Products: LG 42″ LCD TV 42LD560
Price: $1160
Shop: The Good Guys Warrawong
Rating:  * * * *
Comments:

It’s a bit hard to write a fair review about this TV because I have never owned an LCD TV before.

When we were researching which TV to buy, LG seems to have the best value for money compared to other brands.

So far this TV serves us well. It may not have the best picture quality compared to pricier brand but the difference is barely noticeable. The refresh rate is 100Hz which is much better than the cheaper model (50Hz)  so it’s worth paying the difference.

I was initially excited about the netcast feature which allow you to connect to youtube that we also bought a wi-fi dongle. I’m a bit disappointed with netcast now. Searching youtube using the remote is a pain and eventhough I can log in to my youtube account, it doesn’t display list of videos from my subscribed channels. It only shows the videos I favourited which is rather useless because I want to watch new videos, not old ones. I hope this will improve overtime. I notice everytime I go to netcast, it checks for software update so fingers cross for some improvement.

You can plug external harddrive to the TV’s USB and it will play music, pictures, and video. The format of video it can play is limited though. It doesn’t play flv or vob or ts which is pretty annoying and there’s no way to update the codecs. It displays avi best. When the video is high quality, it looks really good. It almost feels like the scene is alive in front of you. We still use our media player to play videos that the TV can’t play directly and I must admit playing it directly through USB gives better quality picture eventhough we connect the media player using HDMI cable.

You can also plug your computer and it will work like a giant monitor.

The sound system is pretty standard. But I guess that’s to be expected. We plan to get separate speaker systems for better sound in the future.

Overall I’m very happy with this TV for the price we pay. There’s room for improvement but I’m not sure if any other model or brands would do it any better.

This is playing avi video directly from my external HD. The picture taken with my phone so the quality doesn’t do the TV justice. The colour is vibrant and picture is very clear.

We finally installed an air condition in our bedroom. Yay! We bought the unit from The Good Guys Warrawong for $960 and was installed by this person called Tim Rogers who was recommended by a friend for $550  (second level brick house). We’re very happy with him and highly recommend him. He was easy going and easy to talk to.

We initially also contacted this company called Rapid Cool and was quoted $1800 for an old Panasonic model + installation. When asked to break down the unit and installation cost, they refused saying that they only do package and they didn’t want us to buy the unit somewhere else. I didn’t like not knowing what I’m paying for so we decided to look somewhere else.

The weather has been pretty cool so we haven’t tested the unit much. When we turned it on this afternoon it was very quiet which we’re really happy about. I will write more detailed review when I have used it extensively.

Okay so these are not online purchases but I did a great deal of online research before I bought them.

Boori Country Classic Cot

in white from Baby Zone Wollongong for $552 + Boori breathable mattress $136

I won’t be getting them for another 5-6 weeks so this is the picture of the display cot in the shop.

I looked around online, this is the cheapest one around and also the shop is local so I decided to go for it. I didn’t want to get a Boori cot initially because the price is more expensive than other brands and also a lot of people say Kingparrot is made by the same company and it’s as good. But when my husband and I browsed the shop, we really liked this style so we went for it. The price is not too bad compared to some other Boori models and it’s $150 more expensive compared to Kingparrot model I wanted. It’s not bad considering Boori is bigger and feels smoother and well, we like the style.

LG 42″ LCD TV 42LD560

We went for LG because it’s  a lot cheaper compared to other brand for the same thing. Most of our electronics are LG so we’re happy with it.

We got it for $1160 + Wi-Fi dongle for $70 from The Good Guys Warrawong. We went to Bing Lee first and the best price they could give us was $1200 for the TV unless we can get a better quote from somewhere else. I never liked how Bing Lee works, it just feels insincere. We indicated we would like to get it today but that was the best they could give us.  We read in some forum that someone bought it for $1159 from The Good Guys so we felt Bing Lee wasn’t really giving us the best price. Also, they didn’t have one in stock in the shop so we couldn’t get it on the spot. So we went to The Good Guys which has been our favourite electronic shop and we were given $1170. After saying we seriously wanted it today they gave it to us for $1160. We were happy with that price and decided to give our business to them for giving us good price. They had it in stock so we can straightaway went home with it which is another plus point.

We have set the TV up and so far very happy with everything. It was easy to assemble and setup. We had old fashioned TV before so this is a HUGE upgrade. It can connect directly to YouTube (once the Wi-Fi was setup), I can connect my netbook to it,  it can stream media files straight from external HD, and of course HD movies look HD in it XD

It has 100Hz refresh rate which is a lot better than the cheaper model but not much difference from the more expensive model which refresh rate is  200 Hz (the guy in the shop showed us the difference).

So far we’re very happy with this TV.