Home Theatre/TV: Daewoo DLV-42C1LMN 42-inch LCD TV – 63

Daewoo may not be the brand typically associated with LCDs in most people’s minds, but the Korean electronics giant has a new DE (Daewoo Electronics)logo and is bringing us electronic goodies like this here LCD TV, and the HD-DVD recorder featured on page 68.

It’s a wallet-agreeable $2500 for 42 inches of LCD TV, and, with a resolution of 1366 x 768, it has a goodly number of pixels for ‘right now’ use. If you’re not investing in HD discs and not holding your breath for local HD broadcasts, higher pixel counts are somewhat, er, wasted. Am I allowed to say that?

This 42-inch is something of a big brother to the DLV-32C3SMBS, the 32-inch Daewoo we gave a rave review to back in Tone 59. If anything, the new 42-inch is even more aesthetically appealing, as its frame comes in a full piano gloss.

Being an LCD TV, its images are bright and colourful, as expected. Debate still rages as to whether the generalisation about LCDs having ‘iffy’ blacks next to those of plasmas holds any water; I’ll leave that to your eyes when you go and get a look-see at this set. If you’re an LCD fan, suffice to say that, for the price, the blacks are the goods.

I had to do a fair bit of setup fiddling with brightness, contrast, colour and sharpness to get things looking their best, but admittedly, I’m hard to please. There’s lots you can fiddle with, which is good. One of the four image presets will probably suit most people.

There’s a handful of audio presets and some special effects, too. One to boost bass, another that creates a 3D effect, and then there’s M.voice, which greatly enhances vocals. The sound really is a talking point of this TV; while most may wish to plug their TVs into full home theatre systems, for reasons many and various some people are quite happy with the sound from their TV, and the speaker – firing from the bottom of the Daewoo – is rock solid. Ditto the remote, which replicates that of the 32-inch: it’s solid and surprisingly easy to use.

I tried out my two usual test DVDs: Star Wars Episode 2 (for high motion surround sound action scenes) and Animusic (for clean CGI animation. Go see www.animusic.com).

I did discover that although this TV has one HDMI digital input, I actually preferred video coming through the analogue component inputs. I guess I liked the job the Daewoo made of up-scaling the standard resolution video over the DVD player. Sure, things weren’t quite as sharp, but compression artefacts (edge ringing, shimmer and so forth) were less apparent.

While the consumer can certainly do better in picture quality by shelling out one heck of a lot more moolah, the Daewoo represents  a bargain at this price point, and will probably present no real problem to the less fussy punter.

CHRIS ANDERSON

Contact

www.daewoo.net.nz

Specifications

Resolution: 1366 x 768p
Contrast ratio: 3000:1
Viewing angle: 178º
Brightness: 550 CD
Inputs: 1 x HDMI, 2 x component, 1 x S-Video, 2 x composite, 1 x PC D-sub
Speaker output: 20W
Size: 1037 x 788 x 328mm (W/H/D)
Weight: 24Kg

Pros

Good price for 42-inch TV
Plenty of adjustable setting

Cons

Average blacks

Verdict

Big screen on a budget

Aesthetics       85%
Performance   75%
Features         82%
Functionality    85%
Price Value     90%
Overall           83%