I'm not quite sure what you expected upscaling to give you. It can't create resolution that's not there in the first place. There is almost certainly some kind of digital filter in there to interpolate from 544 pixels up to 1920 for those crap SD sat channels that only provide 544 pixels of horizontal resolution, and a similar vertical filter to interpolate from 576 lines to 1080 lines. Perhaps LG just don't use that as a pointless marketing term.

... but back to the bad old days of pre-PVR Freeview, with a swanky digital signal and no way to record. Is there really anyone out there who only watches TV at time of broadcast? Yes, you can get a Freesat recorder, but there's umm, let's count them... one, right, and adding another £300 RRP to the already rather expensive bill.

Er, what?

So how exactly is it filling the screen with a standard def picture then?

The photo shows an Ethernet port - what functions does the TV support when hooked up to a network?

Alledgely to deliver Iplayer on the FreeSat boxes and tvs.......

"...the 42LF7700 also has a hybrid TV tuner that will allow you to connect a standard aerial in order to pick up either conventional analogue channels or the Freeview digital service."

Does it really have Freeview?

Also, the ethernet port may be non-operational, but is still part of the Freesat spec.

The Ethernet port is mandatory on Freesat devices, and will eventually be used to provide services like iPlayer, and enhanced interactivity.

iPlayer on Freesat is supposed to come later this year; the set could conceivably use the port for other things, like DLNA, but it should at least enable iPlayer.

Really though, unless you're desperate, why buy a new TV this year? Next year's models will have support for DVB-T2 and FreeviewHD as well

There's a difference between simple 'scaling' - increasing the size of the SD image to fill the larger HD resolution screen - and 'upscaling', which does indeed attempt to effectively increase the resolution of the original SD image (with the emphasis on 'attempt'...). The 42LF7700 does the former, but not the latter - though that's hardly a major criticism of a set in this price range.

As for the Ethernet interface - LG will only tell us that it's for 'future use with Freesat'.

Ethernet port is a prerequisite for Every Freesat Device. My Humax Freesat PVR has one also. Currently useless, potential mooted purpose is for a BBC iPlayer type interface. Maybe LG will make theirs more versatile?

Upscaling engines make a huge differnce when blowing a lo-def signal up to fill all of a more capable screen's pixels. eg, the Humax PVR is piss poor when outputting lo-def channels at 1080 via hdmi. If I feed my Panasonic screen with the raw low def signal via composite, the inbuilt graphics card does a much better job of filling in the pixel gaps,

"Really though, unless you're desperate, why buy a new TV this year? Next year's models will have support for DVB-T2 and FreeviewHD as well"

That's true, but the DVB-T2 signal won't be rolled out across the whole country from day 1 - it's fairly dependent on digital switchover, which means some parts of the country could be waiting 3 years to see a T2 signal.

There is also the *potential* to carry a lot more channels on a satellite link (Freesat has about 200 now), although obviously quantity and quality are not the same thing at all.

And then there are people in poor reception areas, where a satellite dish is a quick and painless solution.

So it isn't quite that cut-and-dried.

How large is the harddisk? Or are we supposed to record onto USB sticks?

What significance does 100 Hz have on a TV which doesn't use a CRT? Are they implying a) 10ms response time or b) DSP magic to create fake frames?