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If you'd prefer a film example, the unfortunate folk aboard the HD DVD of Poseidon fall around much more clearly as the ship capsizes than they would without 100Hz to help.

Even better, the improvements in clarity are delivered without the edge ‘feathering' that blights Samsung's Movie Plus system. In fact, other than a rare ghosting effect around very small, very fast moving objects, like a mid-flight golf ball, the 100Hz engine runs as cleanly as a whistle.

Turning our attention next to that outlandish 25,000:1 contrast ratio claim, it does, of course, end up looking insanely optimistic. But - and it's a healthy but - that doesn't mean the 46F86BD's black levels aren't very good indeed by LCD standards. In fact, they're quite possibly the best black levels we've yet seen on an LCD TV.

Dark parts of the picture actually can look something like black rather than grey as is the case with most LCD screens. What's more, they retain more shadow detail than normal, which helps dark scenes enjoy a better sense of depth.

Good black levels usually mean good colours, and lo and behold, the 46F86BD's colours are first rate. The vibrant hues of, um, Chicken Little (look, animated films on HD discs are in short supply right now, OK?!) blaze off the screen, but at the same time the range and subtlety of the set's colour response is such that quieter tones, like the skin of the actors as they swim for their lives late on in Poseidon, nearly always look completely natural.

The set's full HD resolution also plays its part in the 46F86BD's colour talents, as the extra pixel density enables it to produce extremely fine blends with none of the striping effect seen with lesser TVs.

Not surprisingly the full HD pixel count makes its presence felt, too, in the 46F86BD's presentation of fine detail. With HD sources the image looks superbly sharp and replete with texture, as the set delivers every drop of picture data on offer. It helps, too, that there's no significant video noise to get in the way of the detail, thanks to the processing-free mapping of the UK's 1,920 x 1,080 HD sources to the screen's 1,920 x 1,080 pixels.

Before we try and dig out some dirt on the 46F86BD's pictures, its sound also deserves a round of applause. The speakers produce a really lovely crisp, detailed but above all well-rounded soundstage that leaves most flat TV rivals sounding flimsy and insipid by comparison.

And so to that dirt we mentioned. Really, this is pretty much limited to two things. First, while we generally like a lot of what the 100Hz engine does, it only really gets to grips with moving objects within a frame. If the entire frame moves, as with a camera pan, there's still a little judder in backgrounds, that if anything is slightly highlighted by the 100Hz-inspired smoothness of everything else.

Our other concern is that it's possible to make really quite a mess of pictures if you're not unusually careful with the 46F86BD's many image options. We'd certainly suggest that you start by trying to keep image processing elements like the 100Hz, noise reduction and Edge Enhancement tools set to low levels rather than anywhere near their maximums. In fact, Edge Enhancement is probably best left off entirely, now we come to think about it.

Verdict

Provided you put the effort in up front to get the 46F86BD's pictures looking their best, it will reward you with a truly scintillating LCD performance that gets closer than arguably any TV before to laying to rest those ‘LCD is only good for PC monitors' ghosts once and for all.

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