LG 47LK520 LCD HDTV Review

Formats

The LG 47LK520 displays 1080p natively and can handle all standard NTSC formats.

Viewing Angle

The viewing angle on this LG is unimpressive, an expected reaction when testing LCD displays. Still, it falls towards the bottom of our comparison models making it less than average for an LCD display.

Reflectance

We shined some bright LED lights at the 47LK520's screen to see how annoying electric lights would be when you are watching actual content. Turns out, it's not that bad. The lights were diffracted into a tight little rainbow pattern. This tells us the screen uses material that can break light into smaller components, thus dissipating the brightness of that light. Adding angle to the lights helped eliminate the reflection even more. Overall, electric lights in the same room as the 47LK520 should not disturb you while you watch.

Video Processing

We liked some of the processing features on the 47LK520, and if you know our website, this is very rare. TruMotion mode was great because you can control it to a level that looks perfect to you. We discuss this feature fully in our Motion Section.

The Dynamic Contrast function was stark and interesting, enhancing the contrast of edges to make objects distinctively separate. When turned on, the picture looked great, except that there was significant color loss, so then we threw on the Dynamic Color setting, and then we noticed that the whites were a little yellow, so we flipped the switch on the Clear White function, and before things got out of hand we decided to stop there. The picture looked pretty good, but we could only judge subjectively about the middle range of the spectrum.

It would be great if someone, some collection of handsome geniuses, could have gotten together to run tests on these functions to see what was actually going on. Well avid reader, we are those geniuses.

With the three settings (Dynamic Contrast, Dynamic Color, and Clear White) turned on high, we retested the color and greyscale curves for your benefit, and our amusement:

What was once a beautiful greyscale gamma curve is now jagged and too steep. Large peaks and valleys show where Dynamic Contrast is taking an input value low on the spectrum and outputting a value that is brighter than several values higher up the spectrum. You can also notice that most of the effect occurs within the middle ranges of the spectrum where most of your content will be viewed. These settings are forcing middle range grey values into brighter or darker levels to create extreme differentiation between objects, but you can see how incorrect the picture will be from the input signal.

You can see that color temperature had perceivable errors in the same place, just that these errors were more extreme, almost twice as noticeable.

Looking at the color curves you see much the same changes as the greyscale gamma curve, especially in the reds. Red takes several massive leaps in luminance along the brightness spectrum. Blue takes one right at the brightest end, peaking thereby unable to get brighter about a sixth of the way away from the brightest possible input. Compare this to the graph in our color section, and you get an idea of why you will want to leave Dynamic Color, and the rest of these funcitons, off.