We started off, hoping the performance would live up to the ritzy exterior. First up came calibration and fiddling around. Which brings me to the topic of AV modes that the TV offers. Cinema, Sport and Game are the presets, while you have an intelligent sensor setting here too. This sensor works very well; it’s not a gimmick. Well, not quite a gimmick; as I still think going to the user section and setting the menu to one's liking yields best results.
Blacker than black levels were nowhere in sight, though brightness and contrast was fine-tuned at a little above the half point on the menu, say, about 65-70 (our test room is dark). There is a good backlight control available; a continuous one that allows fine-tuning. As always keep it low!
Colors were spectacular; they exuded a lot of liveliness and bloom. It was easy to make the image scream out with a little fiddling in the menu, but I wouldn't recommend this. The overall brightness and contrast are, though, not as spectacular as the color.
As for motion images, this is a 100Hz set, like others these days, but we still encountered a little blur and motion artifacts. This was while checking our DVE test disc. Next we saw HD footage through our PC, connected via DVI, and this looked better, as the TV wasn’t 'upscaling' anything. The sound from the invisible speaker was ordinary to say the least, though it is a bit louder than older models. It cannot replace a dedicated audio system yet though.
We saw some trailers and snippets of films like 300 in high-def, which yielded similar results: better than average blacks, and satisfactory brightness/contrast depiction. However, fast-action scenes and intricate images like skylines and roadways showed up some jaggies and moirre patterns, detail suffers quite a bit on close inspection.
Conclusion
The TV costs Rs 1,09,000, which is reasonable for the kind of quality on offer. I expected a heftier price tag, what with the red souping-up and all. But then, other companies' mid-range models that cost around the same score lower in performance, especially in terms of color and contrast. So the LG Scarlet does have its USP.


