Philips 32PF9986 review

Setting our player to output via RGB Scart , we saw jagged lines and unnecessary motion artefacts during such slow pans as the opening sequence of Star Trek: Insurrection. "Chapter Four: The Breach of Deeping Wall," from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, revealed the 32PF9986's decent black-level performance. The panel can't produce a real black, but it does a good job of preserving detail in darker scenes. For example, you can clearly see the Uruk Hai warrior's face as he places a bomb at the gate of Deeping Wall. Details in the bricks of the gateway don't plunge into swaths of darkness as they do on lesser LCD panels.

As mentioned earlier, this panel doesn't scale 720p HDTV sources at all, so they won't fill the screen. On the other hand, they will be displayed at full resolution with every detail visible. In addition, high-definition sources are displayed in glorious detail, with almost no noise. Switching over to 1080 material, we noticed scaling artefacts entering the picture, so you might want to choose 720p where available.

The 32PF9986's performance is clearly a step above this year's crop of budget LCDs. The premium price is nothing to take lightly, but neither is the quality. Sharp's LC32GA5E offers slightly better picture quality and superior features, but it does cost more.