Over the years, I’ve done reviews and have studied prior to purchasing. I did no different on this LG 60PZ550. I looked at nearly all brands of PLASMA TVs and finally fell into the LG realm. My first thought was to get the biggest/best, then I started looking at the actual numbers. What was my criteria?

1) Screen Size: 60″ … but, it had to be no more than 34″ in height.

2) 3D: this isn’t really my criteria, I inherited it from my kids.

3) Thickness: I don’t want a very thick or heavy TV

4) Plasma: Sorry, I’ve owned and viewed LED/LCDs v. Plasma – for sheer 1080p experience, my perception is that Plasma always looks better.

So, going through the brands, I found only LG to fit my criteria. The most important was #1, if it doesn’t fit where I need it to fit, all the bells/whistles won’t matter. I could give a hoot about 3D, but my kids insisted for their experience. We went to the big box stores and I will admit, it does look cool. I do not have the glasses yet, they are on their way (As the first reviewer mentioned, the 250′s are for this TV). Thickness, holy smokes, who wants those behemoths we had a few years ago. This is thin and fairly lightweight. Beautifully done. OK, then finally, the Plasma v. LED/LCD debate. It will go on/on/on.. it’s a matter of perception. Technically, the Plasmas have the edge; however, LED/LCDs are catching up. My personal perception is that Plasmas look MUCH better than LED/LCD. Your mileage may vary.

If you do the great comparison that Amazon has towards the bottom of the product page, you’ll see this TV is stacked up against the big 2 – PZ950 and PZ750 – whats missing from the 550? THX (yea right); TruBlack Filter (err, not sure what that is); SmartTV (more apps on the TV I’ll never use because my 3D Bluray player has them); Magic Motion Remote (great, another remote that I have to point “just right” to do the menus … plus, I already have a remote that turns it on and off) … hmm … not really seeing why I would pay a premium for those features. All else is equal.

So, yes, would I recommend? **ABSOLUTELY** What don’t I like about it? Nothing, I love it; however, something that might irritate people is the very reflective surface. It’s like a mirror; however, properly positioned (I have a tilt mount), it eliminates my the irritant factor. I’ve had it with lights on and off and it’s beautiful. Really, I am not using this TV to it’s true potential with all the stuff on it. I don’t use sound (it’s connected to an HDMI receiver), I don’t tune with it (U-Verse customer), I have 2 cables going to it: power and HDMI (high speed recommended … or … incorrectly labeled HDMI 1.4a). I don’t even use the internet portion. I use it as a HUGE monitor for all the stuff I do (U-Verse, Wii, PS3, Bluray) … and now 3D.

UPDATE 13APR2011 – This TV most certainly has ARC (Audio Return Channel). “Definition: Audio Return Channel (ARC) ia a very practical feature that has been introduced in HDMI ver1.4. What this function allows, if both a home theater receiver and a TV have HDMI ver1.4 and offer this feature, is that you can transfer audio from the TV back to a home theater receiver and listen to your TV’s audio through your home theater audio system instead of the TV’s speakers without having to connect a second cable between the TV and home theater system.”

The 60PZ550 is certainly doing this function through my receiver. I made the assumption that since I did not connect my internet to it, I wouldn’t need it. I connected my TV to the internet today to see what the functions were … typical … Netflix, Hula, Youtube… etc. I fired up a Netflix movie (which looked pretty decent) and low and behold, I have BEAUTIFUL sound coming out of my receiver. Please DISREGARD the reviewer who stated there was NO ARC.

I picked up a 60PZ550 to replace my old Panasonic TH-58PZ700. The Panny developed a defective section of pixels and needed to go.

Anyhow, I love the aesthetics of the LG; the thin bezel is just fantastic. It is also 50% lighter than the “smaller” TV it replaced. It is a bit more glossy/reflective compared to the old Panny but I have excellent light control with some motorized blackout shades at the rear of the room. Picture quality is on par if not slightly better than the Panasonic it replaced. Note: The main viewing position is 13-ft from the screen.

My system includes:

* Onkyo TX-NR905 Reciever (HDMI 1.3 4-in, 1-out)

* Onkyo DV-BD606 Blu-ray Player

* Playstation 3

* Xbox 360

* Comcast DVR (Motorola DCX3400)

With the old Panasonic hooked up, the above components all worked together in perfect harmony. 4 HDMI cables into the receiver, one HDMI cable out to the TV. Clean and simple.

With the new LG hooked up, the following occurred:

* Comcast playback and Onkyo Blu-ray playback are flawless. Both run though the receiver with no issues.

* Xbox 360 playback, well, didn’t work. Something about the HDMI handshake running through the receiver resulted in no video playback. I tried various HDMI settings on both the Xbox and the receiver with no luck. I had to resort to Component/Optical for the Xbox to work correctly.

* PS3 played fine through the receiver but it wouldn’t playback in 3D. No surprises here. The PS3 was unable to detect my TV as 3D compatible running through my “now obsolete” receiver. I needed to run a dedicated HDMI cable to the TV and revert to Optical for Audio in order for it to work.

I have two pair of AG-S250 3D glasses. They look great, aren’t too heavy and seem to have great battery life.

However, the biggest problems with the glasses are:

1. They emit a buzzing sound. VERY annoying.

2. One pair of glasses continues to lose sync while the other doesn’t.

The quality of 3D playback isn’t great in games like Killzone 3 Demo on the PS3. I get a lot of ghosting. Playback of 3D movies (watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs last night) is better but you can still notice double images in the foreground every once and a while. If anyone has some tips to remedy I would love the feedback.

The Picture Wizard was handy out of the box to get the basics set up. I’ll be using my DVE Blu-ray to calibrate/tweak the TV settings further later this week.

That’s it for now. I’ll upload some photos later in the week.