>>Hi, I'm David Katzmaier from CNET and I'm with the LG PK950 series. This is a 15-inch flat panel plasma TV. There's also a 60-incher in the series. This review does apply to both. This is LG's highest end plasma for 2010. It's not 3D like a lot of other manufacturers' high end plasmas but it does have plenty of features. The first thing we'll talk about here is the styling. This TV incorporates what LG calls its "infinia" styling. In this case it's a sort of a seamless look on the front, it's kind of one big pane of glass. There's this nice glossy black around the edge. The bottom a little bit thicker and there's this thin transparent edge and also a thin stand stock. The stand does swivel so the whole TV has a very slick look overall.
One or more interesting features on this TV and not found on other TVs is this special magic wand remote, there is a standard remote included but this magic wand actually operates a little bit like a Nintendo Wii motion controller. You hold it in your hand and move the cursor around on the screen as opposed to pressing buttons on a remote. In general we think the system might be kinda cool for people who are not comfortable using a regular remote but on the other hand it does require a little bit more effort and not as many controls are available in the Wii mode scheme but if you like, you know, controll gimmicks, this one might be for you.
Aside from 3D, the TV is pretty well featured. The first thing up is its internet connectivity. It doesn't have quite as many services as some of the other makers out there but it does have the basics including Netflix, Vudu. It's also got YouTube and also Picasa. It also has the Yahoo Widget system for checking out weather and basic non-streaming applications like that. It is missing Hulu Plus, Amazon Video On Demand and a couple of others, however.
Back of this TV includes three HDMI inputs, internet connection for Ethernet, the wireless is not built into this TV, your going to have to buy external dongle for that. There's also a PC input around back as well as two component video inputs. Side panel has a fourth HDMI in addition to two USB ports, one of those can be occupied by that optional USB dongle. Like a lot of other LG TVs the PK950 includes plenty of ways to tweak the picture. You go into the advanced menu system you'll find settings for gamma. There's also a nice color temperature system in addition to a color management system although the color temperature system didn't work quite as well as we'd like to see.
The overall picture quality of the PK950 was very good, we actually included among the top performing plasmas we've seen this year. It starts off with very deep black levels, not quite as deep of the best we've seen but, again, pretty close to the top. It also has very accurate color. Once you play around with some of these presets or if you simply select the THX mode, the color is pretty darn good as well. And one final picture related note, this TV does have 1080p/24 compatibility that worked correctly unlike some of the other plasmas we've tested this year so that's pretty good for the video files out there that want that true film cadence. That's a quick look at the LG PK950 series and I'm David Katzmaier.
