Design
When it comes to esoteric design, LG has had some of the most eye-popping televisions on the market for the past couple of years — a trend most notable with its Scarlet range. The PK750 may not be as wacky as past models, but it wears frilly knickers under its three-piece suit.
The bottom edge of the bezel features graduated, clear blue plastic that harks back to last year's PS70 but without as much of the "speech bubble" look. As is the fashion with TVs that come from this part of the world the TV features a clear rim.
Physically, the TV is quite slim and especially so for a plasma, though thickness is only usually of interest to people wall-mounting their televisions.
Features
The LG plasma includes a number of interesting features, with the most "forward-looking" being the NetCast system, which enables you to stream movies and videos. If you are a BigPond subscriber you may be interested to hear that the TV allows access to BigPond Movies, and soon, an IPTV service called BigPond TV. The service is also just as interesting to non-Telstra customers as it simply means the downloads will count against your download limit.
The TV boasts a full 1080p resolution and a claimed 3,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio. If you count yourself as a "videophile" then the amount of tweaks available to you on this TV will keep you entertained for days.
On a recent trip to the LG factory in South Korea, one of the things that impressed us was the company's dedication to picture quality. The engineers whose job it is to test and tweak LG's sets really knew their stuff, and in the PK750 this is reflected in the array of professional options available to users. The company has included both THX and ISF picture adjustments in addition to an easy-to-follow set-up guide.
Inputs provided by the TV include four HDMI jacks, two component, two AVI ports and a PC port. The TV comes with two USB ports for connecting external drives and an optional wireless dongle.
Performance
While 3D is gaining the lion's share of exposure at the moment, the true battle is over picture quality. Both Panasonic and Sony have pulled up their socks this year, which leaves LG's TV back in the sandpit (probably seeing what dirt sandwiches taste like).
The Panasonic VT20 and the Sony HX800 are true all-rounders, and capable of performing well in a lit room or a darkened home theatre. Meanwhile, the LG needs it to be really dark before its pictures will come out of hiding.
When testing under the fluoro lights of our office we found that blacks came out looking rather brown, and while this TV is one of the only ones in the world with a "THX Bright Room" setting we found it did little to fix picture quality and looked washed out. At least the TV is still watchable in a lit room, unlike the LE7500. However, with the lights lowered, the "vanilla" THX mode makes it easier to set up in your living space. Black levels really come to the fore as a result.
Given the TV has the THX stamp of approval it did indeed perform well with our HD synthetic image tests, acing all of them bar noise levels, which means it will clean up most image artefacts like judder and "jaggies" but noisy content won't be gussied up.
We switched the TV over to rally car racing on One HD and found the TV was able to deliver the dust and fast-moving images crisply. This is definitely a good TV for sports fans who don't mind pulling the curtains shut first.
Blu-rays suffered a little bit of noise but had smooth motion, razor-sharp edges and plenty of detail. Black levels had pop, and colours were natural. Moving to DVDs and the results weren't as convincing, and for all its faults the LE7500 delivered images with more vitality. However, while there are colour gradations on some plasmas, King Kong's sunrise over the Empire State Building proved no problem for this TV.
We spent some time with the online streaming aspects of this TV having already tried out BigPond Movies on the LE7500. It works as well as the other television and we still dig the weather effects on the main NetCast page, but can't wait for more services to come online.
This TV had two main problems, and could be deal breakers depending on how you choose to use it. Firstly, this TV had one of the worst burn-in problems we've seen in a while. Static images would leave a faint imprint for several seconds after disappearing and while this didn't mean any smearing problems with motion it was most obvious after watching letter-boxed material. Big brown blobs at the top and bottom would occur on all-black screens. We don't think this is a permanent issue, but if you want to use this TV for gaming or a PC monitor we'd urge you to exercise due care.
Lastly, while dialogue was clear and natural, we found the cabinet rattled at anything over two-thirds volume. Worse than that, turn it up all the way once and you'll find you can never get rid of the rattle at any volume.
Conclusion
At around AU$2000 the LG represents good value for money for a 50-inch screen, and the array of professional tweaking tools should appeal to people who take their home theatre seriously. Yet, while this TV has some distinctive aspects it doesn't quite coalesce into a whole.
LCD and its bastard cousin "LED" are gaining strength and beginning to eclipse plasma as our technology of choice. If picture quality is important to you, but you don't want to pay more than you have to for an LCD, then just a little more money can get you a Panasonic V or VT series instead.
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