LG MZ42PZ14 flicker etc. - mine's gone back! Read this if you're considering/own LG!

TP2K

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LG MZ42PZ14

In my humble opinion this panel is frought with problems. I purchased mine in January from Powerhouse (PH) with an extended warranty and, if I am honest, I have never been happy with it. Never.

My panel suffered a dead pixel out of the box, buzzed quite loudly and had connectivity and flicker problems. Granted I may have been unlucky on some counts, but on others there is clearly a manufacturing fault which has now been confirmed by LG to Barron McCann (BM) their UK agents. I have to point out that LG UK would NOT admit to me over the phone that there was a problem.

Over my six month ownership of the LG, I reported all the problems to BM; dead pixel, buzzing, VGA connectivity and finally the flickering. All except the flickering were rejected as non-issues. It was in May I reported the flicker and after a month of back and forth between PH, BM and LG I finally got offered an alternative brand and on 1 July I chose (and ordered via PH) the Hitachi 42PD3000 which has today been delivered and the LG taken away.

I was reluctant to post anything prior to today for fear of jinxing my exchange. Anyway, read on if you want to hear my woes;

1 - SCREEN FLICKER
When in a darkened room, screen flicker is very noticeable on dark scenes. It is impossible to watch films such as The Others, Scream etc., without the screen constantly flickering as it attempts to compensate for the dark images. Strangely if the room is lit (be it daylight or other source) then the flicker issue is between less and non noticable. Barron Mcann (BM) catalogued/chaptered a load of DVD's and brought over LG's technical bods from Korea - who then admitted to BM< that there was a problem. This problem apparently affects ALL of the LG range regardless of Model number, and all are the same so a swap will not rectify it.

2 - SLOW PROCESSING ON PICTURE SCROLLING/PANNING
When the picture pans or scrolls from say, left to right, a visible processing delay can be seen on-screen resulting in things such as door frames creating a flickering vertical line shooting up the screen as the image moves. I know someone else here commented on this previously so I would imagine it was not down to my panel.

3 - DIM SCENES/SOLARISATION & GRAIN
With dimly lit scenes which are displayed for a period of time, the panel's processing seems to get lazy and the brightness of the picture decreases the longer the dim scene is present. In particular, if a scene is 5 or so minutes the picture can become so bad it's unwatchable. If the picture cuts away to a bright scene the panel immediately rectifies itself; and if it then cuts back to the dim scene the scene is brightened up - but again, will become dimmer over a minute or two.

4 - CONNECTIVITY
Connecting my panel via the tuner box with Component leads was a hit & miss affair. Sometimes the panel would accept the feed, others it would not. Over the first three months or so although I managed to get it to accept the feed only to have it report "No Signal" several weeks later. The connecting leads and DVD player were not at fault as these were checked - it seems the panel was just being fussy.

Also, I never managed to connect a PC to the RGB PC input. No matter what I tried, no matter what settings I changed the panel would not display my laptop PC. I could get the initial Windows start boot-up screen and then that was it; nothing else. BM could not offer solution to this - citing it to be my laptop at fault which I have since confirmed it wasn't.

-

LG and BM are well aware of the flicker issues - the official word I have from LG (via BM) is that LG will NOT recall this or any other of their plasma panels, and BM also told me today that LG are the hardest people to cooperate with returns/complaints.

However, if a consumer is dissatisfied and makes complaint to their retailer, then LG have authorised a refund in this instance (though I didn't get one - PH would not refund - but I did get an alternative panel, and in my opinion a pretty good deal in the end).

Of course, whether you get a refund depends on your retailer - I believe I was lucky and managed to get the Hitachi (£500 more expensive via PH), complete with a FOUR year warranty (where the original warranty was for only TWO years!) for the inconvenience for the same *original* price I had paid for the LG14 package. Granted, I think my extended warranty helped as PH dropped into conversation that they were claiming against the warranty and this is how they have "absorbed" the additional cost of my new set-up.

I hope this informed information helps some of you if you have issues with your LG panel. If you don't have issues and are happy then good on you... I wasn't at all happy with mine and for £3K I think I should have been. I've had the Hitachi panel for <3 hours and I am more delighted with it than I had ever been with the LG in six months!

Whatever you choose to do (if anything), good luck!

TP2K
 
TP, you've probably read my threads on the LG's too. They should never have been released with all the problems they have. I had brightness flickering in dark scenes, colour banding in component (meaning I had to try 3 different DVD players to find one compatible with the panel), terrible solarisation and it wouldn't do PAL progressive.

LG sent out their service folk who were completely useless. I wasn't going to hang about until their engineers found a fix so decided to get rid of it.

I was in the fortunate position to have Richer Sounds accept the unit was faulty and replace it with a lovely Panasonic (albeit after me giving them another £500). It's lightyears ahead of the shockingly bad Samsung and LG models I also returned. With the Panasonic I've found what was looking for in plasma.

People thinking about LG models look elsewhere.
 
I think you'll find that all progressive panels (apart from the pioneer) flicker because with PAL you are displaying a 50hz signal.
Looking directly at it won't pick up the flicker, but looking to the side of the panel will allow you to see the flicker in your peripheral vision.
ALIS panels refresh at 60hz but refresh lines of 512 pixels alterantively, so they seem to avoid the problem.
The pioneer actually refreshes at 72Hz so flicker isn't really evident on it at all (it converts PAL 50hz to 72hz internally).
 
Originally posted by MilesbennettDyson
Can't say I've noticed it on the Panasonic, except in Composite, which I don't really use.
I've noticed it on all panels except the pioneer.
Fuju, pana, you name it. The only progressive that doesn't have it is Pioneer. It's something that some people will notice and others wont though...
 
I'd agree they all do it to a greater or lesser extent, and personally I have always refused to have anything to do with LG screens, the only good thing about them is the price! Using a progressive scan iput cures the problem, from DVD or iScan.
 
TP2K,great post!

Could I have the same run down on how your Hitachi is please?
 
Thank you TP2K,

I was seriously considering the LG plasma against the LG DLP.

Obviously not going for the plasma now, but it's also put me off the DLP as well.

Thanks for your post.
 
TP2K makes some good points but not all these should be considered inherent LG manufacturing faults, he could have just had a "friday afternoon" plasma.

I have the PZ17 panel and am 95% happy with it. I wasn't willing to spend the extra 500 quid to a grand to get the remaining 5%.

* flicker in dark scenes - yes this can be an issue in the situations described. The problem can be reduced by increasing the brightness although this is not ideal.
* slow processing on panning - never noticed this
* dim scenes solarisation and grain - yes there is some solarisation on dim scenes but this is an issue to a greater or lesser extent with all plasmas. I only notice it occasionally.
* input woes - not having the tuner box I cannot comment but I haven't had any problems with my panel with direct connections.

Mike
 
But Mike, the bottom line is that a £50 portable will output a better signal than your £2500 plasma. It does not flicker in dark scenes, give juddery updates on panning or give colour banding on certain DVD player/disc combinations.

I could not justify living with an inferior product, a flashing screen in dark scenes is a fault, not an idiosyncrasy. I could not stomach paying £2500 for a flickering screen. Especially when my little sister has a 32" widescreen which cost a quarter of that which outperformed the LG.
 
Have read this thread with interest and have concluded that I must have been lucky with my PZ17. To be honest, b4 I used a HTPC as the (only) source for my plasma, I had noticed some of the problems detailed here, however, since driving the plasma with the HTPC - set (with powerstrip) to display at the screens native 853/480 resolution (non ideal for the windows desktop, but I ain't doin word processing in my front room!) I have always had an excellent picture, no solarisation, no problem with dark scenes and flicker, and no problem with slow processing.

Dunno, maybe the LG screens prefer being fed via the VGA input or maybe I am just lucky.

It must be said, having auditioned more expensive screens (like the Panny and Tosh models) they are better, but for me the LG does everything I want.
 
...a spare parts for my tv lg the part model is call interface board (ap-42ea20) and it is located on the tv's bottom but i cant get it anywhere i even contacted lg dealers and nothing so if someone got this tv faulty and wants to sell this part let me know this is my email [email protected] or if someone knows where can i get it even better, thanks
 

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