LG 42LG60FD (Scarlet) 42-inch LCD TV

 The 42LG60FD is affectionately named “Scarlet” due to its somewhat misleading advertising campaign but also because of the red colour of the rear of the unit. It seems an odd design choice considering no one will ever see it but there’s no denying its distinctive look. The stand has a chrome-like mirrored finish and at the centre of the lower bezel is a hollow circular opening that extends to the rear of the television. When switched off, a red neon glow can be seen inside the cavity which pulses white on start up and glows blue during operation.

The LG 42LG60FD has a native resolution of 1920x1080 and can accept video signals from 1080p down to 480p. The unit has four HDMI ports and two Component connections as well as a single S-Video and Composite connection. A D-Sub port provides PC support and there is a USB 2.0 slot for MP3 and JPG playback. We noticed a lag in the handshake time of the HDMI ports which caused a delay of a few seconds when switching between HDMI video sources, slightly annoying in our opinion.

We tested the unit at 1080p, 720p and 576p to find any aberrations in native and interpolated resolutions. At 1080p and 720p there were no image quality issues to speak of. The black levels were excellent and the colours were rich with no overbearing hues. The unit has four preset picture modes, two expert modes and two specially calibrated ISF (Image Science Foundation) modes. Out of the box, the regular picture mode tended to display a little background noise when viewing Blu-ray films but this was easily corrected using the expert modes. Unlike many televisions on the market, there is a wide variety of calibration options allowing for you to attain the best image quality possible.