It’s hard to criticise Korean companies these days. There was a time when LG and Samsung were famous only for their low-end products, but these days, nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, it seems to be the Korean companies who are innovating and adding new features, and in LG’s case, it’s only gone and stuffed a Freeview PVR into its new TV, the LG 32LT75.
LG isn’t the first company to put a PVR in a TV — Humax first did this a while ago. But other companies have been slow to understand what a simple yet brilliant idea this is. If we had our way, there would be a PVR in every TV, because the cost of these devices is plummeting, and they’re incredibly useful.
The PVR boasts a 160GB hard drive, so you should be able to store somewhere in the region of 80 hours of TV — more in some cases. There are also two tuners, so you can watch one channel and record another.
There are plenty of inputs too — a pair of HDMI sockets, component video and VGA should keep most people happy. And there are two Scart sockets available for your older equipment. Interestingly, the HDMI sockets will happily accept 1080p inputs, which the TV will rescale to fit the screen, and 24p movie inputs are accepted too.
The LG 32LT75 is also a fully HD Ready, 720p LCD TV, so there’s no compromise on picture quality, and as you can see from its mugshot, it’s a handsome beast too, offering lovely rounded corners and a pleasing black finish. LG claims an 8ms grey-to-grey response time, and a life expectancy of around 50,000 hours, which should keep even the most TV-addicted couch potato happy.
Update: A full review of the LG 32LT75 is now available on the site.-Ian Morris