LG 50PS80 50-Inch 1080p Plasma Broadband HDTV

2 Responses to “LG 50PS80 50-Inch 1080p Plasma Broadband HDTV”

1. David Pitts says:

   November 10, 2009 at 12:43 pm

   I’ve had the LG 50PS80 for three days now. I really like the TV and believe it is well worth the price. In addition to a great design and noticeably good picture, this HDTV features NETCAST, which you can access with a high speed internet connection. This gives you entree to Netflix movies (with a subscription), and also the VUDU movie service — without the need to buy and attach the boxes for those two services. Netflix in particular is a bargain because for less than $10 a month, you can stream all the movies you want from their instant queue (which has about 10,000). In addition, Netcast features Yahoo Widgets for quick access to weather and headline news. And there is also a feature for showing photographs and playing your music on the television.

   The Netcast feature on the television also gives you access to YouTube, which was a big selling point for me. Unfortunately, YouTube on this TV is not nearly as flexible as YouTube on a computer. You cannot create playlists nor can you play a continuous loop of videos. Instead, you have to interact with the remote control to access each video from a list of favorites. Perhaps this will be rectified with a software update at a later time. In addition, there were a few glitches with the YouTube feature. If I scrolled through a list of videos too fast, it had a tendency to disconnect and return to the broadcast picture. This seems to have lessened over time. The television has all the usual inputs that you would expect from a high-end LG set, including 4 HDMI inputs. However, it has only one antenna input and it does not have a slot for a cable card. I’m not sure how many competing televisions have this shortcoming.

   The sound system is very good on the television although likely not as good as that in the far more expensive Mitsubishi UNISEN sets. Still, I doubt that many people would be unhappy with the sound that emanates from this HDTV, among the best you can receive without attaching a home theater system. And the picture on some movies — even some that were not in HD — was out of this world. It provides a real cinematic experience. All in all the LG 50PS80 is a bargain for the price in my view.
   Rating: 4 / 5
2. Amazoned says:

   November 10, 2009 at 1:09 pm

   I was debating to get this model with NetCast, or model 50PS60 without NetCast. 50PS60 has a lot of strong reviews for its value and I was set on it over other brands. Because I have two kids that always wanted to watch some kids videos on YouTube, I figure I’ll get this higher end model and try out the NetCast feature.

   I won’t review the stuff that is pretty much the same as 50PS60. Let just say I’m happy with the picture and the look. Sound is better than most similar flat panels. I do like the speakers hidden but still end it up getting a Bose Cinemate for my small entertainment room.

   Because built-in access to YouTube is what I was looking forward to primarily, I tried that first. Typing in search phrase via on-screen keyboard is slow and as inconvenient as with PS3, Wii, XBox, et. al. without a keyboard. But you can sign-in to your YouTube account, and it will allow you to choose from your favorites. That’s better as I can pre-add the videos that my boys want to watch repeatedly. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support playlist yet so I can’t have too many videos in my favorites or scrolling will be equally painful to typing. Others such as playing popular videos were not interested to me. Streaming is reasonable with my DSL. Most of time there is initial delay after playing for few seconds but never after. On few bad nights where probably my DSL isn’t as fast the videos would repeatedly halt while loading/buffering.

   Netflix is great option as well, as you can sign-up on the web. I haven’t view my first movie yet, but it appears I have to select few movies from the web and put them in “instant queue” so that the TV can pickup and play. Streamable titles on Netflix website seemed to be very limited to some OLD movies!! Didn’t see any new ones … Certainly great for watching some TV series such as Heros or Boston Legal…

   There is another instant HD movie streaming service call Vudu. You can either rent or own movies. Menu choices are all in HD, but rental/purchase both have different prices for SD or HD versions. Very nice user interface on screen menu choices, as oppose to Netflix that have pretty much none.

   Yahoo Widget has customizable weather forecast by location, finance, news, video, and flickr if you use for pictures. Not much third party widgets yet. There is Twitter that is note worthy. If you are die hard Yahoo user and wouldn’t mind see the snippets on a bar on the bottom of your TV screen, then it can be of real value to you.

   As for playing personal media, you can play from USB storage device or over the network via shared folder on Windows. I hook up an external USB hard drive full of videos, music, and pictures. The TV can play them and combine music and picture. It certainly can play more video formats than PlayStation 3… Also it will let you navigate folders, which is much better than PS3 that can’t go two levels deep. It’s network supports Common Internet File System so you can share folders. But it won’t recognize media servers that PS3 use including TVersity, etc.

   All in all, NetCast is nice feature if you don’t have more room for another media player (like Roku), a BD player with Netflix, game consoles, or computer hooked up. If you have room, then it may be worthwhile to buy the 50PS60 and spend the $300 – $350 on a PS3 or XBox or $100 on a Roku player. For me, it’s worth it if the price difference for this feature is only $100 extra, unless you have kids that hog your computer all the time for YouTubing…
   
   Rating: 4 / 5