LG 42LV355U 42-inch Widescreen Full HD 1080p LED TV with Freeview

I bought this tv to replace a 40" Sony that has been reassigned to Wii/PS3 duty in my son's playroom.

Unboxing, assembling the stand, locating the tv and putting in the connections took a matter of minutes.

For the first day or so I was quite unhappy with the picture quality - the colours seemed washed out. I'm using a Home Theatre PC attached to the TV, so I ran the Windows Colour Calibration utility, which takes you step by step through adjusting brightness, contrast and colour tint, and the picture quality improved massively. Then I loaded a DVD with THX (the George Lucas picture & audio enhancement) and used the THX video adjustment process to go through a similar process to the one I did with the Windows colour calibration.

With those 2 rounds of tweaking the picture on this LG TV is brilliant. As I'm running a PC through the TV I often use it as a monitor with a wireless keyboard - with the Sony TV I used to struggle to make out the text - with the LG it's very clear and easy on the eye.

HD footage is remarkable on the screen. I think it's something to do with having the blacks properly configured. Images have a clarity and depth that at times feels like 3D.

Edit - I originally said "My only real niggle with this TV is that the viewing angle is not as good as the old Sony. Colours start to wash out if you sit more than about 45 degrees either side of the centre line (90 degree total angle). They don't wash out massively at that level, but it's noticeable.".
However - I discovered that playing with the settings gave a much clearer, brighter picture that stands up to much wider viewing angles.
My settings are:
Energy Saving: Off
Backlight: 67
Contrast: 87
Brightness: 53
H Sharpness: 50
V Sharpness: 50
Colour: 50
Tint: 0

In Expert settings submenu:
Black level: High
Gamut: Wide
Colour temperature: Cool

This, for me, gives a really excellent picture.

Had a bit of a problem to start with because dark scenes were just too dark, no use when trying to watch a moody thriller or spy movie!

Eventually found a menu for all the detailed tweaks to light levels, contrast, etc and after setting it up it is the business. I read reviews before buying that said the sound was a bit weak but i haven't found it so.

Having only beared witness to maximum of a 32" tv in my lifetime, this telly really takes the biscuit.

It's amazing, standard scart input quality is really very good, i was expecting a much more disminished picture on such a big screen but it's fine, 1080 immediately just sticks a grin on your chops.

The response time is only 3.5ms and i haven't noticed as much "blurring" when watching fast detailed motion like football as i did on my previous LCD tv.

There is a very helpful picture optimisation wizard so you don't have to try endless numerical combinations of settings to get the picture looking right either.

This is a LED TV (despite someone suggesting otherwise), it's under 3cm deep and the screen is side-lit as opposed to back-lit. You can notice this (lighting) if there is one matte colour being displayed, the sides will appear lighter then the middle of the screen but it's not annoying.

On a sunny day the screen does seem to reflect a lot of light although i don't know if this is just because it's so big and also i like to have the screen relatively dim anyway.

The speakers aren't amazing but that is to be expected on such a slimline telly.

The tv is not over powering on your eyes and the viewing area is very good, on my last sony lcd telly if you were looking up to it, the top of the screen would become very dark and you basically couldn't see what was going on, but this one doesn't have any such problems!

I thoroughly recommend it !!!