PERFORMANCE
After making my final picture adjustments in the Advanced menu and sliding the Motion Blur control to its midllevel setting, I got down to the business of watching TV. Just my luck: The TNT HD channel was airing newly minted Miami Heat forward LeBron James's homecoming game vs. the Cleveland Cavaliers. The crowd's emotions may have been a mess, but the picture on the TV's 46-inch screen looked satisfyingly clean and crisp. I also found that the Motion Blur adjustment offered a subtle improvement during sports programs like this one: With it turned on, the picture was slightly crisper during fast-action play - something that could be verified by looking at the letters on the players' uniforms. The set's other True 240 Hz adjustment, Film Judder, made movies look strange at all settings, however, so I preferred to leave that at its minimum (off) setting.

Turning to Blu-ray, I checked out Christopher Nolan's latest mindbender, Inception. Several dark scenes early in the film proved useful for evaluating the TV's black-level performance and screen uniformity. In a sequence (a dream sequence?) that takes place inside the palatial home where Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are trying to sell Saito (Ken Watanabe) their subconscious- espionage services, blacks looked fairly deep, and I could distinguish between dark tones in the actors' black tuxedos. However, when the action moved outside, both the night sky and the black letter- box bars above and below the 2.35:1 image turned a lighter shade of gray, which served to flatten out the picture's depth.

More problematic, though, was the unevenness of shadows across the screen due to the set's edge-lit backlight: In really dark scenes like this one, the picture took on a mottled appearance. The set's optimal viewing angle was also quite limited at 10º, although that's fairly typical for an LED-backlit LCD model.

With all the controls that Mitsubishi provides for adjusting color, it was hardly surprising that color accuracy turned out to be one of its strong points. In a later scene from Inception where Cobb tests Ariadne (Ellen Page) and her mazedesigning skills on a sunny Paris rooftop, the differences between her pale skin and Leo's weathered complexion were easily discernible. With the Natural picture mode selected, a degree of red-push in the picture gave her red/orange jacket a somewhat too-intense hue. After I made red saturation adjustments in the Advanced mode to compensate for this, however, her jacket looked much more balanced.

To test the set's audio performance, I pulled out my Blu-ray of Avatar. In a scene where Jake Sully (Sam Worthing- ton), abandoned for the evening in the jungle, fends off alien creepy-crawlies, the TV's built-in soundbar did a great job conveying the dense web of nighttime rainforest sounds. Compared with my regular 5.1-speaker system, most of the sound emanated from the front when Jake frantically swings his torch around, as opposed to circling around the room, but the Mitsubishi nonetheless managed to create a convincing sense of ambience. Music also sounded quite good when played through the TV, particularly when its Music audio mode was selected. (Despite the name, the set's Stereo mode tends to collapse the sonic presentation into mono.)

BOTTOM LINE
Mitsubishi's LT-46265 is priced competitively with many other 240-Hz LED-backlit LCD TVs with the same-size screen, but it goes the extra mile by giving you a built-in high-performance multichannel soundbar. Just add a subwoofer and you've got an instant home theater. Where it comes up short is in its black-level performance: Shadows on this TV aren't as deep as you'll see on many plasma models and other LED sets with a fullarray backlight. Also, its screen uniformity on dark images was below average. But if you're looking for an all-in-one A/V solution with several cool perks (how many other TVs have Bluetooth A2DP audio streaming?), the LT-46265 is well worth a look.