If the shockingly large screen and 4G speed on the LG Nitro HD isn’t enough for you, we’ll delve into the greedy, dirty little details a little bit.

When, you get up close, the Nitro HD’s 4.5″ screen might as well be a 50″ plasma in your den. Combined with 4G speed, it turns the phone into a portable man cave that you can use to actually fulfill those fantasies of watching a football game during a wedding or making a last minute fantasy team switch during church that you see on all those commercials.

The 4G LTE is amazing. It’s still relatively new around here in Boston, so we’re still getting used to not having to troll around for Wifi hotspots to download vides and apps. YouTube videos stream just as fast as they would on WiFi. That makes watching game highlights and an occasional catch-up episode easy on the train or during downtime at work.

It is amazing how far the cell phone has come in the past few years, and this is a prime example. The display is in 1280 x 720 resolution, at 329 pixels per inch, with real RGB pixels, giving you the best possible display on a cell phone.

And the phone zooms Android 2.3 with a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor.

The display is truly impressive. There’s a lot of real estate, and it’s incredibly crisp when playing videos. I checked out some highlights from my Steelers absolute laydown against the 49ers on Monday night, and I loved how detailed everything looked on the phone’s screen. Everything sounded clean and clear as well.

The ESPN ScoreCenter app also looks amazing on the larger screen of the Nitro, letting you check on all your teams, but what’s even more amazing is the ESPN Bowl Bound 2011 app that gives you highlights and analysis of the coming college bowl season. If you’re not a huge college football fan, all you have to do is play with this app for five minutes, and you’ll be hooked.

What makes it easier is that, on the 4G LTE network, the videos and data stream as fast as they would if you were sitting at your office computer. The only difference is that you can check everything on your mobile man cave of a phone instead of “company time” on your work computer.

Having high-def video content over 4G LTE makes a world of difference. You really notice the improvement over the grainy “mobile video” content of yesterday. It’s like having HDTV at your fingertips.

If you’re a Google user, the phone will be more comfortable right away, because the Nitro HD comes preloaded with the major Google apps like Maps, Mail, and Calendar. There is also an office-esque app, visual voicemail, and YouTube and Twitter onboard.

The 8 megapixel camera is also a great feature, same as the iPhone 4S. Finally, phones take real photos.

The whole package also makes it easier on the battery. The display is energy-efficient, and the battery gives you up to seven hours of talk time, so you can also use your man cave as a phone.

What makes LG Nitro’s True HD IPS Display so amazing? 16:9 Aspect ratio for widescreen entertainment, sharper, crisper images, amazingly accurate colors and more. Exclusively available on AT&T’s 4G LTE network. Find out more at NitrobyLG.com.

LG provided a sample phone for the purposes of this article, and the author was paid or otherwise directly compensated to promote the product in the article.

The next generation of netbooks are a lot like cell phones, in that they don’t cost much up front, but you’ll be paying for privilege and convenience.

Until December 24, RadioShack is offering the LG X120 netbook for $49.99 with 2-years of mobile internet service.

The netbook is a true cell phone, and it’s a true netbook in every sense of the word. It’s designed for 3G mobile Internet service, but don’t expect to run photoshop or games on it. It does carry a 160GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM, however.

The LG X120 is a 10.1-inch laptop weighing 2.8lbs. that goes for $399 without activation. It’s available at 2,000 RadioShack stores nationwide.

The LG Dare puts the world into the palm of your hand, literally.

With direct access to the World Wide Web, a camera that puts handhelds to shame as well as GPS capabilities, the LG Dare covers all of a consumer’s basic technological necessities and it covers them well.

As far as being a phone goes, the Dare doesn’t really go above and beyond. Then again, anyone who wants a phone just to send and receive calls and text messages probably shouldn’t be dishing out between $199.99 and $599.99 for what is an all-in-one gadget. Calls are easy to make and receive; the only snag comes when you are using a different aspect of the phone and a call interrupts.

Text messaging is a little more difficult, as the Dare sports a virtual keyboard is that when held vertically is a DMFT keypad (like the ones on your cell phones), but when tilted horizontally is a QWERTY keypad (like the ones on your computers). The actual touch screen isn’t very exact and it takes a couple of tries to hit the correct letters, which is why the Dare is not the best phone to type with. Still, it certainly does the job.

The Dare’s interface is one of its coolest aspects. Once you get past the three different menus, you can customize your own by dragging and dropping your favorite utilities onto the main screen for easy access. That’s a big step up from hunting for the link to your music whereas now it’s just one tap away.

The features on the phone are infinitely cooler than its calling capabilities. The VZ Navigator, a GPS utility, is easy to access from the phone. Instead of dialing 411 to find your movie times, the Navigator will look up the nearest movie theaters for you and then follow up with directions. It can also find nearby restaurants, gas stations, hotels, and parking. The only time things get difficult are when a call or text message comes in mid-travel.

Coming in at a  close second is the Dare’s camera, which takes pictures that rival many handheld cameras’ in quality and clarity. The Dare’s camera sports 3.2 megapixels with resolutions up to 2048×1536 pixels for pictures and up to 640×480 pixels for video. The Image Editor allows for some cool touch screen interaction, like the ability to write over images, but the menu screen itself can be slightly confusing. Trying to zoom in and out is way more effort than it should be, and after you click the camera button to take a picture, it takes about 10 seconds for the picture to actually be taken. This leaves you with pictures in motion or of the wrong object rather than the picture you were looking for. Once you snap the right shot, though, it looks great.

The Internet capabilities are quick to load (for the most part) with 3G speeds and allow easy access from the VZW Today bookmarks browser, but the touch screen is temperamental when it comes to scrolling down or across the page and when pressing certain buttons. The ability to access the Internet whenever or wherever you want is extremely useful, but actually viewing it gets stressful at times. Having to zoom in and out of a page in order to see what you’re looking for or to gain access to a text box can be frustrating.

The mobile e-mail feature makes it easier to access sites like Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo! Mail versus trying to find it through the Internet (which is also possible), but if you’re looking for a phone to receive e-mails for business then this is not the one for you. Typing for e-mails has the same issues as when typing for a text message, and that gets frustrating very quickly.

As part of the Verizon network, the Dare has access to V Cast, from which consumers can download music and stream videos for a monthly fee. Scrolling through the lists of songs and movies to listen to or watch can be a pain, but the Dare makes up for it in its excellent sound and video quality. The Dare is compatible with MP3 and AAC music and audio formats and offers VGA video playback.

The phone has a three inch screen, up to eight gigabytes of hard drive space with a microSD card inserted, is Bluetooth enabled, and includes all of the basic functions like a tip calculator, calendar, and stopwatch which are incredibly useful as a rule.

The LG Dare is a very solid phone; it has all of the aspects anyone could need, it’s just using them that gets a little difficult. No, it won’t replace the iPhone, but if you’re looking for a network alternative smartphone, the LG Dare is the right phone to choose.

Okay, so you bet on the wrong horse. You early-adopted HD DVD. It was cheaper. It was attractive. It had a nice ring to it — it’s not DVD, it’s HD DVD. I mean, when has Sony ever won a format war? MiniDisc? Bah. No way Blu-ray will ever win this format war.

And you were dead ass wrong.

Don’t fret if you’re stuck with 30 HD DVD discs as you rush to be a good consumer and begin to consume Blu-ray discs. There are still a few options out there that will let you play with both.

The LG BH200 is one of those options, and if you’re looking for DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray playback, it’s one of the best.

The BH200 puts out an amazing picture over HDMI and Component Video, and it upconverts DVD’s — and yes, they do look better.

The problem is that looks aren’t everything, and the BH200 is bad at optical audio output, failing to send a proper DTS signal for Blu-ray and failing to send either a DTS or Dolby Digital signal over optical audio out for some DVD’s that I tested.

The unit also has Ethernet built in, but you can’t upgrade the firmware over the Internet. Doh.

Lastly, the product takes as much time to power up as a desktop PC. When I press the eject button on my video player, I want it to spit out the disc, not turn on, boot up, load, load, load and then eject the disc over a minute later.

Basically, it’s like this — if you use HDMI for video AND audio and you need to play every format available, the new low price of the BH200 is attractive.

But HD DVD is dead, and this player might have come on the market a tad too late.