LCD TV Reviews

User Interface
As with many TVs these days, the remote is a universal type that can control up to four devices other than the TV—interestingly, one of the device buttons is labeled HD DVD! It's not illuminated, except that the selected device button lights up momentarily when you press any other button to show what device you're controlling. All the buttons appear to be translucent, so they could easily be backlit.

The layout is fairly well-organized and differentiated, though the buttons surrounding the cursor cluster are grouped in pairs on rockers—push one side for one thing, the other side for another. This is a bit awkward and cluttered-looking, and these buttons are harder to find by feel.

The menu system is not my favorite, with picture controls that are two levels deep and advanced settings another level deeper still. Granted, once these parameters are set, you probably won't need to adjust them much, but I've seen menu designs that are more immediately accessible. Happily, the picture settings are independent for each input.

The organization is not bad overall, and the menu opens to the item you were last working with, which is very nice. The selected picture control drops to the bottom of the screen and the rest of the menu disappears, as it should, but it times out after only six seconds of inactivity, which is too short in my book. Also, if you adjust a picture control and then press up or down, the entire menu reappears—this should cycle through the controls one by one at the bottom of the screen.