A daytime scene of the GIs drinking in a Vietnamese roadside café reveals a richness to colours you won't find on most liquid crystal TVs, though there's a slight orange bias that leaves skin tones just off target. There's also a small judder as the camera pans across some billboards, although fast-moving objects don't suffer from noticeable blur. The 600Hz feature doesn't add much to what was already (on LG's previous plasmas) a relatively smooth picture, but it does cement plasma's continuing advantage over liquid crystal in this regard.

A DivX HD trailer (in 720p resolution) for Star Trek from a USB stick proves less fluid than Blu-ray, but the opening scene of James T Kirk driving off a cliff indicates that DivX HD is definitely a format worth watching.

Standard definition fares less well, as Match of the Day on BBC1 looks drained of colour with less defined edges. Picture noise makes an unwelcome appearance, too, though the Freeview image is still preferable here than on many LCD TVs of this size.

Sound

The set deftly proves that the bigger the TV, the better its speakers. It performs particularly well with music, with plenty of treble detail and some acceptable bass effects. It all helps to make MP3 files sound that much better, too.

Value

Its lacklustre performance with SD aside, the 50PS7000 is an excellent value big-screen plasma that's best suited to anyone who wants a decent all-rounder, but who plans to watch a lot of HD material.

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