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
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