NEC 42XR3 review

While the remote control's simplicity is a breath of fresh air, the menu system's 8-bit console appearance spoils the appeal of the television itself. If you can put up with their unsightliness, then you'll find there are plenty of options to be played around with. Like a fine wine, NEC's plasma can be enjoyed by all, but if you're an expert, your insider knowledge can significantly enhance your experience. We'd suggest taking a look at our calibration guide and tweaking the contrast/brightness levels to fit. There are a couple of presets such as Theatre, so you can optimise it at the touch of a button.

NEC's internal picture processing is brilliant at reducing the blockiness that can be found on Freeview broadcasts. We cheated, though: we fed our Humax Freeview box through Panasonic's DMR-EH50, which was then able to provide pictures through its progressive-scan component outputs. It sounds complicated, but it's worthwhile if you can afford it, because Panasonic's box provided a very stable picture.

You'll probably want to invest in something like Denon's DVD-2910 to make use of the DVI input. Alternatively, with a Media Center PC you can send everything digitally through a DVI cable.

The internal processing offers wonderfully vivid colours, no matter which source you're using. During the Ashes, we could really make out the different shades of green at Trent Bridge, and when we played grainy home videos taken with the Sony DCR-DVD203E, they looked surprisingly good. The contrast level is excellent, which not only improves the colour reproduction, but also means you can make out detail in darker areas. This is not really important to everyday video playback, but it makes a huge difference in moody movies such as Ronin.

Performance
NEC doesn't boast about its advanced picture processing technology, as Toshiba does about Active Vision and Philips does about Pixel Plus. However, its plasma picture quality is beautiful to behold, and when passers-by comment on this as opposed to the size or style of the TV itself, you know you're onto a winner.

The 42XR3's speakers are pretty weak when you bear in mind the action movies you'll want to show off this baby with, but they manage to cope admirably. They convey plenty of vocal clarity, and while they may not be the punchiest of speakers, you can still tell when something's exploding on screen. It also helps that they can be removed, and considering the price of the TV, we suspect that the vast majority of users will be using a dedicated sound system anyway.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Nick Hide