LG 32LT75 review

LG's 32LT75 is a competitively priced 32in TV, and it's great to find a PVR built in.

This records up to 86 hours of Freeview TV broadcasts to its 160GB hard disk, and can pause, rewind and scan back and forth through live TV. There are dual tuners, so it's possible to record one programme while watching another, although it can't record two simultaneously. The eight-day EPG is easy to navigate, if scruffy looking, and it's possible to schedule recordings of entire series with a couple of button pushes. Sadly, Freeview image quality is scruffy, too. Freeview broadcast quality is arguably to blame, but Samsung's, Panasonic's and Toshiba's TVs do a much better job of cleaning up the picture.

DVD playback over a SCART connection wasn't much better, with a slightly fuzzy picture. Blu-ray playback over HDMI and component connections revealed a reversal of fortune. Here, the 32LT75 managed to suppress any hint of compression artefacts to give natural-looking fine textures, although with a touch less detail than Samsung's LE32A436. However, it failed to convert blocky colours into smooth gradients in darker parts of pictures. The 1080p signals were accepted over HDMI but not via component, although this is unlikely to be a problem.

Connected to a PC via a DVI-to-HDMI cable, the screen displayed a pixel-sharp 1,360x768 image without coaxing. Switching to a VGA cable, we had to set the correct resolution on the TV manually and adjust the horizontal position and clock settings, but having done it once, the image was rock solid. Image quality was excellent, although not quite as bright and vibrant as Samsung's LE32A436.

The PVR is a great extra, as it cuts down on clutter and cabling headaches. However, its value is diminished by the disappointing Freeview picture quality. It's also worth bearing in mind that HD TV broadcasts are likely to become more widely available over the next couple of years, whereupon the standard-definition PVR is going to become redundant.