LG DVS450H New DVD with Style

Oozing style the LG DVS450H is certainly a looker. Chiselled from the classic LG black suit, and boasting a Bang and Olufsen-style gliding disc door, its one desirable slice of kit. But, its trump card is that this player floats. We say float, Paul Daniels unfortunately isn’t working for LG, there’s just a gap between the player and where its mounted. Think wall mounted TV screens.

Far from being style over substance though, this player claims some high definition credentials. It has the ability to play back DivX HD files burnt onto disc and upscale DVD material to 1080p resolution and another party trick is it can read USB devices that you plug into the socket at the side. So far so good.

It’s a very user-friendly machine too. Plug one HDMI cable to your HD TV and then it’s a case of brushing the touch-sensitive power button to light up the large front panel display, slip in the disc of your choice and you’re away.

The on screen setup menu is the familiar LG GUI, which is easy to navigate using the nifty credit card-style remote control. Note that this is easily lost down the side of the sofa though. If you fancy getting all fiddly there’s a button on the remote that toggles through the screen resolutions from 576i (regular interlaced DVD definition) up to 1080p (Full HD). It’s best to match the output with the native resolution of your screen.

After much scrolling, we found that DVDs looked their best at 720p with sharp images and gets the full colour range across with natural tones. There’s some unwanted video noise, but nothing too serious. Turning the scaler up to 1080p puts the strain on the processor though and you’ll see slightly more grainy interference on screen. It’s not real high definition, but the upscaled picture squeezes a little more quality from a bog-standard DVD.

If DivX is your thing, then this format-friendly player could be what your downloading habit needs. It’ll play them from a disc or the handy USB port at the side. It’ll also play back MP3s and JPEGs too. Turning your flatscreen TV into a media hub haven.