Review: LG Infinia LX9500 3D TV

Hot on the heels of Sony's spectacular World Cup entrance into 3D TV, all the other manufacturers also launched their models. LG, Panasonic and Samsung all have models available to compete with Sony's 3D-capable sets.

As the name suggests, this full LED-backlit LCD panel is capable of displaying 3D images. Or rather: it can display images that are turned into 3D using the supplied glasses. Two pairs come with a set and additional pairs cost around R1 000.

This model, the LX9500, is also super-thin. LG claims a thickness of 22mm, which gives it a lower profile than the average laptop. In practice, this design makes it a lot easier to mount on a wall, not to mention attractive. In addition to being super-thin, it also has a barely noticeable 16mm bezel - the little black bit making up the frame. Closer to frameless than we've ever been.

As a conventional display, the LX9500 excels. Full-LED backlighting means there's a grid of LEDs behind the main LCD panel. These are individually controllable, so an on-screen picture with a lot of black would have those LEDs dimmed, while the brighter areas would have their respective LEDs lit up. This does endow the LX9500 with fantastic contrast, though I wouldn't bet my salary on it living up to the claimed 10 million to 1 contrast ratio. Overall picture quality, even with default settings, is vastly superior to anything else I've seen.

Connectivity is great, too. There are four HDMI ports, more than enough to accommodate all the HD devices you could possibly want to connect, and some analogue inputs are also present. One strange addition is an Ethernet port. Hook this baby up to an Internet connection and it'll unlock a few extras, using LG's Netcast online service bouquet. This offers YouTube, Weather Channel and Picasa online services in HD. It's pretty cool loafing on the couch and just browsing YouTube for an hour or so, but the Picasa and Weather Channel applications didn't get me as excited. One fantastic feature to look forward to is Skype integration. LG SA is working on finalising the service, but when it's made available, customers will be able to purchase an LG-specific Webcam and transform their HDTV into a Skype videoconferencing machine. No firm details are available yet, but I'm told to hold thumbs for this to arrive before the end of the year.

Let's face it, though, the real reason you'll drop 40 grand on this TV is to watch some 3D movies. Here's where things start looking less promising. While the LX9500 is a fantastic 2D display, mainly because of its 400Hz refresh rate and full LED backlighting, the 3D technology lets it down. It's not that this model has a bad implementation, but rather that the 3D technology being used for TVs is 'under-whelming'.

The first major 3D hit movie was 2009's Avatar, and I'll admit to being blown away by its really immersive visuals. Unfortunately, 3D TVs don't have the same wow factor. The thing about 3D films in a cinema is that they're already larger than life, making it a lot easier to perceive the depth offered by the stereoscopic image. When you scale that down and make the same image appear on a 47-inch screen, it's a whole lot less impressive.

Instead of a shark looking like it's coming right at you, it just looks like a less-two-dimensional shark in a 47-inch box. The 3D effect is noticeable, but it's not convincing enough. Again, this is no fault of the LCD panel or the Blu-ray player, just the inherent downfalls of packaging the technology for home use. It's also pretty awkward having to wear glasses. They're not uncomfortable and can easily be worn on top of prescription glasses, but you do look like a bit of a tool sitting on your couch wearing something that looks like a movie prop from Back to the Future. The glasses are rechargeable and battery life is an impressive 40 hours, and they're obviously not needed for regular 2D content.

I should also add that it was very difficult to obtain a final verdict on the 3D capabilities. The review unit was supplied with an LG 3D Blu-ray player (see sidebar), which came with a 3D sample disc. There are no 3D Blu-ray films on sale in South Africa and obtaining an import film on short notice proved impossible. Even attempts to source 3D movie trailers online were fruitless, despite having the means to download and play them. I will be revisiting 3D TVs in the near future to see if the newer, purpose-made content makes the technology more attractive.

LG was also kind enough to supply me with a copy of the Avatar game for the Xbox 360, which has an option to render in 3D. This was quite remarkable, since it runs on standard Xbox hardware and worked really well. Turning on the 3D mode in the game did degrade performance quite noticeably, but I'm hoping future games for both the 360 and PS3 will offer something similar without a performance penalty.

As it stands, the LX9500 is a fantastic 2D display with 3D capabilities. Spending R42 000 on one is hard to justify when there's no way to make use of the main selling point.

Going 3D requires the actual display, glasses and a 3D media player. Unless there are only two folks in the house, bank on spending at least another R2 000 on extra pairs of 3D glasses. The BX580 Blu-ray player I used costs R3 500, which is fairly reasonable given its great feature set. That's R50 000, before even buying movies that take advantage of the new tech - a tough pill to swallow when a really good 2D display, with Blu-ray player, costs less than half.

If money was no object and you wanted a great HDTV, I'd definitely recommend this, but if you have saved up for a while and want a 3D TV you will be a tad disappointed.