LG Electronics 42LH50

Inputs are easily accessible, and the first-time wizard guides you through language, home versus retail mode, time setting, and network setup before beginning its automatic scan for channels. Network setup proved nearly instantaneous and effortless with the set connected via ethernet to a router with DHCP enabled, and in my tests it prompted an immediate but painless software update.

The menu button brings up eight simple icons for fine-tuning everything from channel listings (you can choose to exclude channels when you're browsing with your remote) to settings for picture, sound, timer/clock, network, inputs, and parental controls. An Options icon leads to several miscellaneous functions, including settings for allowing the remote to control other devices and for labeling inputs.

Preset picture modes include standard, vivid, natural, cinema, sport, game, and an Intelligent Sensor option that promises to adjust for ambient lighting. If you'd rather make tweaks yourself, you can adjust the backlight, contrast, brightness, sharpness, color, and tint settings to your liking through a handy picture wizard that gives you images to match; once you're done, you can save those adjustments in either of two Expert modes.

In our juried tests in the PC World Labs, the 42LH50 scored fairly close to its 42LH55 sibling, earning above-average scores on all counts. Its 120Hz refresh rate probably helped it on sharpness and detail, but on our motion tests its results were only average. This HDTV also did well on color and brightness/contrast in our tests, although not as well as competing Samsung and Sony sets.

The audio options include what LG calls Clear Voice II technology, which basically subdues loud background noise to help you hear spoken words. In addition to the usual treble, bass, and balance controls, LG also provides audio presets: standard, music, cinema, sport, and game. Both the overall audio quality and the surround-sound simulation were quite good, but not the best in our test group. With The Phantom of the Opera on Blu-ray played at full volume, we heard very little distortion (although the sound wasn't particularly loud).

The 42LH50 lets you view .jpg images and play .mp3 audio files on either a USB thumb drive or a shared network folder using the Common Internet File System (which Windows Vista supports). You can set up music on a thumb drive to play while you're running a slideshow.

The remote control for the 42LH50 is one of the best I've seen, with all of the buttons clearly labeled and appropriately laid out (although a backlight would have been nice). You can program it to control other electronics, too.

A Quick Menu button near the top makes accessing several key settings (including aspect ratio, picture and audio mode, and closed captioning) a breeze--the settings appear as icons on a wheel that you can scroll through. A dedicated Input button makes switching between video sources easy, and the remote also has an energy-saving button for toggling between an automatic setting (based on ambient light) or manually choosing from three levels of power consumption. LG says that the default power setting for home use conforms to Energy Star 3 requirements.

Pressing the Netcast button brings up a menu for the on-demand video services. Setting up Netflix takes only a few minutes (you must log in on a PC to link your account to your set). Afterward, when you log in on the set, you see the first few items in your queue that are available on demand. I did not try the Vudu service, which lets you buy or rent movies and TV shows.

You can sign on to your YouTube account to view favorites. The videos can display in full screen (though the quality is poor, as you'd expect when viewing YouTube on a large, high-resolution screen) or alongside information about the video, including ratings and how many times it has been viewed.

The remote also has a dedicated button for accessing Yahoo Widgets. You create a user profile with up to 8 of the 11 (at this writing) available widgets, including ones for Flickr and Twitter. (You can swap widgets in and out of your profile.)

The LG 42LH50 is a competitively priced HDTV, and has little to dislike. Though this model may not sit at the very top of the heap for image and sound, it comes darn close--and it is among the leaders in design, features, and ease of use.