LG 32LG7000 32″ HDTV
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG I CAME!
Nastyness aside, this telly is absolutly fantastic!
For Christmas I knew I was going to get some money, and for a good while now I have wanted a HDTV of my own, so the two kinda of go hand in hand don’t you think? Anyway, I have always been on the look out for a cheap 32″ HDTV. Specificly it had to be 32″ or bigger and under £350, possbly £400 if it was REALLY good! So while I was back home I had a hunt on some shops in town who sell HDTV’s. Unpon doing so I noticed that the DSGi Group (Currys, PC World, Dixons) of stores had a £600 LG telly down to £350. I thought this must be good and had a butchers. What I saw actually shocked me some what.
The TV has 4 HDMI ports, a component connection, 2 SCART sockets, 1 RBG input, VGA In, PCIMA slot, USB port and BLUETOOTH! My jaw dropped onto my keyboard!
Primarily, I will be doing visual effects and film making/editing for the next 2 years of Uni. One thing I have always noticed with any video I have made on my PC/Laptop or the Mac’s at Uni is that on a computer screen the video is nice and bright, perfect viewing brightness if I am honest, but when it comes to showing it to the class on the projector we have or playing it back on a HDTV, it is very dark! Now, I should of learnt to adjust to this hinderance by now, but I simply forget due to the fact every computer I work on to edit on it seems fine, so put my faith into the system that the final output will be fine. I also at the time had an Xbox 360 and wanted to view my games in HD goodness along with being able to use it as a monitor for my computer. So these are kinda why I wanted one.
For a while I was asking around several people who have HDTV’s to see what one is the best. My parents have a Toshiba REGEZA (I forget the specific make) and while I was home, I put my laptop in via a DVI to HDMI cable. Like on Stefan’s Bush DTV, when the desctop resalution is set to 1920 x 1080, there is either clipping of the desktop or the whole screen is incased in a 1inch thick Black border around the edges. This to me 1) isnt good, I would like to see the start bar! and 2) having Black edges takes away the 1:1 pixel ratio of the 1920 x 1080 resolution, which in my opinion will throw off any fine detail in anything I watch or do. (I have tried all the ‘zoom’ levels each telly has such as Panoramic, Full Screen, 4:9, 16:9 etc etc, none were using the whole TV properly.) So having a TV that did this would be vital for me! Also, I noticed when I used these TV’s as a screen, when it came to reading Icon names on my desktop or text on a website, unless I had the screen set to a smaller resoluton (Such as 1440 x 900) the text was blurry and very hard to read.
So, I had a nibble on the interwebz and found out LG’s seem to do the trick, so when I saw that LG on sale, I was in love with it.
So, I get it home and plug my laptop in. At First it had Black bars on all sides and I felt rather gutted, but upon changing the zoom, there is one called ‘Just Scan’ an this does it perfectly! When I wear my glasses (I’m blind you see..) it looks like I am looking at a monitor! PERFECT! Every bit of text is viewable and perfectly displayed. WIN! Also, the HDMI port I have the cable pluged into has a DVI icon in brackets next to it, which also comes with a 3.5mm audio jack. That, to me says ‘PLUG UR COMPUTAH IN2 MEH, I SHALL DO UR BIDDIN!’
So, as for my purpose this TV is perfect. I’m actually writing this blogpost up on it without having to strain any eyes or change the resolution!
The USB is good. It allows you to plug a USB Flash Drive into the TV and let you view Pictures or play Music. (I haven’t looked into what format’s it will play, but MP3′s and .jpg’s so far work like a dream.) Unfortunaly, I cant play Movies via this. This is a big lose really as reading a film of a pen drive might be faster than doing it via the computer. Ah well, not a total bum-out considering the computer is pluged in.
Bluetooth I haven’t had the chance to use! My iPhone wont let me send audio or pictures via Bluetooth and I have no other Bluetooth devices around which could do this, but when I get a chance I will. From some reading, I can Bluetooth images (and maybe music?) to the TV and they will display out. This is no to shabby, but not a total win for Bluetooth tech for TV’s. What I did find interesting is that if I want to be far away, watch TV but not have cables flying about the room, I can conncect a Bluetooth headset/headphones to the TV and watch or listen to things via them. That, is rather good!
A bit of a bad review here, but I haven’t had the TV all that long, so just a priliminary outburts of features really. Ironicaly, I got the last one in PC Worlds in town and the man who derved me said that they have had to order 1000 more because their going like hotcakes and 1000 people have ordered them! Woah! Demanding tech!
Here you can find the TV in question. 
So, if you want a TV to be used for a Media Center, this is a very good choice of TV! I’ve yet to put my Mac Hack into this puppy, but I have a feeling it will be fine. So anyone with a Mac Mini or MacBook line of Mac’s should be fine with this for media.
