Got My LG 42LD520 Yesterday

What did you base this on?

I am currently looking for a bang-for-the-buck 46" or 47" matte screen LCD with 120 Hz. I have been debating between the LG LD520 & Sony EX500, but I have not heard too much feedback about the LD520 yet. I haven't even seen one on display in the stores. I will be waiting to see what people have to say in this thread.

This 42LD520 TV is sooooo good for its price.

I am having a hard time finding a connector for the PC audio though. Am I supposed to use a 3.5mm stereo connector? the input jack looks quite different from standard 3.5mm jacks. I used a 3.5mm cable and the sound that came out was very faint.

the video is fine using a VGA cable.

What kind of cable have u guys used? Any thoughts?

Bumping this because there is not alot of info on this tv out there, wondering if it has a swivel stand?

I bought the 42LD520 last night.

Reason for my purchase, with young kids who have a tendacy at breaking everything (espicially the young one who is the primary reason for me buying a new TV after he smashed the previous one to the floor), I wanted a 40" or so TV that wasn't expensive. I was willing to pay up to 3000$ for a new TV but because of the kid factor, decided to go cheaper and wait to see how the LED technology evolve. Also, I'm upgrading from a 32" so the 42" is really appreceated.

My primary concern was input lag. Before this set, I had bought the C650 from Sansung and although the PQ was amazing on it, the input lag was too much for me to enjoy playing video games even with game mode turned on.

I am happy to say that the LD520 have very small amount of input lag. I'd say between 20-30ms but that's just my estimate, I have not done any real testing yet. I played games for more than an hour last night and didn't notice any input lag while playing and even turned on some motion flow control and some picture enhancement with very little input lag added.

I'm happy to report that LG offer independant Jigger and Blur control on their 2010 model with Motion flow. So now we can set seperatly those setting while I believe this was not the case before.

Still hoping for someone to come up here with some calibration expertise to tell us how to set this TV properly. I'm having a hard time getting a picture that I like from it. The PQ is a step down from Samsung's C650 right now.

On the low side, LD520 view angle aren't great. From left to right, there aren't bad, but I tend to notice it more from up and down. The Black level could also be better. But I think I'll live with those short comming if I can get it calibrated properly and because the input lag seems low on this set.

Screen is Matte or semi-matte, not really sure which was a huge plus for me.

As for the Swivel, it does "turn" although I find it really hard to turn. Maybe it's because it's brand new and will loosen up with time but you can clearly see that you can turn it. I don't really need that feature myself but it's there.

Thanks for your thoughts, Guibs.

This set is certainly affordable for more than 40inches of tv. Reading all this stuff about imput lag from other brands annoys me. I got an XBox360 and later this summer plan on getting the PS3, so maybe this is the best bang-for-buck set I can get without bad input lag.

I got to make up my mind soon. I got money burning a hole in my wallet. LOL

Was in the same situation as you. I got burned by other unit that had better PQ but the input lag was a killer.

I can tell you that input lag wise, this one is great. in game mode it's not noticable and you can even add some image enhancement without too much of a performance hit and you know that if you ever play a game that requires good input lag, you can turn off everything and get really great performances.

But I understand the feeling of wanting to spend money. I had lots of money saved since 2 years for this TV but as I said, decided to go cheaper until the kids grows up and technology mature a bit, espicially LED wise with all of the known issues they have (bad view angle, local dimming not present on lots of sets and when present, introduce input lag in games).

What sealed the deal for me is that I just couldn't play Red Dead redemption properly anymore on my 32" from 7 to 9 feet. When you are asked to kill rabits and have a hard time seeing them at all, I had to pull the trigger on a bigger TV without as less input lag as possible. For the record, I am using a Xbox 360 for videogames and a wii for the kids. On a slight note wii wise, you notice a little bit more input lag on wii games (normal since it's trying to upscale a 480p source to 1080P) but it was ions better than the Samsung C650 that I had bought and returned 2 weeks ago.

I do have wii, but its collecting dust. hahaha I just don't have the space to really get into it.

... I've been playing RDR on a old school boob tube tv and I can hardly read the menu screens, onscreen instructions and no matter how I adjust the settings, it is hard to see raccoons, foxes and the like. I am definitely wanting to finally get my first HDTV. LOL

I am really leaning towards this tv because of price point and input lag.

For the price and feature, I think it's pretty good. You do get 120hz which can be usefull. For me, I wanted a 120hz set so I could turn it on when I watch hockey.

Of course, you can find better TV out there. but this one has a good combo of low input lag and features for a good cost. At worst, make sure to ask the clerk if you are not satisfied with it if you can return it. Most store will allow you 30 days to return it if you are not satisfied. After looking at this TV for 2 weeks, without anyone here commenting on the input lag, I decided to pull the trigger and buy it to see for myself. I was glad to see it had minimal input lag and I'm usually pretty sensitive to it.

[quote=masterkaj;18441741]When watching sports and stuff it seems pretty choppy unless I have trumotion enabled. QUOTE]

And how is it with trumotion enabled??

Looking for a tv for the bedroom in this price range and most of the time I have sports on when watching tv....

are there RCA audio outputs?
the 450 only has optical, and I would really like RCA.

Love it.

I played with the settings for a couple of days. Intellegent Sensor is useless.....power saving is too conservative and no way I can find to fine adjust it.

Solution? Adjust settings for cinema mode. Brightness up a little higher. Increase skin tone. Nearly perfect. Looks good in any light.

Watched Avatar last night on Blue Ray. Amazing.



-rick

Not impressed with Trumotion. It gives everything a wierd 'artificial' look. Like every movement is being panned around in a soap opera. Even set at low it was too much.

You won't need it for sporting events. They look fine without it.
Movies look disasterous in it though.


Recommend disabling.

can someone take a macro shot of the screen? wondering what LG is using for panel

On a white background, super macro setting on camera, get camera as close to screen as possible and pattern like this might show up

I also have been looking at the LG 42LD520. Could anyone tell me if sound
is loud?
Or any input would be much appreciated.

Sound is OK. They should not have put the speakers in the back though. Would rather have great sound as opposed a more asthetic looking set.

I just bought the tv a week and half ago. More details forthcoming......

Thanks for this. Anxious to hear your review.

Anyone know if this can play .avi files from a thumb drive? (sammy I had did) Thinking about picking this set up this weekend.

Thanks

nope I just tried it

Hi all,

I just got a 47LD520 last Tuesday and though I've not had it long, I thought I'd chime in with my opinions for those wondering about this TV. Call it a mini review, if you will.

First off, I should mention that I came *this* close to returning it over the Soap Opera Effect. I don't know if everyone sees this like my wife and I do - I've read cases where people actually like it, but my wife and I don't. With TruMotion turned on, you'll see it on this set - bad. Thankfully, it disappears entirely when you turn it off. To be more clear, change your setting to the 'User' mode and turn Judder to 0 and Blur to 10. This will give you the benefit of the anti-blur, but you won't get the SOE. This is a good thing. If you're a big-time gamer, apparently the Blur setting can add lag. I'll mention this later on.

Setup Info

So, some background and setup info. My last TV was a 42" 480p Samsung plasma. It lasted 4.5 years then gave up the ghost, requiring a $400 repair. Though not unreasonably expensive, since it wasn't even 1080p, we decided to go for a new one. Our room is reasonably bright so I wanted a matte screen. I didn't want to go with another Samsung as this one had died twice with the first delivered unit being DOA. Plus, my friend's Samsung LCD has required 2 repairs as well (with ongoing issues), so LG/Panasonic/Toshiba were my main choices. I decided on this set predominantly due to the price point and feature set. At the same time as buying it, I also purchased a Vizio VBR-100 Bluray player. If you're looking at the moment, I bought it in Canada at Visions. I paid $1000 for the TV and $100 for the Bluray player.

I have an old Yamaha HTR-5230 which I love, Klipsch speakers and an 8" sub that I couldn't name. I play games quite a bit on my Xbox 360. The BD & 360 are connected via cheap (Energy brand) HDMI to the TV, then I'm connecting to the Yamaha via Optical out.

My room is pretty small - I'm about 7-8 feet from the TV, max. I have a wall behind me, but to my left when watching there is a small window at about 4 feet high. I have a light on the ceiling, 2 bulbs. The screen is matte enough so that you can't see any reflections whatsoever when it's on. This is what I wanted, and if you're looking for the same, you'd appreciate this set. I suspect that if I had a window behind me, it wouldn't be quite as good, but likely not a deal breaker like it would be with a plasma.

Settings

I'll verify that these are correct tonight, but here's what I can recall.

Important!!
This may be discussed in the manual, but I couldn't find it. Maybe this is a normal thing - this TV will remember settings depending on your input. I wasn't expecting this at all. To explain: if you set your Cinema mode while your input is set to your Xbox 360, then switch it over to your DVD player, it can have a *different* Cinema mode setting. This is important as, if you think you've turned off your TruMotion, it may not be off on that particular input. However, this is very useful if you've adjusted your settings to how you like and don't want to change them when switching to play games - simply turn TruMotion to how you'd like it when your DVD is selected... switch to your game console then set it again to how you'd like it. The TV will maintain those settings.

I have the TV set to ISF Expert mode 1
Backlight: 70
Contrast: 90
Brightness: 40
Hor/Ver Sharpness: 50
Color: 60
Tint: 0
Color Temp: Medium

TruMotion: User
Judder: 0
Blur: 10

Advanced Controls
Dynamic Contrast: Low
Noise & Dig. Noise Reduction: Off
Black Level: High
Real Cinema: On (only will work on DVDs, not on Games)
Color Gamut: Standard
Edge Enhancer: Off

Picture

I'm no expert. I don't look for banding or really notice little things like minor backlight issues. I'm not saying they don't exist, I just don't see them. I think the picture on this is amazing. Granted, I've jumped from 480p to 1080p, but I think it really does look great. Rich colours, crisp, clean whites, dark blacks. As far as I can tell, the detail in shadows are excellent. It is incredibly bright and lifelike.

The matte finish keeps any reflections from being an issue.

As I previously mentioned, I hate the Soap Opera Effect that you get with TruMotion, so that is turned off. If you don't know what I'm talking about, search on the forums here for it.

Sound

I'm afraid I run the sound through my receiver and turn it off on the TV altogether, so I can't comment at all on how good the built-in speakers are, sorry.

Sources

I play games on the Xbox 360 and watch movies on the Bluray.

Games I've played so far:

The Saboteur
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09
Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe
Darksiders

Games I have and will eventually test:

Rock Band
Rock Band track pack
Saint's Row 2
Sacred 2
Pure
Lego Batman
Batman: Arkham Asylum

Movies I've watched so far:

Up (BD)
Mr & Mrs Smith (BD)
Star Trek (BD)
The Incredibles (DVD)
Selected scenes from various movies (DVD)
ie: shootout from Matrix, opening scene in Xmen2, etc etc.

TV:

Justified (divx avi via streaming to 360)
Burn Notice (divx avi via streaming to 360)
(I don't have cable or satellite, fyi)


After adjusting the settings, everything looks amazing, especially Blurays. Upconverted DVDs are much better than expected and if I hadn't just watched some BDs, they would have literally blown me away.

Streamed low-res TV looks about what you'd expect with lots of artifacts and graininess. I might turn on the noise-reduction settings when watching to just see if it helps. It doesn't really matter much to me, but I might do it for fun. I live in an area of Canada where there's only 2 OTA HD channels, so I haven't bothered with getting an antenna.

Games are incredible. Text is crystal clear - something I really struggled with on my 480p set. I haven't noticed the slight bit of lag, not even in a fighting game like Mortal Kombat... and I have the anti-Blur setting at max. Darksiders looks amazing.

Value

For the price I paid, I didn't find anything to really compare to this. Granted, I could have gotten a 46" for a bit more, but hey, I figure I got an extra inch of screen for less, so I think it's a bargain. I suppose time will tell as far as the longevity of the TV is concerned. As it is now, I'm very happy with my purchase.

If you have any questions specific to how it performs, I have about an 80 DVD collection and I can take pics etc if you'd like. I haven't tried the USB input at all - I'll mostly stream stuff to the 360, so it's a low priority for me, but I can test it for you, if you'd like.

I don't really know how to test lag or do calibration stuff, but I can learn, if it's important to your purchase.

Thanks to you all for these great forums.

Oliver

Thanks for this great review.

Might not appeal to the people who can afford a $2500 TV..aka videophiles, but I'm in love with this. For 95% of people this should be more than enough. After months of shopping around and doing my homework, I bought this set for $728 through Walmart site to store. It was $70 more than the LD450 model on the shelf. But in my eyes well worth paying a little extra and waiting another week for it. The extra hdmi port alone justifies the $$$$.

Picture Crisp! Bright. Color is deep! Pops off the screen when in high def. Nothing in 480 (standard) looks good on this though . Keep that in mind. Initially struggled with adjustments. In the end a couple of tweaks to cinema mode were all it took. Looks as good (maybe better) than the comparible Sony's and Samsungs....at least to me.

Word of advice... I saw one of the 450 models on a store shelf...which basically has the same picture with a few less features. It looked horrible next to a Sony. Huh? The sales guy tried to tell me that the LG wasn't getting as good of a signal. Ummm...why does the 47" inch version way down on the other end also look bad next to the Sony? Or even the Sanyo? Why do I see the same thing when I visit the store down the road in fact? The answer? LG's 'store demo' presets are horrible. I'm not sure why they did this. But they badly misjudged something. Once you get the picture correctly adjusted, you'll see what I'm talking about. It's an "oooh and ahhhh" kind of thing when you see what it is supposed to look like.


My Final Settings:


Aspect Ratio 16:9
Energy Saving Off

Cinema Mode
Backlight 30
Contrast 90
Brightness 75 (adjusted)
Sharpness 50
Color 50
Tint 0
Color Temp W50

Advanced Control

Dynamic Contrast Low (manually enabled)
Dynamic Color Low (manually enabled)
Clear White Off
Skin Color 3 (adjusted)
Noise Reduction Off
Digital Noise Reduction off
Gamma Medium
Black Level Low
Eye CAre Greyed Out/off
Real Cimema Off
Color Gamut Standard
xvYCC Auto
Trumotion Off






THOUGHTS:

Intellegent Sensor is useless. Makes picture WAY too dim. It might have been good if they weren't so conservative with the energy savings. I could achieve 100% power savings by unplugging it, but what would be the point? Options to adjust Itelligent Sensor are greyed out too. The IS logo that pops up on the screen is also annoying. Blech! . Strongly recommend disabling this feature.


Trumotion=much ado about nothing. Doesn't add anything great to the experience imho and in many cases makes things worse. Thankfully it's easy to disable. Interloping of frames just creates an artificial feeling to everything . Even on low it's bad. If motion blur/judder is an issue to you, then you to look into Plasma. I really don't notice it though. NBA finals and World Cup matches looked amazing WITHOUT this feature enabled!!!!!

60hz vs 120hz: The difference is slightly noticable. Will 60hz ruin your viewing experience? No. But for the slight price difference it's worth it. You'll notice the difference with Blue Ray movies for sure.

Glare almost non existant. Good job!!!

Off angle viewing isn't flawless, but I don't notice issues unless I'm watching tv from the other room.

Reported LG 'lip-sync' issues: I saw it do this once and the issue never resurfaced. So I'm writing this off.

Remote control simple to use. Well done. Although I can make all adjustments I need to with my Directv remote, so it will go into mothballs.

Noticed a bit of uneven backlighting when I'm flipping channels, on a pure white screen. But don't let that scare you. You shouldn't notice it 99% percent of the time. If it does become an issue to you, then adjust the intensity of the backlight accordlingly.

Sound could have been better. Meh! Having speakers in the back was a bad idea. Asthetics aside..they shouldn't have done this. But I'll be getting a home theatre system soon anyway. So it's a minor issue to me.

The stand: I had heard rumbling about the stand not being very 'secure' on the LD450 models. Definitely not an issue with the 520 series. Seems perfectly stable to me. I've bumped it a couple of times and it barely moved.
Lack of an ethernet port: Would have been nice had LG included this feature just for pulling down firmware updates. But I can live without it

BOTTOM LINE:

This tv is great! You can't go wrong....as people have said...for the money. If you are looking for something better....wait a year or two for the next generation of led-backlit sets to hit the mainstream market at a reasonable price. But I can honestly tell you that this unit provides the best balance of all worlds. It's candy for the retinas!!!!!!!!!


Well done LG

-Rick

Not a lot of activity on the forums regarding this tv- i just bought a 42 inch LD520 a few days ago. I've turned off TruMotion, it's way too distracting, but I'm noticing a lot of juddering on certain tv shows. Also, there seems to be a somewhat screen door effect and not as much fine detail as my old 32LG30. don't get me wrong, a lot of the time the detail and PQ is great, but it just doesn't seem as consistent as the LG30. Anyone else have these problems?

Hello guys, I just recently bought this tv..the 42LD520..and I absoultely love this Tv!!

I just have two questions referring to options and picture.

First, the picture setting option says "Screen (RGB-PC)" is this strictly for "PC" use? or can I modify my tv with this option? I read in the menu that this option controls picture resolution. If I can..How do I activate it..its greyed out.. Thanks in advance.

Also concerning the picture..when I browse my channel guide..(I have comcast) the picture is displayed in the top right corner of the show/sporting event you are watching and the picture is FLAWLESS! But once I exit the channel menu..and the full tv is taken up by the show, etc..the picture isnt as sharp..Does anyone have an idea why this occurs? I would greatly appreciate any feedback on how to attack these "minor" issues..

Thanks in advance once again.

-Tim

Just a guess, but if the picture is being shown much smaller it may appear much shaper compared to blown up full screen as with any display... might be more noteable if it's a 720p feed? Just guessing...

I picked up the LG 42LD520 over the weekend. I had recently returned the VIZIO M420NV edge lit LED because of screen uniformity issues when the screen was mostly black (flashlighting). Now, I knew that what I'd be sacrificing by returning to a CCFL was the quality of a fully lit and colorful picture. It's slightly dimmer yes, but my PS3 still looks great. However, my cable feed (Comcast HD) seems to produce more noise and artifacting than I was noticing with the VIZIO. Comcast of course doesn't send full 1080p, and I'm convinced they do some other compression of what ends up coming through at 720p...nonetheless, I'm a bit bummed about it.

Does anyone out there think that this is at all the fault of the TV? Would I get better PQ from say, the Samsung C630 or the Sony HX701?

Subscribing to Thread

Does the signal info actually say 720p?

I would think the signal would be the same signal your vizio got so image would be up to the TV. Maybe tinker with noise reduction and digital noise reduction?