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By Nigel Whitfield (via reghardware.co.uk)

Review LG’s 42SL9000 is billed as a ‘frameless’ set, and indeed the pictures on the website seem to give the impression of the picture spilling out of the frame, in an immersive manner that’s somewhat reminiscent of philips‘ Ambilight.

LG’s 42SL9000: when is a frame not a frame?

So it’s a bit of a disappointment on taking it out of the box to discover that ‘frameless’ really just means that the front is a single piece of glass, and that there’s still a black border – about an inch wide – around the edge of the picture. Still, it certainly lives up to the billing when it comes to slim, being only around an inch deep. However, if you don’t use the Desktop stand, with all the sockets on the rear it will certainly sit further from the wall than that.

The stand – which requires a few screws to put together – is about eight inches deep, but fairly unobtrusive. Also in the package are two remote controls – a full size, full featured one, with a stylish silver trim round the top edge, and a smaller one with just basic functions, for the more bewildered or less technically adept members of the household. The set has some buttons on the right hand edge for power, volume, channel and menu, should you lose both remotes.

As you’d expect at this price, it’s a full 1080p set and the connectivity is pretty good, with four HDMI slots, three on the rear, and one available at the side. There are two Scart inputs too, plus component, and an audio in for use with a DVI adaptor, as well as a PC RGB input. There’s the usual Common Interface slot for pay channels – though that won’t get you very far in the UK – together with a USB socket accessible from the side. Read the rest of this entry »