PERFORMANCE
I had a fresh Blu-ray 3D copy of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on hand during my test, but I was more interested in seeing The Ghost Writer (in plain 2D — don’t expect Roman Polanski to jump on the 3D ship anytime soon), so that got cued up first. In a scene where the character simply known as the Ghost (Ewan McGregor) interviews Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) in the exprime minister’s office while his secretary (Kim Cattrall) looks on, the LG managed to flesh out fine differences in the light skin tones of all three actors. At the same time, the bright red of a large abstract painting looked balanced, while a celery stalk sticking out of Adam’s vegetable-juice concoction displayed the pale-green celery hue we all know and love.

The set’s LED local dimming feature allows it to deliver images with fairly solid black levels and good shadow detail. In another scene from The Ghost Writer, where the Ghost huddles in his flat after getting mugged, shadows in the dim interior showed good depth, and I could clearly make out stuff like boxes, clothes, and books cluttering the walls and tables. On the other hand, a coarseness to LG’s local dimming processing resulted in poor picture uniformity, with certain areas of the screen looking lighter than others on dark images, and “halos” sometimes surrounding bright objects. The most glaring example I saw of this was Writer’s opening scene, where a ferry pulls into a dock at night. Watching it, I could actually make out backlight “blocks” — areas where specific lamp modules were either fully illuminated or dimmed — on the LG’s screen.

Viewing in 3D didn’t get off to a good start on the 47LX6500, with the handful of 3D discs I checked out all showing fairly serious crosstalk, or “ghost” images. But then I remembered the Left/Right button on LG’s remote control, which reverses the order in which left/right 3D frames get displayed. Once I pressed it, crosstalk virtually disappeared, and 3D pictures now looked solid and sharp. In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 3D is for the most part used in a subtle manner, but a few shots — like that of the town’s scheming mayor mumbling behind a chain-link fence — displayed a dramatic sense of depth. The LG’s very good rendering of 3D images also made scenes like one that takes place inside a giant yellow Jell-O mold more engaging and fun than they otherwise would have been in 2D.

As with many other LCD TVs, the 47LX6500’s TruMotion controls are meant to reduce the amount of blur and judder in video- and film-based images, respectively. With either the High or Low TruMotion presets switched on, film-based images took on a “video” look that was decidedly un-film-like. And when I used the Custom mode’s separate blur-/judder-reduction controls, I found that even a +1 judder setting introduced the “video” look. Better to just leave this feature off for movies, in which case the LG simply repeats each frame from a 1080p/24 Blu-ray source 9 times to hit its native 240-Hz screen-refresh rate.

Poor viewing angle has been an issue with many of the LED-backlit LCD TVs we’ve tested: Once you move a foot or two away from the screen’s center, picture contrast weakens and colors shift to an objectionable degree. Not so with the 47LX6500, which uses an IPS (In-Plane Switching) LCD panel. Screen uniformity was perfect at seats 45° off-center and beyond, making the LG a good option for households with multiple viewers.