PERFORMANCE

Watching The Counterfeiters on Blu-ray Disc, I was immediately grabbed by the TV's crisp 1080p picture. In scenes like the one where Herzog (Devid Striesow) busts into the pad of artist/counterfeiter Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) to arrest him, the TV's sharp detail brought the large array of objects cluttering the space into crisp focus, with the fine texture of the future Sturmbannführer Herzog's tweed overcoat in particular conveying a solid, 3-D feel.

Reds initially looked oversaturated and cartoonish on the JVC, and skin tones had a too-warm cast. But after making extensive tweaks (including reducing the set's red level in the Color Management menu), the color rendition improved. Watching a scene from The Counterfeiters where Sorowitsch gambles in a private room in Monte Carlo, his face, and those of the European aristocrats surrounding him, displayed a natural-looking skin tone. And when I checked out a Clemson vs. Alabama college football game recorded from ESPN-HD, the sea of bright-orange-clad players and fans looked balanced, as opposed to lurid - which is how they initially looked before I made my adjustments.

Shadow detail and depth, while not on the same level as that of the plasmas and better LCDs I've tested recently, was mostly good. When Sorowitsch gets transferred in a squalid train compartment to a different concentration camp, the TV managed to illuminate a fair amount of detail in the dank interior, such as wooden slats lining the walls and grungy straw covering the floor - not to mention the half-starved young art student in the corner whom the counterfeiter helps and befriends.

The set's Clear Motion Drive III 120-Hz processing for the most part worked very well. With my Blu-ray player configured for 1080p/24 output to the TV, shots with diagonal camera pans looked smooth and relatively judder-free. The set's noise-reduction modes also proved effective (I'd recommend setting the VNR mode to Auto and leaving it there), although a slight amount of detail reduction could be seen when MPEG NR was set to High.

BOTTOM LINE

JVC's latest 120-Hz LCD offers some improvements over last year's models, particularly in the areas of onscreen menu design and ergonomics. And while this TV's black level, shadow detail, and color accuracy are only average compared with that of the flat-panel competition, its 120-Hz display delivered crisp and smooth-looking pictures with all manner of programs - and it did so over an impressively wide viewing angle.