LG PG6000 (42PG6000) Plasma HDTV Review

Regular readers will know that I covered LG’s high end plasma screen, the PG7000, a few weeks ago. This time around we take a step down the range and look at the HD ready PG6000. The first thing that hit me when unpacking this model was the fact that cosmetically, it looks identical to its big full HD brother. Indeed it keeps that sleek designer look with a full sheet of glass covering the whole screen surface and bezel. Out of the box the PG6000 also has its own attached table stand which allows a 30degree swivel. The LG design is very sleek and looks far more expensive than its price tag suggests.

The actual plasma panel is a HD ready 720p affair (1024 x 768 resolution) and some may think that this is not really acceptable given today’s full HD (1920 x 1080) market. However the number of pixels available is not the most important factor in creating a great looking picture, no matter what the marketing guys will tell you. The PG6000 also features some excellent technology on board and also offers full calibration control. Some of the subjective reviewers out there seem to get confused with this kind of flexibility, thinking that it must point to a bad picture to start with. What they are missing is the fact that to get the very best from any display is to actually switch it out of the factory defaults. The PG6000 offers ISFccc controls and a very good out of the box preset, which we will examine in detail later in the review.

The PG6000 boasts LG’s dual XD engine which claims free flowing judder free images along with full 100Hz processing. The menu system is also very similar to that seen on the PG7000, with a video game type graphical interface, offering all the choices you could possibly require. Looking at the picture area this takes us to a traditional menu screen which offers all the usual picture settings.

The remote control supplied with the PG6000 is also exactly the same version seen with the more expensive screen. It is a plastic affair with the buttons logically placed and is very intuitive to use. It also has a fake leather look under the keys in an attempt to make it appear expensive. Using the remote allows full control over all the TV functions available and although it’s plastic, on a set in this price range it is more than acceptable.

Moving around the back and we find the following connections. There are four HDMI v 1.3 (three on the back, one side mounted), RGB/PC, component, two scart along with optical digital output, stereo analogue out and an RS232 port. On the side of the set are further connections which include, USB in, s-video, composite along with audio jacks and a PCMCIA card slot. So overall, the PG6000 is certainly laden with enough connections to make even the most hardcore of users happy.

The PG6000 boasts LG’s dual XD engine which claims free flowing judder free images along with full 100Hz processing. The menu system is also very similar to that seen on the PG7000, with a video game type graphical interface, offering all the choices you could possibly require. Looking at the picture area this takes us to a traditional menu screen which offers all the usual picture settings.

Along with Brightness, Contrast, Colour, Tint and sharpness you can select picture modes which include the usual ‘Vivid, Standard and Cinema’ along with two expert modes. It is the expert modes which we find the most interesting as this opens up full control over the calibration such as greyscale and colour management including a 2D RGBCYM system. These presets in other countries are designed to follow THX certification, which for some strange reason LG have dropped in the UK. The company obviously need some convincing that the UK market knows what THX is!

For me the most important point of any display review is to actually measure its performance out of the box. There is no other way to see exactly what a display is doing or how it has been designed to display its images. Only with objective data available can we confidently tell you, the reader, exactly what the display is capable of and how accurate its performance is. And considering our philosophy of having our displays reproduce what the director intended, there is no other way to fully review a display product.

So with this in mind, we first need to know how close the display can reproduce the Rec.709 HD standard and how good the greyscale mix is with the out of the box settings. For this we measure each picture mode provided to find the exact settings available, and which ones get close to D65 and Rec.709. So how well does the PG6000 get to these standards in the best out of the box presets?

Looking at the CIE chart you will see that the colour gamut employed is slightly wide of the Rec.709 standard, yet all the important points are well aligned. This should allow us to calibrate the PG6000 using the available Colour Management system (CMS- RGBYMC). However, as it is out of the box, the wider colour points are not so strong that it overly affects viewing in this mode. Indeed the Greyscale is also not that far out for a consumer TV with things just slightly low in terms of red. However as the PG6000 has an ISFccc control we will be well placed to get these points as accurate as possible.

And after a full ISF calibration the results are very favourable indeed. The colour points are now accurate to the Rec.709 standard and luminance of these points is also very good indeed. The greyscale has also hit the required points with deltaE error of less than 2 across the board. Gamma has also managed to give us a perfect 2.2 result. All in all the flexibility on the PG6000 has meant that we have been able to calibrate it as accurately as possible to the industry standards which should improve the natural images from the set.

Video Processing

Video processing is also a high point with the LG. The scaling and deinterlacing of material is first rate with very few jaggies and most of the tests passed with flying colours. Even cadence detection was very good and within a few frames of material changing. Blu-ray playback is also well handled with no signs of serious induced judder when playing back at 24p. Overall I was mightly impressed with the processing at this price point.

Out of the box picture performance

One of the slight weak points with the PG6000 is its dynamic range and black levels. Blacks are not as fluid or deep as some competing products in its price range, such as offerings from Panasonic. However, although things are not as deep as they could be, at the price point this Plasma operates you would be hard pushed to get an LCD that will beat it in that department.

Colours out of the box are strong and ever so slightly over saturated with some material. Red is the main culprit with some flesh tones looking slightly blushed. However, with the majority of material I fed the LG, I didn’t see to many instances where inaccuracies actually affected my viewing pleasure. Freeview pictures on the PG6000 can look good with higher bit rate channels, such as the BBC content, however with poor material there was nothing that I could do other than add slight processing to try and clean up the results. However feed the TV a good quality source and the picture quality is very good indeed, and depending on your viewing position, you will not notice any real issues with 720p resolution.

Calibrated performance

Having a full calibration certainly adds an extra dimension to the LG’s performance with a variety of material. Colours are now vivid but natural with flesh tones looking completely natural in their presentation. Detail levels are higher and more pronounced with added shadow details jumping out. The image just look far more convincing once the set has been calibrated and LG should be congratulated for showing other manufacturers in this price point how it should be done. It would have been an added bonus for end users had they included the THX preset on the UK sets, as an accurate image brings out the real performance of this TV.