LG 47 LE8500 INFINIA LCD TV

It’s been a while since a full fledged HDTV has made its way to our labs, but now all the brands are pipelining models one after the other. Today we have LG, and their newborn Infinia Series of LCD TVs. The LED8500 model came packed in a wooden freight carton. Removing it took us a good 90 minutes. We hope this new crop of HDTVs has something nice to offer, what with all the hype created at CES. It’s got a local dimming Led backlight that should interest the techie readers instantly.

Design and Features
This is easily the slimmest TV around, at least when not perched on its stand. It’s a seamless bezel, completely covered by a glass sheet that extends out and borders the black bezel. The age old plague that haunts all TVs is here too: ugly looking fingerprints. The bottom panel has a row of flush, touch sensitive buttons labeled in white behind the glass panel. The back is bare, with a small window for i/o on the bottom left.

This model has no 3D capability, that is only available on the LE9500. The main feature is local dimming LED backlight, which actually totals 216 zones for our 47 incher, as sourced from the press release. Besides 3D the TV can do everything in the book, from internet video courtesy NetFlix and applications like Twitter, Yahoo, generic weather, stocks, sports updates etc. There's local gaming ability (small time games), along with the ability to play videos and music off a USB flash drive. It comes with a plethora of image processing features like XD Engine, Dejuddering, IRE adjustment. As a final note that is more of a marketing weapon: this model claims THX certification.

Specs
Brightness/Contrast                   not rated
Refresh rate                               240 Hz
Response time                           1 ms
Resolution                                  1920 x 1080
Display                                        TFT Active matrix LCD
Backlight                                     Local Dimming LED
HDMI                                           3 back, 1 side
Component                                 2 back, 1 side
Composite                                  1 back, 1 side
VGA                                             1
RF input                                      1
Digital audio output                    1 optical
USB ports                                    2 side
Ethernet (LAN) port                    1