Review of the LG 50PS80 50″ Plasma TV

Over a year ago now I had the pleasure of purchasing the LG 50PS80 50″ Plasma TV, and overall I have to

say this is one of the best purchases I have ever made!  The Size, and Online Services, Network Abilities, and Video compatibility Features of this display make it one of the best that I’ve ever come across.  Some of my favorite features of this display are Wired Network Access into your LAN for browsing files on any computer, Integrated Netflix and YouTube players to preview and play online content immediately, native support for several video codecs including h.264 and DivX, full 1080p resolution, and much more.

The 50PS80 50″ Display

The firs thing I love about this beautiful screen is the display itself, 50″ seems to be a beautiful sweet spot, and it’s sits nicely on my widescreen TV that a friend gave me in our Den, a room that’s about 12′ wide by 20′ deep.  The TV has an integrated digital and analog tuner, which works well picking up all the local channels through our HDTV antennae.  The TV also has several Energy Saving modes, to save electricity and to feel “green” when watching TV for longer periods of time.  I leave this setting on automatic, which can automatically adjust for changing lighting conditions, such as turning the lights down to watch a movie late at night.  The TV also comes with a simple to follow wizard for calibrating the lighting and color to be correct and to match the conditions of the room.

The 50PS80 Online Services

The single biggest feature that we use on the LG 50PS80 is the integrated  Net Cast services, which includes integrated Netflix access, so you can stream thousands of movies and TV shows right to your TV via the wired Category 5 network connection.  One particularly nice thing that I like about the wired connection is that it seems to provide a much more stable consistent connection and won’t buffer movies nearly as much.  Another Net Cast feature are the Yahoo Widgets – so you can check stock prices, twitter feeds, news feeds, and the weather, all while still watching tv.

The 50PS80 Network Services

One of the key areas where this particular TV shines is in its Network Abilities.  Because its wired directly into your home LAN, this TV can automatically scan for and play almost any media that it finds that is being shared by any laptop or desktop computer or NAS (Network Attached Storage) sharing device in the house.  The only requirement is that the media has to be accessible without having to type in a password to get to that shared folder.  The easiest way to accomplish this is to enable simple file sharing on your windows PC or Mac, then as your editing your videos and exporting them, export them directly to a shared folder, then their instantly available for playing on this TV.

The 50PS80 Video Compatibility

The great thing about LG TV’s is that most modern sets of started to quietly introduce compatibility for DivX content, h.264 content, and a wide variety of other codecs that can be updated all the time with new firmware and codecs.  When we test out videos through our home network, editing the videos in iMovie or Final Cut Pro X, exporting the movie in a standard h.264 format allows us to watch the movie instantly on this television set, making it an excellent choice for integrating it into our professional video workflow.

Purchasing the 50PS80

Unfortunately because technology is always moving quickly, the LG 50PS80 specific model is no longer available, but an equivalent replacement that has all of the same features of this TV is the LGPZ750, which has all of the features listed above but also includes a full smart TV interface for downloading and adding Apps to the TV, a smart controller that acts more like a mouse, a full web browser, and even more of a connected experience.  To learn more about the LGPZ750 and to purchase this great set, click the button below Now!

No matter which TV you choose, if you’re looking to integrate a HDTV into a home video editing station, make sure it has these key features:

• Online Services: such as Netflix, YouTube, twitter
• Wired / Wireless network access to your LAN (I prefer wired for the speed, and it has less interference issues)
• common native support for the codec that you’re using such as h.264,
• Multiple HDMI Ports for easy cable output / input access
• A USB port, so that content can be played off of an SDHC Card reader for raw video previews and the ability to hook up an external hard drive to show off a finished product at a show.

Follow the link below to check out the LGPZ750 HDTV on amazon and other HDTV’s on the market.