Performance
First impressions on connecting this TV were good. It takes about five
minutes to scan for both analogue and digital TV channels. The TV makes
this totally painless and all you have to do is sit back and wait for
it to finish.
Once everything was set up we spent a few minutes doing our regular picture calibration. We don't generally use any special tricks for this. We just pick a random channel -- usually one of the main broadcasters -- and adjust the brightness, contrast and backlight until we find a setting that looks good. This is the sort of thing you should do once you buy your new TV, too. It's dead easy and will improve the picture on your TV no end.
We checked the power consumption of the TV in standby and it consumes about 15W average. While that's higher than a normal TV, it's actually less than some TVs we've seen and it's even better if you consider that it means you don't have to have a separate PVR chewing up power all the time.
The PVR portion of the TV does add some operating noise to the TV. Because it uses a hard disk, some sound is produced by the disk spinning constantly. We tested it in a quiet room, and with the sound off, we could just about make it out when we were really close. Honestly, it's not going to bother you when you're watching TV.
Picture quality on Freeview was good as 32 inches is around the sweet spot. It's not so large that every picture fault shows up, but it's big enough to suit all but the most enormous living rooms. The quality of recorded programmes from Freeview was also good and we could see no discernable degradation.
Recordings from analogue also looked as good as you can hope, but when we test it here at the office, the tall buildings around us make analogue a nightmare of ghosting. If you have a strong undistorted picture from your analogue, this TV will do a good job recording those signals.
HD performance from our HD DVD player, the Toshiba HD E1, was excellent as well. The Matrix look superb, with scenes taking place within the computer program suitably green looking -- as the directors intended -- and scenes outside the Matrix looking suitably stark and gritty. Upscaled DVD also looked good. Our Mission Impossible: II test disc looked good, although the lack of detail in certain shots is pretty much unavoidable on standard definition material.
Our only major complaint performance-wise was the weedy sound. This TV only puts out around 10W per side, and with our HD DVD material -- which tends to be a little on the quiet side -- we had to have the volume up to full to hear everything properly. This wasn't a problem on Freeview, though.
Conclusion
The LG 32LT75 is an example of a very well thought-out product. It
provides a solution to the problem of finding a simple way of recording
TV programmes without paying for a PVR plus a TV. It is elegant and
simple and that makes it a great choice for people who want an
all-in-one solution that anyone can use with minimal training. The menu
integration and ease of use make this a cracking main TV, or even a
second TV for the study or bedroom.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday
iPhone App 
Newsletters 
RSS Feeds 
Send Us Tips
User reviews6
Add your review
evanstim2004 10 November 2010
Comment: Does anyone know if you can use the pause live TV funtion of this TV with a digital TV set top box attached via the HDMI connection? many thanks.
Gibgill 6 September 2008
Good: Looks; brilliant picture quality; recording; 7 day programme guide
Bad: It is a bit slow changing after pressing the controller
Comment: A really excellent tv with superb picture and features.
daba 28 June 2008
Good: Integrated PVR
Bad: EPG : Channel Selection
Comment: Had this TV for over 3 months now, and am highly delighted with it - I summarised it as "does what it says on the box" because thats exactly how I feel, and it's not meant as a derogatory summary.
Picture quality is excellent, and the sound is more than adequate for our needs, despite the original reviewers comments. You can always hook it up to a cinema sound system if you want to shake the plaster off the walls !
I have a couple of niggles, not serious, but if LG were to change a few things it would make a superb product even better.
1. EPG programme changing : This involves too many key presses on the remote, it simply isn't necessary, (although this may be down to EPG as a system rather than its implementation in this set).
To use the EPG to change a channel :-
a> Press the button to bring up the EPG
b> Scroll and/or PgUp PgDn to get to the required program (and there's a small problem here that the selection doesn't "hug" to the left, i.e. the current program, so you invariably have to use "Left" to return to the current time).
c> Press "OK" to choose the channel.
So far so good - if only that were all it needed.
d> Up comes a pop-up menu, with "Record this programme", "Watch This Program", and "Cancel"
e> Unfortunately, the default selection on this pop-up is "Cancel", so you have to press "Up" to get to "Watch..."
f> Press "OK" again to switch to the selected channel.
Wait, there's more...
g> The EPG is left on the screen, so you have to press "Exit" or the EPG button again to turn it off.
All too clumsy, and that pop-up menu at <d> above is completely unnecessary. If I have cursored to a channel I want, and press "OK", it should switch to that channel immediately, and turn off the EPG. If I wanted to record the selected channel, I can press the "Record" button, and if I didn't want to record or watch it (i.e. Cancel), I can simply continue scrolling to anothr progarmme on the EPG.
Another minor critisicism is with the Input Selection. This involves using a pop-up menu to select from the list of available inputs, "DTV", "AV1", "AV2", "AV3", "HDMI1", etc. You can if you wish associate a more friendly name with each of these inputs, for example you could put "Satellite" for AV1, "Game" for AV2, "DVD" for HDMI1 etc., but the names are preset, and you just choose the best to fit your input. It would be much bettter if you could enter your own "friendly name" for each input, say "SKY" for AV1, "Wii" for AV2 and the like, but you can't, you're stuck with the names they provide.
And then, having associated the inputs with these "friendly names", when you put on the pop-up menu to select your input, it still presents you with the original list ! The only time you see your "friendly name" is after you've chosen the input, the TV switches to it, and puts the status info in the top right corner. In effect, you still have to remember waht you've got connected to the wide range of inputs available.
All-in-all, even taking the niggles above into account, I still gave this a 9, it would have got 10 if those minor hassles weren't there.
See all 6 user reviews