LG 55LH90

Pros: Excellent black levels, extremely granular picture controls, great price, low power consumption, looks good on a wall.

Cons: Awful artifacts when watching 720p or 1080i sources, 240Hz processing is a trick.

Summary: I bought in November 2009 at BB after months of shopping an reading reviews. It helped that BB had this on sale for $1900 at the time. It is still the cheapest 55 inch LED/LCD display on the market, unless something changed today. I bought because I wanted great black levels and extensive picture controls, and the LG has these in spades. It also did NOT have any of the Yahoo/Twitter/Facebook gadgets/widgets that other sets have. I already get those via my PC, Blu-ray player, and FIOS set-top box, so why pay for those capabilities on my TV? Plus, I wanted to have only 1 power cord and 1 HDMI cable feeding the LG, not an ethernet cable too. Everything runs through a Pioneer SC-05 receiver, and HDMI sources are fed raw through the SC-05. This brings me to my issues. First, 240Hz processing is a marketing gimmick as far as I can tell because there is, to my eye anyway, zero difference when it is enabled. Perhaps it is the way it is implemented on the LG (and also on the Toshibas, IIRC), but I have never heard any reviews saying it was impactful, and based on my experience I would never pay extra for that feature. Second, watching blu-ray movies is a joy on the LG. I don't even notice the drop off of black levels with slight off-angle viewing as the CNET guys seem to note about every LCD set. (Guys, how big are your couch cushions - 10 feet?) What I do notice, and what CNET clearly didn't test, is that when viewing 720p or 1080i video sources, the LG seems to try to upconvert to 1080p and in the process creates a TON of artifacts. Sometimes, it looks like the image has been photoshopped into sugar-cube-sized pixels. Watch a football game and you will see this during slo-motion replays. Watch HD channels (I have FIOS with a 1080i HD STB) and you will see it there too. I have tried turing off all the video processing on the LG to no avail. This one flaw really detracts from what is otherwise a great display.

So, if you are looking for a home-theater display for watching blu-ray or other 1080p sources, give the LG a close look. But if you want to watch 720p or 1080i sources, you'd do well to spend some time with this set to see if the artifacts make it unwatchable.