JVC LT-32P300

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LVC LT-P300 series

The Apple iPod phenomenon has invaded not only your ears, but also your car, your home audio system, and now your television. JVC's LT-P300 series is one of the only TVs on the market designed specifically to work with iPods and iPhones, allowing you to charge your iPod and play back music, videos, and photos via the TV. JVC's integrated dock goes a step beyond the dongles and docks found on AV receivers such as the Pioneer VSX-1019A-HK and TVs such as the Panasonic TX-LX1 series because it actually folds out from the front of the TV, for a seamless integration that should please convenience-conscious Apple fans. The looks of the television do not hew to the company's strict design cannon of flat planes and rounded corners, but given its decent picture quality and good-enough feature set, that's probably the only thing that will deter folks seeking the most Apple-friendly TV available today.

Series note: We performed a hands-on evaluation of JVC's 46-inch LT-46P300, but this review also applies to the 42-inch LT-42P300 and the 32-inch LT-32P300. The three screen sizes share identical specifications and should have very similar picture quality.

Design
The LT-P300 series dares to look different, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Much like an old JVC minisystem, or some of the more ostentatious examples of the company's car stereos, it's heavily illuminated. Two wands of bright blue light shine from the iPod dock mounted below the middle of the screen toward the edges, fading completely before they get a third of the way there--although, bizarrely, the two tapered light fixtures extend all the way to the edge, so most of their length remains dark. The closed face of the dock bears a diamond-shaped blue power indicator, and when it opens and you insert an iPod a pair of small blue bars appear to either side, and flash when the TV and the 'Pod are establishing communication. Yes, the illumination can be turned off or dimmed.

The front of the JVC doesn't suffer from lack of illumination.

With dock closed and lights off the panel mostly resembles your standard glossy-black LCD, aside from the angled, inset speaker grilles below the screen, which are halved by the light fixtures. A matching, nonswiveling stand is also unremarkable.

The other obvious difference between the JVC and other HDTVs is the dock itself. Pull at the edge of its closed faceplate and it pops open and down like the soft-eject cassette door on that old minisystem, revealing the connector that plugs into a range of iPods or an iPhone. The dock's placement is extremely convenient on the front of the TV and, compared with an external dongle or iPod adapter for a component, much sleeker. A separate dock adapter--a piece of plastic between the iPod and dock, which JVC didn't include it since different iPods require different-size adapters--is recommended for the best fit but not entirely necessary.

The dock is both convenient and well-integrated into the TV.

Integration of the dock is well-thought-out. As soon as you insert your iPod it begins charging automatically, and remains charging regardless of whether you access its content or whether the TV's power is turned on or off. To get to that content, the easiest way is to hit the "iPod" button on the TV remote, which brings up a simple menu system that allows navigation to all of the iPod's normal music categories, including artist, album, song, genre, and composer, as well as audiobooks and podcasts. There's a shuffle option right on the main menu that shuffles all of the music on the iPod. Videos get similar category treatment: movies, music videos, TV shows, video podcasts, and rentals. Dedicated transport keys on the remote let you pause, rewind, and fast-forward videos and music.

The menu that appears when you insert an iPod includes music and video options, but to access photo slideshows you'll need to use the iPod's own menu.

You can also operate the iPod using its own control system, be it the touch screen of an iPhone/iPod Touch or the scroll wheel of a conventional iPod. The only real reason for doing so is to access digital photos stored on the iPod, a function that's not available using the TV's on-screen iPod interface. You can initiate a slideshow as normal on the iPod and the images display on the big screen, and you can skip between images using the remote's fast-forward and rewind keys. Running additional slideshows is again handled via the iPod's controls.

The remote control itself is a large affair that we liked for the most part, mainly because of the direct input selection keys and plenty of separation between buttons. However, we're not fans of the dual rings of identical-size buttons around the main "OK" button since they're easy to confuse; we pressed "back" instead of the right cursor button, for example, on numerous occasions. The clicker can command four other pieces of gear, but it's not illuminated.

The bare-bones, text-only menu system's chief virtue is the capability to display nearly every picture settings onscreen at the same time, and we also liked the one-line explanations for various menu items. Some users might not appreciate the relatively small font, however.

Features
The iPod dock allows all of the functionality described above, and is compatible with most late-model iPods for music, videos, and slideshows. Check out JVC's compatibility chart for a full list of compatible iPods. iPods not listed, mainly older ones, are not compatible, although our testing with an iPhone went well despite the fact that it's not on the chart and the company doesn't "officially" support it. You can't display other content (such as apps, the browser or e-mail) from your iPhone or iPod Touch on the big screen, and some older iPods won't output video.

Additional functions include the capability to sync the iPod with iTunes by connecting your computer via USB (we didn't test this function) and setting the timer to wake up the TV to play music from the iPod at a certain time. You can also listen to music from the iPod while watching a program on TV, to basically replace the TV audio. Audiobook playback speed is adjustable (slow, normal or fast), and you can adjust the aspect ratio and picture settings during video playback. We also appreciated that the TV's audio outputs (both analog and digital) fed iPod audio to external devices, allowing you to play iPod music via the TV through your home theater system, for example.

In addition to being an iPod dock, did we mention the LT-P300 is also a television? Its feature set is entry-level by today's standards, lacking a 120Hz refresh rate or any non-iPod interactive features. Picture settings are also quite basic, starting with the four adjustable picture modes that are the same across input types (so the Contrast setting, for example, is the same in Theater mode for all three HDMI inputs) as opposed to independent per input.

The LT-P300's main picture menu displays nearly everything on one big list.

The LT-P300 offers five aspect ratio selections with HD sources, including one called "Full Native" that allows 1:1 pixel display of 1080i and 1080p sources without overscan. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't stay set in this mode, instead resetting to the default "full" mode with its 3 percent overscan when powered-off. Four modes are available with standard-definition sources.

Other features are absent for the most part. The JVC lacks picture-in-picture, you can't freeze the onscreen image and there's no dedicated energy saver mode (although the TV is quite efficient without one). We would have liked to see an option (offered on Sony sets for example) to allow the screen to go totally dark, thus saving significant power. Such a feature would be particularly useful for times when you use the iPod for just music and don't need to see the song information, for example.

No side-panel AV inputs are in evidence, but there is a USB port for photos and music near the side controls.

Connectivity on the LT-P300 is subpar. Unlike most flat-panel HDTVs, it doesn't include easy-access AV inputs on the side or front (just a USB port for digital photos stored on thumbdrives). That's a shame since those connections make it easy to quickly make temporary connections. Around back you'll find an adequate selection of jacks, starting with three HDMI ports. The analog inputs share the remaining two input slots, and unfortunately if you want audio you can't use more than one at a time (you can select between the various video inputs shared by these two slots, but they all have the same audio inputs). One analog input offers a choice of composite, S-Video, or component-video. The second offers composite-video, component-video, and VGA-style analog PC (1,024x768 maximum resolution). There's also an RF input for antenna and cable, as well as an optical digital and analog stereo audio.

JVC's back panel includes all the requisite connections, although some of the analog inputs do double-duty.

Performance

iPod testing: Overall the dock functioned as advertised. We tested it with an iPhone (3.0 software), iPod Touch, iPod Nano 3G, and an iPod Nano 4G and experienced no major issues. Sound quality via the TV speakers was pretty poor, but that's to be expected and not a problem if you connect an external audio system. The iPhone had to be put into airplane mode, as usual, to work well with the dock, and we did get a few onscreen messages warning of device incompatibility--but everything seemed to work fine regardless.

As expected, videos blown up to the big screen looked much worse than on the tiny iPod screen. We downloaded a rentals of "Grand Torino" and "Mad Men" from the iTunes store and both played back properly in wide screen on an iPhone (after we'd made sure to select that option from the video output menu), but the quality looked a bit worse than DVD, with evident softness and compression artifacts. All things considered, however, it was still watchable by nonvideophile standards, and we really appreciated having full picture controls available. Standard aspect ratio content, including some downloaded episodes of "The Wire" and "The State" also played fine, with the usual caveats about small videos rendered on a big screen. You can choose the from a pair of iPod-specific aspect ratio options that don't fill the screen, yet look sharper on than the blown-up modes, but we doubt many people will want that.

The iTunes store apparently doesn't allow downloads of high-definition movie rentals to the iPhone, and no iPod, including the iPhone, currently allows high-definition video output, so there's not much hope for higher-quality video for now.

HDTV testing: Overall, the LT-P300's picture quality was about average for an LCD, and should raise no major red flags for less critical viewers. It delivered good black levels, although color and shadow detail could definitely be better.

The JVC's lack of picture control made our setup process quite brief. Our main actions after choosing the most-accurate preset (Theater) was to disable the extraneous picture options, curb light output slightly to hit our target of 40 footlamberts, boost brightness somewhat to reveal as much shadow detail as we could, and reduce the color control to make up for set's red push. We would have liked to see a gamma control in particular, since the JVC only hit 2.01 overall versus our target of 2.2.

For our comparison we lined the LT-P300 up next to a few competing displays, including the Samsung LN46B650 and the Sony KDL-52V5100, along with the higher-end Samsung LN52B750 and Sony KDL-52XBR9. We also included Panasonic's entry-level TC-P50X1 plasma, and as usual our reference display was the Pioneer PRO-111FD plasma. For reasons we can't quite fathom, we watched "Yes Man" on Blu-ray for most of our image quality tests.

Black level: The JVC did well against the other displays in this category, delivering a depth of black just slightly lighter than the Samsung B750, yet a tiny bit darker than the Sony LCDs and the Samsung B650. The difference was subtle even in our side-by-side comparison, but in nighttime scenes like Jim Carey's motorcycle ride in Chapter 6 dark areas, such as the letterbox bars, the night sky and Zooey Deschanel's leather jacket all appeared plenty deep and realistic enough for a standard flat-panel LCD. Compared with the plasmas, as expected, the JVCs blacks were quite a bit lighter.

Details in shadows on the LT-P300 looked less realistic than on the other displays, however, a symptom of overly-dark gamma in dim areas. When the pair pull over onto the side of the road, for example, the trees in the background looked less distinct, hiding much of the detail in the needles and leaves.

Color accuracy: A lack of adjustment and less-than-perfect grayscale didn't serve the LT-P300 well in comparison with the other TVs in our test. Zooey's skin tone during her performance at Spaceland and later when she chats up Carey at the bar, for example, was somewhat pale compared with our reference. As we mentioned above, the JVC also suffered from some red push, so to prevent skin tones from appearing too ruddy we had to back down the color control, which robbed colors of some punch and saturation. The LT-P300 also showed a characteristic blush cast in very dark and black areas, although it wasn't as noticeable as on some of the other sets, such as the Samsung B650.

Video processing: The LT-P300 didn't excel on the test patterns we use to evaluate processing, for what it's worth. It did resolve every detail of 1080i and 1080p still resolution sources, but it failed to deinterlace 1080i video-based sources properly. It handled 1080i film-based sources well, although to do so the Natural Cinema setting needs to be active (it's deactivated by default). Finally our motion resolution test results were typical of a standard 60Hz display at 300-400 lines. As usual we suspect it will be difficult for most viewers watching normal material, as opposed to test patterns, to discern any differences that result from these resolution or video processing characteristics.

Uniformity: The LT-P300 we reviewed was on par with the competition in terms of evenness across the screen. In dark areas we noticed the edges appeared a bit brighter than the middle of the screen, although the difference was subtle eve in nighttime scenes. The extreme top and bottom of the screen appeared a bit darker along the edges, but the issue was not noticeable unless we looked hard and were watching the right material. From off-angle the image faded and became washed-out about as quickly as the other displays, with no overt color shift.

Bright lighting: Like the matte-screened Sony LCDs in our lineup, the JVC was superb at attenuating ambient light in our room. It wasn't as good at preserving black levels in bright light as the Samsungs were, but still outperformed the plasmas in that regard.

Standard-definition: Standard-definition processing on the LT-P300 came in somewhat below the other sets in our lineup. It resolved every detail of the DVD format and details in the grass and stone bridge were solid, although not quite as sharp as Sony or Samsung. The JVC eliminated most of the jaggies in moving diagonal lines and a waving American flag. We did appreciate that the noise reduction controls worked well to remove noise and moire from shots of skies and sunsets. When we engaged the Natural Cinema option the HDTV correctly implemented 2:3 pull-down detection.

PC: As the manual warns, the LT-P300 can't accept resolutions higher than 1,024x768-pixels via its analog PC input. We weren't surprised to find that the picture looked relatively soft on this 1080p set displaying such a relatively low resolution, but some viewers might not mind for a temporary PC hookup. Via digital HDMI, the LT-P300 performed as it should, resolving every line of a 1,920x1080-pixel signal with no overscan or edge enhancement.

Power consumption: We did not test the power consumption of this size in the JVC LT-P300 series, but we did test the 46-inch model. For more information, refer to the review of the JVC LT-46P300.

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