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A knock-on effect of this is that it gives dark and bright scenes alike a greater sense of depth, helping HD movies look genuinely cinematic for much of the time, and drawing you more successfully into the world you’re watching.

Given how many LCD TVs we’re getting through our doors these days, it’s worth adding as a final positive comment that the 42PC1D handles motion extremely well, with none of the smearing common with LCD technology, and precious little of the fizzing noise still seen at times with plasma technology.

On the downside, the 42PC1D’s pictures are rather prone to noise. For instance, any MPEG noise in a standard definition digital feed - Sky or Freeview - tends to look rather exaggerated, despite the best efforts of the MPEG noise reduction and XD Engine processing. General grain is also quite apparent, even during HD viewing, and overall the picture just isn’t quite as sharp as we’d like – and again this applies to HD as well as standard def.

Sonically the 42PC1D is more consistent, having enough power, frequency range and sheer quality to rise quite comfortably to the challenge of a good action film sequence. A slight shortfall in the bass department stops the set reaching the heady audio heights of the finest-sounding TVs we’ve heard, but it’s better than you’ve any right to expect for the price.

Verdict

If you’ve managed to squirrel away £1,000 for your next TV, you were probably thinking the best you’d be able to get with it would be a decent 32in LCD TV. Happily, LG has other ideas. For while most previous sub-£1k 42in TVs the market has seen have been more or less pants, LG’s 42PC1D looks great, performs decently, and offers features and connections galore. Looks like those lovely Koreans have rewritten the TV pricing rule book again…

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