Refine search for TVs

  Leave a comment      Email this to a friend TrustedReviews Newsletters

One potentially key feature the 52LG6000 does not have, mind you, is 100Hz processing to help smooth and sharpen the appearance of moving objects. This is alarming to say the least when you consider how much motion blur we experienced with LG's 32in 32LG5000. If the 52LG5000 doesn't sort this out, its much larger and therefore far less forgiving screen could present us with a bit of a mess.

Just as well, then, that the amount of blur in the 52LG5000's pictures intriguingly - and thankfully - really isn't as obvious as it was on the smaller model. Fed a tricky and admittedly quite bizarre combination of the latest South Africa vs England Test Match in HD and the hilarious (in a truly bad way) mammoth-fuelled finale of the new Blu-ray of 10,000 B.C., the 52LG5000's motion handling was actually OK.

Yes, there's some sign of blur to the South African bowlers' limbs as they charge in; a little resolution loss in the mammoth's hair as they go on a rampage against their Egyptian ‘captors'; and a fractionally ‘laggy' look to the grass as the camera pans across the ground to follow the cricket ball's trajectory. But overall the screen's natural blurring and lag levels are never quite severe enough to make pictures really unpleasant on the eye. Phew.

I included the word ‘natural' in the previous sentence for a very good reason. For if you start messing around with the TV's noise reduction options you can introduce all manner of smeary unpleasantness. So my advice to you would be to make a point of checking all noise reduction stuff is turned off when you're watching any sort of HD footage on this screen, and only setting it to a minimum level if you really feel you need it while watching standard definition.

Actually, I'd probably say the same thing for the noise reduction systems of any flat TV. But it's more imperative advice with the 52LG5000 than usual.

Looking for other nice things to say about the 52LG5000's pictures, they're exceedingly bright with really quite extreme colour saturations. This helps Sky's cricket coverage blast, almost blare, off the screen, especially when the action's taking place on a nice sunny day.

In fact, initially I found the image's brightness and intensity distinctly over the top, to the point where I almost had to squint at it. But after calming things down by changing the picture preset away from the absurdly over-wrought ‘Vivid' factory setting, and tweaking down the contrast and brightness settings, the picture started to look just eye-catching rather than eye-ruining.

The screen's enthusiasm for brightness does have other repercussions, though. For the bottom line is that the TV's black levels are merely solid by today's standards, leaving dark 10,000 B.C. scenes, like the ones in the slave's ‘prison', looking rather grey and flat. And this is even with the Movie preset in play, which reduces the backlight output all the way down to 20 per cent.

Add your comment