LG PC5D review: LG PC5D

While LCD and plasma continue to duke it out in the hearts and minds of American TV shoppers, the one arena where plasma still pummels LCD is in popularity at 50 inches and up. The main reason is that 50-plus-inch plasmas still cost a heck of a lot less than similarly sized LCDs. The LG 50PC5D represents the trend of affordable flat-panel big screens nicely, undercutting models like the Panasonic TH-50PZ77U yet outperforming true budget panels like the Vizio VP50HDTV. The LG has its share of picture quality issues, namely a noisier image than many plasmas, but its strengths, including deep black levels, a sleek design, and that competitive price tag, put it squarely in the sweet spot for many 50-inch plasma shoppers.

Design
Like just about every other flat-panel HDTV available this year, the LG 50PC5D has an almost entirely glossy black exterior. In this case there's a strip of silver running horizontally below the glossy frame, and below that, the area containing the speakers is angled back along the bottom, for a sleek look that segues nicely into the wider-than-usual glossy black pedestal stand. Despite the presence of a swivel-looking semicircle on the stand, the panel is fixed and cannot swing from side to side. We liked the look of the TV overall, although not quite as much as the Samsung HT-P5064, for example.

The LG 50PC5D measures 48.9 inches high by 34.9 inches wide by 14.5 inches deep and weighs 86.6 pounds including the stand. Sans stand, the plasma panel clocks in at 48.9 inches high by 32.6 inches wide by a slim 3.5 inches deep and 76.3 pounds.

LG's slick design extends to the menu system, which consists of a semitransparent block overlaying the picture. The numerous options are easy to access and intuitive to adjust, although we did wish for text explanations of menu items to help flatten the learning curve. We were also annoyed that the menu's left navigation bar remained onscreen during picture adjustments, and that the adjustment sliders themselves didn't drop to the bottom on the screen.

The remote included with the 50PC5D is a bit underwhelming and saddled with a few strange design quirks. For example, we didn't understand the presence of a secondary brightness control--separate from the main brightness control in the menu--controlled by prominent "plus" and "minus" buttons flanking the main menu key. The only purpose it serves is to make picture adjustment that much more confusing. We'd also liked to have seen more useful functions, like the button that scrolls through picture modes moved from under the slide-down hatch to a more accessible position. The clicker can command four other pieces of gear, and only the keys to access different devices are backlit.

Features
LG equipped this plasma with the standard array of pixels -- giving it a 1,366x768 native resolution--so the set can resolve every detail of 720p HDTV material. All sources, whether high-def, standard-def TV, DVD or computers, are scaled to fit the native resolution.

Picture controls on the LG 50PC5D are fairly complete, starting with eight picture presets--more than just about any HDTV we can remember. One, strangely called "Intelligent Eye," engages a sensor that detects room lighting and adjusts the picture accordingly. Although the secondary brightness control we mentioned above affects all of the presets, User1 and User2 are the only ones that can be fully adjusted. Since they're both independent per input, you can set up custom settings for two different users, lighting conditions, and so on for every source.

A few advanced adjustments are available on the LG, starting with red, green, and blue controls to help fine-tune color temperature. You can also choose from three color temperature presets, of which "warm" came closest to the standard. A trio of On/Off selections can be found under the "XD" heading: XD Contrast, which we left off for better shadow detail; XD Color, which we left off for slightly better primary colors and color decoding; and XD Noise, which we'll cover in the Performance section. There's a control for Black Level that we left on Low, for deeper blacks, and a Cinema 3:2 mode that engaged 2:3 pull-down detection.

LG offers an ample selection of aspect ratio modes. Four are available with high-def sources, along with a fifth called "Set by program" that attempts to adjust aspect automatically. The same five selections are available with standard-def sources. Unlike the company's 47LB5D LCD, the 50PC3D plasma allows all five choices with standard-def sources too.

Although we don't consider "burn-in"--or "temporary image retention" in pro-plasma parlance--any reason to avoid plasma, (more info), we appreciate when plasma makers add features to address TIR when it occurs. The 50PC5D has two modes that can help "erase" temporarily retained images, one that turns the whole screen white, and another--sure to be a hit a parties--that puts up the inverse image, turning black areas white, orange areas blue, green areas purple, etc. You can also choose the "orbiter" option, which very slowly moves the entire image around on the screen.

Two HDMI inputs is plenty for most users.

We didn't expect an entry-level plasma to have three HDMI inputs and the 50PC5D does not. It gets by with two, which should be plenty for most users. The back panel jack pack continues with a pair of component-video inputs, a VGA-style PC input (1,366x768 maximum resolution), one standard AV input with a choice of composite or S-Video, a single RF input for antenna or cable, and an optical digital audio output for the built-in ATSC tuner. There's a small bay on the left side of the panel that houses another AV input with composite and S-Video. Custom installers will appreciate the addition of an RS-232 control port, which is unusual in entry-level HDTVs.

The LG's side panel sprouts the standard array of inputs.

Convenience junkies will pooh-pooh the lack of picture-in-picture, but they may appreciate the ability to name the inputs and to control selected compatible HDMI devices using the LG's remote.

Performance
For an entry-level plasma, the LG still managed to produce a picture that compared relatively well against higher-priced HDTVs. We missed the ability to properly fine-tune the color temperature, which along with a yellowish green hampered the set's color accuracy, and we did see a higher instance of video noise than we'd like, but overall the TV's deep black levels helped distinguish it from other entry-level flat-panel HDTVs.

When we set about adjusting the picture controls for best performance in our darkened theater, the LG's picture settings proved a bit inadequate. Its color temperature control, for example, did not allow enough range to approach the standard of 6500K; the Warm preset came closer. That's why we didn't list anything in the "after" section of the Geek Box below. We were also unable to completely eliminate edge enhancement by reducing the sharpness control to zero, although it was difficult to spot the effects in program material. For our complete picture settings, check out the Tips & Tricks section above or just click here.

For evaluation we set the LG up next to three 50-inch plasmas, including the aforementioned Samsung HP-T5064 and our reference Pioneer PRO-FHD1, which cost a good bit more than the LG, along with the Panasonic TH-50PH9UK, which is in the same price range. We slipped The Sentinel into our Samsung BD-P1200 Blu-ray player and sat back to see how the LG compared.

The LG delivered a deeper color of black than the Pioneer, and while black areas like the letterbox bars appeared a bit lighter than either of the other two models, the difference was subtle enough to probably be indiscernible outside of a direct comparison. We did notice the LG's detail in shadows lagged a bit behind the other sets--the lapels of Michael Douglas' dark suit, for example, blended into the shadows a bit more quickly during a chat with a subordinate. Overall black level performance, however, was quite good.

We also don't have any serious complaints about the LG's color accuracy, but it had more than its share of issues. The biggest was the inaccurate primary color of green, which made shots of trees and grass around Washington DC appear a bit more yellow than on the Samsung or the Pioneer. When comparing skin tones and other subtle shades across the three sets, we did notice the LG's slightly bluer cast during bright scenes, which we couldn't correct with the user-menu settings. Kim Basinger's face, for example, looked a bit paler on the LG than on the other sets. The LG also tended to tinge darkened skin tones redder, such as when Douglas jumps into the back of a shadowed car. And while color decoding was accurate, we still had to desaturate the image a bit to keep skin tones realistic and so ended up with slightly less-punchy colors overall as a result. The LG's solid black-level performance meant that saturation was still acceptable, though, and again we felt the LG competed well against the others in this area.

The one issue where the 50PC5D exhibited a decided disadvantage, however, was its noise reduction. Flat backgrounds like the beige wall of the airplane cabin or the sunset over Camp David were the most noticeable culprits, exhibiting more crawling motes of video noise than they did on the other plasmas. When we engaged the "XD Noise" function we saw some improvement, but the LG still appeared slightly noisier than the others. The Sentinel Blu-ray is a very high-quality source, and lower-quality sources, like a Derek Trucks concert on HDNet from our DirecTV feed, again appeared noisier on the LG. It's worth noting, however, that the LG actually introduced less false contouring than the Panasonic or the Samsung, and its video noise issues become significantly less visible as seating distance increases. From our nominal 8-foot seating distance, they were discernable, while at 10 feet, they all but disappeared.

According to our tests, LF 50PC5D could not correctly deinterlace film-based content, and although we didn't notice any clear evidence of this failing while watching the film, we did see the grille of the RV in Ghost Rider devolve into unnatural diagonal lines, like it did with most other HDTVs we've tested (the Pioneer plasma excepted). The 50PC5D also failed the test for video-based content, which most other HDTVs pass, although again the visible effects were hard to spot.

We checked out standard-def performance using the HQV DVD connected via component-video at 480i, and the LG performed well, although the picture was once again relatively noisy. The plasma fully resolved every line of the DVD format on the color bars pattern and delivered good detail on the stone bridge and grass from the detail test. It did a fine job of smoothing out jagged edges from moving diagonal lines like the stripes on a waving American flag. Once we engaged the "Cinema 3:2 mode" in the advanced menu (unfortunately it's set to Off by default), we were pleased to see the set engaged 2:3 pulldown processing quickly and effectively. On the other hand, the noise reduction control (stashed in the XD menu) didn't clean up the low-quality, noisy shots of sky and sunsets as well as the Samsung's did, and overall the set showed more moving motes of noise than we'd like to see.

With PC sources via the VGA input, the LG was pretty disappointing. We tried connecting a couple of computers but couldn't get the TV to properly display resolutions higher than 1,024x768. When we went up to 1,366x768, text looked choppy and almost illegible, and the screen was cut off. As expected, 1,024x768 looked a good deal softer than we'd like to see, mainly because it was scaled to fit the display's 1,366x768 pixel grid, but there wasn't any overscan, so that resolution ended up being the best fit for the TV. We didn't test the LG with a DVI source connected to the HDMI input.

Juice box

LG 50PC5D	Picture settings
	Default	Calibrated	Power Save
Picture on (watts)	320.03	289.15	247.63
Picture on (watts/sq. inch)	0.3	0.27	0.23
Standby (watts)	0.78	0.78	0.78
Cost per year	$97.66	$88.28	$75.67
Score (considering size)	Good
Score (overall)	Poor