LCD TV Reviews

User Interface
Unlike most TVs these days, the remote is not universal, but dedicated to the TV (huzzah!). Not only that, it has discrete input-selection buttons—well, almost. One button cycles through the HDMI inputs, but all the other inputs have their own buttons (hallelujah!). The only downside here is that the TV gives no indication of which HDMI input is selected with this button until it finds a signal. Interestingly, there's a DVI button that seems to do nothing.

The slender handset is not illuminated, and the buttons are reasonably well-organized and nicely differentiated, making them easy to find by feel in the dark. On the other hand, some of its design is questionable. For example, the Input button, which calls up a list of inputs, is entirely superfluous, and it's positioned next to the Channel Up/Down buttons, where the Mute button should be. (Mute is at the top of the remote; it should be swapped with the Aspect Ratio button, which is also near the Channel Up/Down buttons.) Also, most of the buttons are labeled not with words, but with icons, many of which are rather cryptic.

The menu system is very well-designed; for instance, the picture controls are visible at the first level. Even better, when you enter the menu system, it returns to where you were when you last exited. Thankfully, the picture controls are independent for each input.

One strange quirk—holding the remote's Menu button causes the menu to appear and disappear repeatedly. If you want to call up the menu and hold the button just a bit too long, it appears and quickly disappears again, which got old really fast.

When you select a picture control to adjust, it drops to the bottom of the screen while the rest of the menu disappears as it should. But you cannot cycle through the controls from this level—you must back out to the full menu and select the next control, which is far more tedious than it needs to be.

The main Video menu includes an item called Calibration, which opens the Calibration menu. Oddly, the "value" next to the this item in the Video menu always reads "No," which is confusing. Also, the Calibration menu includes duplicates of many of the picture controls—changing one in either menu changes it in the other menu. Unlike the Video menu, selecting a picture control in the Calibration menu leaves the entire menu on the screen, which makes it more difficult to tweak these controls while looking at an image.

The Color Temp parameter in the Calibration menu includes a single set of RGB calibration controls, not two sets as with most TVs. Thus, the set cannot be calibrated at the high and low ends of the brightness range. On the plus side, each color-temp preset has its own set of RGB controls.