LG LHT250SC Review

The LG LHT250SC is another contender in the range of absolute budget home cinema systems. Retailing at around £100-£150 it certainly won't break the bank. Surprisingly for a low cost system though the range of features in the LG LHT250SC's specifications are quite comprehensive. Coming with support for Dobly Digital 5.1, DTS Digital Surround Sound and Pro Logic II, it certainly packs the right audio punch when it comes to decoding formats. It also sports a good range of media compatibility, allowing playback of DVDs, VCDs, MP3/WMA CDs, Photo CDs, and writable DVDs and CDs.

Most impressively though for the price tag is its progressive scan technology, which makes for a finer, sharper picture quality. This is backed up with a built in digital amp, so your audio doesn't have to be converted into analogue before being output to your digital TV.

Integrated with the LHT250SC is a reasonable AM/FM radio tuner to make the most of your speakers, and LG have also included phono audio in sockets to connect an MP3 player or other audio device.

Where the LG LHT250SC falls down however is on its lack of other input and output formats. There is no S-Video in port so you can't connect your PC or games console to the unit to output to your TV, and there is no optical input to support MP3 players with digital output. It doesn't have SCART or S-Video out to make the most of your high quality TV, which is a shame considering it support such good image processing technology. It is also a pretty ugly beast, looking blocky and squat.

In terms of actual quality in use the LG LHT250SC performs well for its price. The picture quality is good and clear thanks to the progressive scan, and MPEG artifacts are only slightly more obvious than on the more expensive counterparts. The sound quality is surprisingly clear for the slightly low spec RMS 220V amp, and come out as crisp and nicely bassy.

Pros

• Good price
• Nice feature set
• Progressive scan technology
• Good support for decoder formats
• Digital amp
• Surprisingly reasonable sound and picture quality

Cons

• Lack of input support
• Not very easy on the eye
• No SCART or S-Video output

Conclusion

The LG LHT250SC is an able home cinema system . It is well specced with good added value features and provides surprisingly good video and audio quality. The low number of input and output port options and the rather uninspiring design are the only things that let it down.

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