Philips 32PF9830 review

While extensive, the amount of picture-processing options available makes setup a lengthier process than we've seen on other TVs. When Philips came in to demonstrate the television, the representative set up the picture as he said he had it at home. The demonstration looked great, but when we took the television into a darker room and calibrated it for DVD, we ended up using quite different picture settings. We also tended to change settings depending on which source we were using -- some of the processing added an unnatural quality to analogue sources. Luckily, the TV memorises different settings for each of the separate inputs.

Ambilight is the clear talking point of this TV, and with the second generation of the technology Philips has really made it an attractive selling point. The lights can be set for a variety of modes, some of which are designed to relax the eyes, others are more dynamic modes for movie viewing. The two strips of light can now also act independently, meaning that each of the two lights emit a colour consistent with that side of the picture. True, this can be slightly distracting at first, and it's more suited to movies than fast-cutting videogames or TV, but you'll stop noticing it in minutes. It also gives the television more visible presence, with a picture that seems to stretch outside of the TV itself.

Philips doesn't promote it in the accompanying literature, but the TV features excellent multimedia functionality. It can play media from a variety of formats, including CompactFlash, Memory Stick, MMC, Secure Digital and SmartMedia. Cleverly, it can also read directly from USB flash drives, so if you grab some photos of the work party from a colleague, you can take them home and watch them directly back on the TV.

NXT's flat-speaker technology is also brilliantly hidden in the frame of the television -- in fact, there's very little evidence of any speakers being in the TV at all. While there is a subwoofer included, we found the speakers lacked some bass, and were more suited to television and videogames rather than movies. As we've mentioned, it's a shame that there's no integrated digital tuner with the television, although the allocation of Scart inputs means that there's plenty of space to plug in a Freeview box. We spoke to Philips about this, and they promised that its new range will be IDTVs and they will be launching in mid-2006.

Performance
Picture quality from the Philips LCD is superb from high definition, and very good from standard definition. We've seen good efforts from Panasonic and Sony recently, so the Philips has a lot to live up to, but these are certainly the best HD images we've seen. When you sit down and begin to watch some high-quality footage, you're presented with a picture that seems to drip with colour, something which is undoubtedly helped by Ambilight. Even up-close, we had a hard time picking out any dot crawl or colour bleed.

If you use Pixel Plus processing on standard definition, you might find some of the images over-processed and slightly unnatural. The lower quality the source, the more the processing seems to amplify its imperfections, so if you have a DVD player you'll want to use the component video outputs to ensure the best picture. Other than the artificial sharpness that seemed to occur on Freeview, Pixel Plus kept the signal solid and colourful, and if you turn the processing off then it looks just as good as the Samsung and Toshiba LCD TVs we've seen recently. This is the ideal LCD for buyers with high-definition and style considerations, and it just about manages to justify its premium price.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Nick Hide