LG LM9600 55-inch Cinema 3D Smart TV - Full Assault!

When Form Meets Finesse

Television makers tend to favor edge-LED backlights since they typically involve lower production costs. On that note, we'd like to applaud LG for braving the odds with a direct LED model as seen in their newly minted 55-inch LM9600 Cinema 3D Smart TV. Essentially, the LM9600 comes with LG's full-array Nano LED structure and local dimming perks, much like the one found on last year's 55-inch LW9800. For our local market, however, the LW9800 was unfortunately ditched in favor of the LW9500. Now, most television enthusiasts would understand the benefits of a full-array LED backlighting solution. Generally, they offer a deeper and more uniform black levels across the LCD display panel, depending on how exclusive the segmented LED clusters are. Not only has LG managed to accomplish a full-array formation in a 38mm-thin display, but they've also trimmed their bezel down below the 5mm mark - a design marketed as "Cinema Screen" according to the South Korean firm.

It's good to know that LG hasn't rested on their laurels either. The LM9600 flaunts a very zippy Motion Clarity Index of 1,000Hz (via frame interpolation and scanning backlights dubbed as TruMotion) with an equally impressive native refresh rate of 400Hz. Picture quality wise, LG has improved on their scaling algorithms for lower resolution videos, plus a 10,000,000 to 1 contrast ratio rating. That said, we'll regard the latter specification with a pinch of salt and revisit this later after our through analysis of the TV in the following pages. At the 3D end, LG latest passive 3D TV continues its assault on the active-shutter faction with more tweaks of its own. Some of the new features include 3D Depth-Control, and Color Correction - designed to correct the possibility of mismatched colors due to separate cameras used for left and right eye images. Powered by a dual-core central processor and a quad-core graphics processing unit, this model possesses the chops to meet Samsung's flagship ES8000 on the warpath as well. There are more new features, of course, like the reworked Magic remote which we'll update you along the course of our review. The LM9600 has form, but will it offer the same cool finesse too? If you're ready, it's time to visit this Cinema 3D set in detail to find out!

Floating Form

LG has cooked up a number of marketing terms for their latest LM9600 display, such as 'ultra-slim escutcheon' and 'floating form' to describe their Cinema Screen design. Fancy as they are, there is an element of truth to the TV's impressive form factor. The Ribbon stand (found on series LM9600 to LM6700 as seen in the photos below) does help create the impression that the TV is elevated, or 'floating' of sorts. Comparatively, we find the Ribbon stand to be more stable than Samsung's U-shaped alternative, such as the one found on the new ES8000. LG's Ribbon stand swivels as well, thanks to its special joint. Note that this feature isn't present in Samsung's U-shaped base either. The other complimenting aspect is unlike conventional TVs with relatively thick borders, LG's LM9600's metallic bezel appears more like a slim outline around the 55-inch panel, thus giving the LM9600 a "window-esque" feel especially with the display turned on. Upon closer inspection, however, there appears to be a misalignment of the bezel at the bottom right corner (see picture). We'll check with LG soon to determine if this is a manufacturing flaw or simply part of its design. As for the screen itself, the TV's glass face is extremely glossy making it impractical for use under bright ambient lighting conditions.

Things are equally interesting on the back of the TV too. Instead of awkward rear-facing inlets, LG has positioned the ports sideways or downwards to make it more convenient to wall-mount the LM9600. The side panel carries four HDMI slots (ARC is enabled on HDMI 1) and three USB terminals, while the lower tier holds most of the analog ports and Ethernet socket. To preserve the TV's slimness, a breakout cable is required for the composite and component jacks. The bundled Magic remote is another anticipated component of the LM9600. LG's secondary remote now touts a scroll-wheel situated within the D-pad itself. This is to facilitate the scrolling of app pages and web pages. The point-and-click wand also harbors a dedicated 3D and My Apps button. The latter enables you to fire up the My Apps 'docking bar' on the TV's user interface. Although it's more ergonomic than last year's design, LG's Magic remote has unfortunately been stripped of its voice features for the local release. According to LG, getting their voice controls to work flawlessly with Singaporeans' diverse languages and accents can be a tricky endeavor. And it's a risk LG isn't prepared to take. The same model sold in some of the overseas markets will have voice activated controls enabled.

Welcome To The New Home Dashboard 2.0

Before you get to enjoy the Cinema 3D TV, you'll be prompted to set certain things in place first, such as the TV's language selection, calibration for the Magic remote, network settings, and so forth. That said, let's take a quick peek at the new Home Dashboard. Visibly, LG has performed a complete overhaul of its Smart TV interface. And what we have now is a more polished interface which makes the previous version look somewhat dated. On the upper row, there's a row of tiles consisting of categories like Premium, 3D World, Smart World, and Smart Share Plus. To navigate from page to page, simply point the Magic remote to the extreme ends, and click on the arrow "button". The LM9600 also features an EPG (Electronic Program Guide) icon found on the My Apps docking bar below. However, we can't put this feature to the test since we are unable to receive any digital broadcast channels at our test lab.  

Featured apps on the LG App Store can be found on the Smart World tile, while Smart Share Plus enables you to grab screen content from your mobile device. The opposite is also possible (streaming TV's content to smartphone or tablet) via Wi-Fi Direct or WiDi. Unlike DLNA, these two standards offer direct wireless connectivity without requiring the devices to be connected to the same home network. Moving on, a quick check confirms that LG's App Store carries both paid and free apps. However, loading times for the web store were a little too sluggish for our liking. The same applies to the 3D World portal, which carries a combination of educational and infotainment 3D clips. Content is still lacking in our opinion. On the other hand, the new web browser is a tad more responsive, and it also features a PiP (picture-in-picture) function as well. Picture presets for the LM9600 include the following - Intelligent Sensor, Vivid, Standard, Cinema, Game, Expert 1, and Expert 2. To tune the TV's advanced settings, we'd advice you to select either the Expert 1 or 2 presets which feature ISFccc calibration attributes like color gamut and luminance settings.

Calibration - Spyder3TV Report

To maintain a standard across our review units, we calibrated the LG LM9600 with Datacolor's Spyder3TV Home Theater Color Calibration kit prior to our visual tests. This is to ensure we assess the HDTV based on optimal display settings and not on visual estimation alone. Using the TV's Standard preset, we've also disabled all the necessary enhancement features.

Here are the recommended picture settings after calibration - Brightness: 51, Contrast: 88, Color: 57 and Tint: G4. We also lowered the TV's backlight levels to 60 instead of the default 70, given that the panel was unnaturally bright in our darkened lab environment. After calibration, black and white luminance values were rated at 0.112 cd/m2 and 245.039 cd/m2 respectively. Compared to Sony's Bravia HX925, another full-array contender with local dimming, LG's LM9600 emerged with a noticeably darker black luminance after calibration against the HX925's reading of 0.310 cd/m2. For those of you who'd like to calibrate the TV further, LG's advanced 10-point calibration scale is available via the Expert 1 and Expert 2 selections as with last year's ISF-certified LG models.

DisplayMate Tests

DisplayMate is an application which generates a sequence of test patterns to determine the capabilities of imaging devices, like color, uniformity, and gray-scale accuracies for example. For our tests, we've hooked up the LG LM9600 to our display test-bed via a HDMI connection. Similar to our calibration setup, we have also disabled all visual enhancements on the TV to reduce the variables involved. Here are some of our findings.

IDT HQV Tests

IDT's HQV Tests (on Blu-ray) are designed to assess image quality and handling of digital displays through a variety of video signal processing tasks which includes decoding, de-interlacing, motion correction, noise reduction, and film cadence detection. We've programmed the Blu-ray player to playback in 1080i to test the TV's de-interlacing capabilities. Here are the results we noted on some of the more crucial HQV tests:-

Standard-Definition Tests

X-Men: The Last Stand (DVD)

To assess the real capabilities of a HDTV's video processor, we believe standard-definition images are better 'stressors' compared to 1080p content. In any case, we've been told the LM9600 has been fitted with an updated resolution upscaler, and we'll see how it holds up with the X-Men DVD. For starters, LG's local dimming option should be made mandatory with this model. What do we mean by that? To begin with, enabling this feature helps reduce backlight bleeds at the corners as mentioned previously. On the other hand, we also observed that shadow details were compromised as a result when it's set to High. Some call this the 'black crush' phenomenon. Being so, the Medium local dimming selection would be your best bet in obtaining an ideal balance between black levels and picture detail. The TV's Super Resolution feature is critical for DVD playback as well, since it cleans up noise artifacts and sharpens the picture by a fair bit too. To add, motion-tearing was also less apparent (without TruMotion applied) compared to LG's first Cinema 3D Smart TV we've reviewed last year. LG has a new feature called Preferred Color under the TV's Advanced presets with three main options - Skin Color, Grass Color, and Sky Color. The Skin Color is set to "-3" by default, although we feel that a value of "-2" yields the best result.

High-Definition Tests

Corpse Bride (Blu-ray)

Tim Burton's gothic animation was fairly watchable without the need for too many picture enhancements to be enabled. Again, we have to stress that the TV's local dimming attribute is a must-have here, not unless you can live with cloudy blacks at the periphery of the display. Next, we put LG's frame interpolation and backlight scanning to the test. TruMotion (1000Hz) comes in four modes - Off, Smooth, Clear, and Clear Plus, each with its own "de-judder" and "de-blur" values. On its own, the LM9600 was capable of producing crisp visuals with natural colors which we can vouch. With Trumotion, however, onscreen movements and camera pans became unrealistically smooth. And since there were little instances of smearing or judder natively, we figure there is little reason to enable TruMotion at all. On the contrary, one of LG's best weapon lies with its Real Cinema (or 24p processing) instead. And as recommended in our previous test, we strongly suggest you activate this feature with most of your Blu-ray content. And as noted on our DisplayMate test, we hereby confirm that horizontal viewing angles are excellent on this advanced IPS panel.

Cinema 3D - The Second Coming

2D to 3D Test

LG moves into their second generation of Cinema 3D TVs after a relatively successful run last year. As for bundled accessories, LG is now complementing the LM9600 with four pairs of polarizing glasses (model: AG-F310) plus two pairs of Dual Play gaming glasses (model: AG-F310DP). Similar to Philips' latest bunch of 3D sets, Dual Play actually enables gamers to view two-player screens in full instead of the typical split-screen. According to what we've learned from an LG spokesman, the South Korean engineers have also gone back to the drawing board to improve on their FPR's (Film Patterned Retarder) 3D performance after receiving feedback from multiple sources about the unmistakable vertical banding issue which we've discovered as well. More on this later, but before we look at the TV's 3D performance, let's see how the display handles 2D to 3D conversion with our DVD test disc.

Hitting the 3D button on the remote revealed that the TV supports the 2D to 3D mode as well as a the Side by Side and Top/Bottom 3D video formats. Under Picture settings, there is another 3D Mode available with the following selections - Manual, Standard, Sport, Cinema, and Extreme. However, you might want to note that only the Manual option enables you to adjust values for 3D Depth and 3D Viewpoint, while the rest are offered as presets. As for the display's 2D to 3D performance, we observed that minimal depth is perceived, even with a boosted 3D Depth of 18 (3D Depth scale ranges from 0 to 20). Also, 3D Viewpoint presumably enables you to tweak the perceived distance, and yet the images did not appear specifically nearer or further away when tried. On the up side, there were hardly any instances of crosstalk on the screen for the most part, although we did spot minor signs of ghosting close to the left and right edges of the screen. In a nutshell, LG's 2D to 3D performance on the LM9600 is largely forgettable. Hopefully, its 3D mode would do better for content created with 3D in mind.

3D Blu-ray Test

First, the good news. LG has managed to recreate the same flicker-free results as they did with last year's Cinema 3D line-up. Kudos also goes out to LG's 3D processing and their Triple XD Engine for delivering excellent clarity, depth, and sharpness. In other words, watching Monsters vs Aliens in 3D was an enjoyable experience on the whole. Pitted against the active-shutter camp, LG's FPR technology still has our vote for being the most comfortable 3D display (on the eyes) in the market by far. However, a number of caveats apply. As noted on the LW6500,  persists when the screen is viewed at a meter or less. Another minor gripe we have is the relatively tight vertical viewing angles. For example, crosstalk or split images are apparent when we stood up to view the TV. Fortunately, not too many viewers engage a film in such a position, plus this wouldn't be an issue if one were to view the TV on a level plane. Finally, the Vivid picture preset is enabled by default in 3D mode, but that's understandable given the dimming qualities of the polarized lenses.  

Dual Play!

For this test, we hooked up a Sony PlayStation 3 loaded with Gran Turismo 5 to the LM9600. Player-one takes the glasses labelled "A", while player-two takes the one labelled "B". So far, so good. To get things started, we selected the Top/Bottom option under the TV's 3D Mode, and we were off in a jiffy.

After burning some virtual rubber on the High-Speed Ring, we were quite impressed with how LG managed to pull this one off although the gaming experience was far from perfect. Each player was able to visualize his own 2D view on a full screen, and that's a big plus. However, 'leaked' images from the other player's point of view did creep into the display from time to time. We also noticed that this overlapping pattern becomes more prominent in conflicting darker and brighter scenes, like when one vehicle enters the tunnel for instance but your opponent is out in the open. It was fun, but these ghostly images can be a distraction. All things considered, we'd opt for Dual Play over a split screen on any given day, but we'll appreciate it more if LG could find a way to perfect this technology without the annoying crosstalk tendencies during gameplay.

The Final Word

It's been a long review, so we'll make it easy for you by telling you what we like or dislike about the LG LM9600. To begin with, we adore its almost bezel-free design. The HDTV's metallic frame and ingenious Ribbon Stand (which swivels) are also attractive incentives in our book. The hardware buttons on the TV look more like a throwback to the year 2009, but we can't really fault LG for not finding space for touch buttons on this 'borderless' display, can we? Besides, the TV's controls are seldom used anyway when the remote is in working order. The breakout panel for its AV ports are suitably aligned for wall-mounts, so that's another major design plus point. The glossy glass face might enhance contrast levels on the LM9600, but be reminded that it could throw back serious reflections under brighter spaces. We love the upgraded point-and-click Magic remote compared to its predecessor, and not to mention that the additional scroll-wheel is a helpful tool for navigating the web as well. It's a pity though, that we didn't get to try out its voice activation capabilities here. LG's incorporation of direct wireless features like WiDi and Wi-Fi Direct also gives the LM9600 an edge over its competitors.

The LM9600 coasted through DisplayMate and HQV with little mishaps with the exception of its intense backlights which resulted in backlight bleeds at the corners. Thankfully, this drawback can be mitigated by enabling the display's local dimming features. We were also impressed with the TV's film processing and reconstruction of de-interlaced sources. When upscaling DVDs, we also noticed there were less motion-tearing occurrences compared to last year's LW6500 model. At the 1080p end, high-definition pictures were a pleasure to watch on the LM9600, but that's provided you know which picture enhancements to tap into. For example, Dynamic Color and TruMotion are less critical options in our opinion, while others such as Real Cinema and local dimming are essential assets in correcting the TV's visual aberrations. To top that off, we're certain AV enthusiasts would appreciate the two advanced ISF picture presets and 10-point scale too.

As for its 3D performance, we won't say LG has made a huge leap forward compared to last year's flagship LW6500 (issues like vertical banding and tight vertical viewing angles persist), but these passive 3D sets are easily one of the most eye-friendly stereoscopic displays in the industry yet. At the gaming end, we enjoyed Dual Play on the PS3 even though there were mild traces of ghosting during gameplay. Who can possibly say no to a full screen on two-player mode? Of course, it would be ideal if LG could polish up their Dual Play act further before their subsequent Cinema 3D TV releases. Compared to the Sony Bravia HX925, LG's latest passive 3D display finally has the firepower to match (and outdo in some aspects) their rivals in terms of Smart TV features, video scaling, and picture quality. Although the 55-inch LM9600 is costlier by a grand (with an SRP of nearly S$7000), we're confident that LG's stylized looks and compelling display would win more than a handful of consumers over.

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