Insignia NS-LCD42HD-09 (08/01/2008)

Review: i got this compared side by side with sharp, sony and samsung it was as good a picture as them butt 30% less, but it lacks many advanced features that are in budget tvs but is above most budget brands in picture quailty , scales well and has little in the the way of motion artifacts and jaggies, does 480i very good perfect for reg cable

Review: Best Buy house brand Insignia, manufactured(so I'm told) by LG for Insignia.
Remarkably similar to the LG50 Series.

Updated on Jan 15, 2009

GREAT for Blu-ray!

Review: I highly recommend this tv to anyone, deep pockets or not everyone who has seen my tv has been impressed. Don't let others tell you Insignia is not a good brand. I was actally told by the best buy sales rep that it is made by LG.

Review: When my old CRT set, which was in my living room, finally died, I decided to purchase a new TV. I didn't want to spend more than $500. However, after stopping into Best Buy and looking around, I realized that for my desired budget, I just wasn't going to be able to get a plasma or LCD replacement with a reasonable size. Fortunately, the knowledgeable floor rep pointed me to this Insignia TV. He told me that it was actually made by LG. I don't know if this is true, but a number of web posts also say the same thing (but none of them will actually confirm).

With a current sale price of $899, I told the rep that I would take it. Fortunately for me, it was the last one in stock at my local store. As of the time of this writing, you probably won't find a 42" 1080p LCD for less. It has multiple input and output formats, as noted in the PROS section here. The biggest drawback is the low contrast ratio. I noticed this in the store, but figured that once I got it home, I wouldn't be aware of it, since I wouldn't have more expensive models sitting next to it for comparison, which is true in most circumstances, save a few.

For example, when watching the Iron Man movie from DVD, in scenes where there is not a high contrast, such as when he's walking through the dark caves in the beginning, I had to make a lot of adjustments to brightness and color in order to be able to enjoy the movie. Similarly, in the scene where Iron Man is being chased by the jets, much of the picture is filled either with the white clouds or blue sky. In this case, the settings that worked for the cave scenes were now too bright, and the picture looked washed out. With some more adjustments, I was able to enjoy the movie again, but I couldn't get it to be exactly the way I wanted. A higher contrast ratio would obviate the need for such continual tweaking.

While watching a 480p DVD, I had the "progressive scan" turned off. The picture looked good, but in scenes that were very dynamic, I noticed what appeared to be motion blur. When I activated progressive scan, the motion blur problem went away, but picture quality appeared to be sacrificed, which was puzzling to me. Specifically, rounded edges now appeared jagged, so I assumed that the interlaced mode (ie progressive scan off) must have made the picture look better using anti-aliasing. Fortunately, I realized that by adjusting the "Sharpness" setting to be more negative (the default is 0), this problem went away.

I was impressed with the picture quality while watching an HD On Demand cable broadcast of Madagascar 2. It was here that you could really see the this TV at its best.

The sound quality from the speakers is similar to my old CRT set, which wasn't very good. However, I'll pick up a low end theater system to solve this problem.

For the price, I am very pleased with the performance of this television. I would recommend it for someone who wants a 42" LCD TV with 1080p resolution and wants to spend less than $1,000. I would not recommend it for the finicky viewer.