DMTech DML-4120SD review

DMTech is the latest Korean LCD TV producer to occupy shelf space in the UK and surely one of its most potentially attractive products has to be the DML-4120SD. This 20in LCD TV comes complete with built-in DVD player and only costs £500.

Its design is a neat take on the current fashion for glossy black screen frames contrasted against cute silver bodywork.

Connectivity is okay on the video side, with a Scart to the rear and the usual S-video and composite video side-mounted options. However, we were slightly disappointed to find no digital audio output to hook up a receiver and rather more disappointed to find no form of PC connection.

Beyond the built-in DVD player, features are understandably limited, considering the knock-down price. The DVD section can handle MP3s and, bizarrely HDCDs, and there's a graphic equaliser for the sound. Otherwise, the only things of interest are a fair quoted contrast ratio of 500:1 and a rather basic native resolution of 800 x 600.

A notable feature absentee is a widescreen mode for watching anamorphic digital TV shows or DVDs. This is particularly odd given that the DVD player has an anamorphic playback mode.

The remote control is also far from perfect, though it does at least make a decent fist of switching between its TV and DVD modes.

Performance

The DML-4120SD's picture is slightly disappointing. The killer flaw is the way dark scenes suffer a really quite alarming invasion of greenish light, meaning that anything that's supposed to be blackish in colour takes on a noticeable 'radioactive' glow.

We were also underwhelmed by the fine detail response, with pictures generally looking soft and skin tones waxy.

On the upside, the green tone that afflicts dark hues is completely absent from bright colours, leaving them free to emerge with a good combination of vibrancy and naturalism. The picture is also reasonably free both of LCD's common smearing issues over motion and dot crawl.

And while dark picture elements may have the green affliction, that doesn't stop small doses of them from functioning nicely as field-depth generators during predominantly bright scenes.

The DVD player is fairly good for such a affordable unit, too. Pictures look as sharp as the screen will allow and there are no overt problems with MPEG decoder noise or iffy edge resolution. It's just a shame that movies tend to exaggerate the screen's black-level issues.

DVDs also tend to exaggerate another weakness: audio. Although the speakers seldom fall prey to distortion, this is down to the fact that they deliver practically no bass, leaving film soundtracks sounding thin and weedy.

In the end, the DML-4120SD isn't quite the full sum of its parts, since while it passes muster as a display for daytime TV, it's not really good enough as a DVD machine. Still, for just £500 we guess you could argue that the DVD player is thrown in more or less free of charge.