to fill all of a more capable screen's pixels. eg, the Humax PVR is piss poor when outputting lo-def channels at 1080 via hdmi. If I feed my Panasonic screen with the raw low def signal via composite, the inbuilt graphics card does a much better job of filling in the pixel gaps,
"Really though, unless you're desperate, why buy a new TV this year? Next year's models will have support for DVB-T2 and FreeviewHD as well"
That's true, but the DVB-T2 signal won't be rolled out across the whole country from day 1 - it's fairly dependent on digital switchover, which means some parts of the country could be waiting 3 years to see a T2 signal.
There is also the *potential* to carry a lot more channels on a satellite link (Freesat has about 200 now), although obviously quantity and quality are not the same thing at all.
And then there are people in poor reception areas, where a satellite dish is a quick and painless solution.
So it isn't quite that cut-and-dried.
This bit of small print from the Reg competition to win this TV amuses me:
"You agree to answer five questions on camera concerning your experience with the 42LF7700 and to allow the resulting video to be shown by LG and Register Hardware."
Isn't that a bit hopeful that the winner is going to be a) photogenic and b) vaguely comfortable in front of a camera?
"Tell us why you like this fine LG product?"
"Ermmm... Ummm... well.... it's a flipping great screen; innt?"
As anyone who's tried to plug their pooter into some Samsungs that recommend a certain HDMI port for DVI->HDMI connections. The EDID (resolution table) for those nominated ports has the full native res of the panel exposed for a nice 1:1 desktop. Other ports often don't.
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