LG 50PK950

LG Electronics Infinia 50PK950 50-Inch LCD

With features like 20-point white balance and built-in connectivity through LG's NetCast services, the LG Infinia 50PK950 sounds like an excellent HDTV for people looking to update their home-theater setup at a reasonable price ($1500 as of October 1, 2010)--especially for plasma HDTV enthusiasts who crave deep blacks and vibrant colors. Unfortunately, a few quirks in the image quality bring the 50PK950 down from champion to contender status in its category (50- to 55-inch HDTVs). In our image quality jury testing, the 50PK950 excelled in many ways typical of a high-end plasma TV. The 50PK950 managed to finish narrowly ahead of the Sony Bravia KDL-52NX800, an LED-backlit LCD set of comparable size, in our tests for brightness and contrast and for color and skin tones--not bad, considering that it costs about $1000 less than the Sony set. Unfortunately, it achieved mixed results in motion-heavy scenes, effortlessly handling scenes from Mission: Impossible 3 and The Dark Knight that often gives other sets problems, but consistently posting subpar scores for detail and sharpness, and rendering one of our motion tests (a scrolling static image of a city) a blurry, jagged mess.