LG 32LD550 32-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LCD HDTV

Review by Primal for LG 32LD550 32-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LCD HDTV
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I bought a Samsung “Touch of Red” 46 inch LCD TV awhile back, intending for it to become my everything TV, for sports, XBOX and all around lounging. Having two kids though, quickly turned it into the Elmo’s World TV in the living room and I was left with an old, 19″ TV upstairs to play on. I bought this strictly for the man cave and think that it was a great buy. The size is perfect, Big enough to get full HD but not so large that it looks strange sitting on a desk. The picture quality is amazing, the colors are incredibly crisp and everything I have played on it looks exceptional. The 120 HZ, though not top of the line anymore, is still more than enough to make all but the most high speed games look great, with no blurring. It has 4 HDMI ports, so that I can hook both consoles up, along with a computer port, so I can have everything right at the desk.

Like the Samsung Series, LG planned ahead and made their TV internet capable. You have to buy the $80.00 wifi adapter, but once you do you have access to Netflix, youtube and a bunch of apps that can do many things. Great for me and wife trying to find something to watch on the weekend.

I looked around for a while before deciding on this TV. At Best Buy it was up against a Sony and a Samsung of similar price and size. The LG clearly had the better picture. I have no regrets about buying this and highly recommend it for anyone wanting a moderately sized, fully HD TV.

Review by Evin Gultepe for LG 32LD550 32-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LCD HDTV
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It is very good price for a full 1080p HD, 128Hz refresh rate, 2.4ms response time and 150,000:1 contrast. We searched over and Amazon price was the best.

When we were searching for HD TV, 32″ looked tiny next to huge TV sets. But I measured over our old TV and saw that 32″ was enough for our living room( it was twice as big than our old TV). I suggest you to measure the size over your old TV and decide in your room for which size you want; not in the showroom.

I ordered this TV on Sunday from Amazon and it arrived by Tuesday with free FedEx shipping. It cannot get any faster than that. Love free shipping. Come out of package almost ready to go.

The video quality is amazing, colors, sharpness… It is everything you are expecting from an HD TV. But our favorite was the NetCast. We hooked up our internet cable to the TV and voila! We immediately watched from our instant-Q from Netflix! Even with our slow (1Mb/s) internet connection the quality was awesome, although occasionally the quality got low when the connection slowed down but it corrected itself when connection got better. If you have a better internet connection, I don’t think you need any problems.

I read that you can buy an wi-fi adapter for NetCast but i don’t think it is necessary. We are using wireless internet for our laptops, cable for TV and TV is not something we wanna move around anyways.

It is quite new so I cannot say much about endurance but currently I am perfectly happy with my buy and strongly recommend it.

Review by M. Geary for LG 32LD550 32-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LCD HDTV
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We bought this on sale at Best Buy. Hated to pay sales tax but was still a slightly lower total cost than Amazon. Stand assembly was a simple 2 step, 8 screw process. We are using it in the bedroom hooked up to Charter cable. We are getting a very good quality picture on standard (non HD) cable channels. In fact the non HD picture is better than the one we get from the 2 year old Sony Bravia XBR6 32 inch TV that we have in the kitchen. The remote and menus are easy to use even for my non-techie wife. We have not used the internet(netcast) feature. We have ordered from Amazon the wireless LG ANWF100 USB-based adapter which will allow this TV to connect wirelessly to the internet. The recent price for this adapter was $30 less on Amazon than at Best Buy or other sites. Because of the reduced price on the adapter, we decided to try the wireless method fist and if it fails to function properly then I guess we will have to try to run wiring from the router in the basement. I will try to update this review after we see how the internet connection works for us.

Update: June 2 — I plugged in the wireless LG ANWF100 USB Adapter and easily connected to the internet following the onscreen directions(I had reviewed the LG owners manual prior to completing this step). After inputting the necessary email and password info, we were able to connect with VUDU, Netflix, UTUBE, and Picasa photos. The picture quality with this wireless adapter has been exceptional using our Charter broadband service.

Update: June 11 — We have streamed two movies using the VUDU service and had no problems with the signal coming from the router in the basement to the main level bedroom. The VUDU HDX picture quality was suberb. This TV is DLNA compliant and allows access to files on a computer. I did not use the Nero MediaHome 4 Essentials software that came with the TV for accessing computer files. Windows 7 is DLNA compliant so I decided to go that route. Using MYMEDIA in the menu I was able to see my music and photo files in my windows 7 computer. The photo viewing was fine but I could not get the music files to play. I kept getting “invalid file format” for the music files. I have done some research but have not yet solved the music file problem. I will try using the Nero MediaHome software to see if I can play the music files through it.

Review by Boyan Syarov for LG 32LD550 32-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LCD HDTV
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Just the other day I giggled when a friend of mine referred to my MyTouch Android phone as a “smart phone”. This is a phrase my grandma would use I thought. This is the best way to describe this TV, however. Embedded software that recognizes FAT32/NTFS file systems is something that deserves this label as silly as it may sound. Since many of the reviewers have already given pretty comprehensive reviews of the conventional qualities of this device I would try to focus on the “smart” features.

Pros: Install is a breeze. The hardest part is screwing in the 8 bolts it takes to assemble the stand.

Picture quality is very good, many presents here – including two completely customizable profiles. Anything from color and back-light to TruMotion can be set within those profiles. The TruMotion default setting is “Low”, I have left it there and haven’t noticed much of the “soup opera” feel to movies that I get from my friend’s Bravia.

USB connectivity – mass storage devices, such a USB thumb drives and external hard drives can be attached directly to one of the two USB ports this TV has. Immediately after a menu would appear much like the “Auto-play” one you get in Windows. You can choose to ignore it or play directly from here. I’ve played MP3 files and bunch of DivX AVIs, from my thumb drive – quality here is as good if not better than that of my HD computer monitor. Same is true for picture viewing. All this is done with the use a of built-in file browser and viewer. The viewer can be paused, forwarded and anything else you already do on your computer or DVR. The “limits” here are very practical, recommended max size for USB thumb drive is 32GBs and 1TB for HDD. Up to four partitions on a single device can be recognized! FAT32 and NTFS are both supported, with one limitation – not being able to delete files from an NTFS partition (which implies that you CAN delete files from the FAT32! I think I can live with that).

Networking – connecting a cable to the RJ45 that on the back of the TV gives you an IP within seconds. Of course this assumes that you either have a router or a DSL modem to connect it to. I thought some tweaking would be necessary here, but it worked out of the box. Once this is done you can go ahead into the NetCasting features of the TV. NetFlix, YouTube, Zulu and all the other ones mentioned in the product description. I personally love the Yahoo Widgets, among which you can find Flickr. For some reason I also thought it had Pandora but I guess I was not reading carefully – that caused some disappointment with my wife. If RJ45 seems to clumsy for your taste, a wireless device is sold separately – LG AN-WF100 Wi-Fi USB – you can use it to connect to your wireless router instead of running CAT-5 cables across your house.

Cons: no Pandora, which other LG NetCasting devices do offer. NetFlix – you can only play movies previously added to your “instant queue” from your computer, and cannot add to the queue directly from the TV. This of course is a short coming of the NetFlix implementation and not the TV itself, but I consider it worth mentioning.

Other: Internet speed of 5 Mbps or higher is recommended for screaming (NetFlix), I have only 3 Mbps however, and stream HD movies just fine with no interruptions for buffering! There’s so much that can be said about this TV, but the most important part is – the best TV in its size and price range.

Review by D. A. Sterner for LG 32LD550 32-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LCD HDTV
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Buy the LG32LD550 at your own risk and prepare to return it when it fails in an unexpected area. My new 32LD550 failed to play sound from CD’s played on any DVD player after the most recent 6.00.04 updates were installed on this TV. On the first call to LG support they incorrectly blamed my new LG BD550 DVD player. Testing of the supports answer showed the TV was actually at fault not the DVD. I then obtained a replacement TV set. The second 32LD550 worked well out of the box. I then updated the software to the Version 5 level and it continued to work. I then upgraded to the latest level, 06.00.04, and it failed. I then called LG support for a second time and identified the software issue. They finally admitted they have an error with the 06.00.04 software. I asked to talk to a manager to express my concerns, and the manager proved he was there to protect LG, not be an advocate for the customer. I then asked to talk to a Quality Manager, and he refused to give me any name of anyone responsible in the management chain. By this time I had more than $300 additional expense isolating the real problem and getting the replacement set. I asked for compensation for my out of pocket expenses the answer was “LG Policy does not allow for that.” While LG promises a fix for this specific problem sometime in the future, they cannot say when