Philips 37PF9731D review

Tech-wise, it's disappointing, but we're leaning towards the opinion that only someone with superhuman vision will be able to tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p on a 37-inch TV. The screen is simply not big enough, and the picture is deinterlaced by the TV's internal processing anyway, which should eliminate the jaggies around moving objects -- so our advice is not to worry too much about it.

Resolution aside, this TV has a truly superb set of features. There's a list of picture processing modes as long as a Russian art film (Pixel Plus 3 HD, Clear LCD, Digital Natural Motion, Active Control), plus a three-sided Ambilight. For the uninitiated, the latter shines coloured light on to the wall behind the TV; the colours and brightness are determined by what is on screen at the time, resulting a more immersive viewing experience -- and less eye strain.

The picture can be adjusted in a huge variety of ways. There are the usual colour, contrast, brightness and sharpness settings to tweak, and all of the processing features mentioned above can be turned on and off, and some can be set at different levels. The menu system you use to do all this is nicely straightforward, and the fact you can set different configurations for different inputs (say a bright, non-processed picture for your Xbox 360 and a darker image with noise reduction turned up high for the built-in Freeview tuner) is a big plus point.

We should also mention the media playback functions. Thanks to the card reader, USB ports and networking capabilities, you can use the TV to view videos and photos and listen to music. Sadly, the implementation is poor -- the aspect ratio of videos cannot be altered, for instance -- and we suggest you look at it as merely an occasionally useful bonus feature, not a main selling point.

Performance
Like other high-end Philips LCDs, the picture quality here is nothing short of excellent. If you're viewing in the right conditions -- for example, with a little bit of ambient light in the room -- the black levels are truly stunning for an LCD. They're not up to CRT standards, but as long as you're not sitting too far off-centre they don't fall far short.

Colour reproduction is also a strong point. If you've ever seen a sunrise on a flat-panel TV, then you've probably seen the 'banding effect' -- where differing shades are displayed by contours of a colour rather than a smooth transition. That isn't the case here -- skies look really convincing.

Gamers will be happy with the smooth movement -- Project Gotham Racing 3 on the Xbox 360 glides along in blur-free brilliance -- and there's almost no judder thanks to Digital Natural Motion and Clear LCD. Sadly, these only work with standard-definition sources at present -- but hi-def still looks fantastic on this screen.

There are problems, though. The screen supports 1:1 pixel mapping, so every single pixel from, say, a 1080i Sky HD feed is displayed. Ordinarily this would be a positive, especially for owners of home cinema PCs, but Philips has messed up by leaving a bright green line at the top of the screen -- it's distracting. Expect a firmware update to rub this problem out before long -- but it'll also likely kill off the 1:1 mapping feature.

Edited by Kate Macefield
Additional editing by Kate Macefield

Update: Philips has informed us that the green line at the top of the screen is a result of a "gap" in the 1080i signal generated by certain sources. Sky HD is certainly one of the sources that causes the line to appear, and we had no trouble from our upscaling DVD player or Xbox 360.

The company would not confirm that a fix or update was on the way, but mentioned that viewers could avoid the issue by setting the aspect ratio format to "automatic". We found the automatic aspect shifting to be a little unreliable, though, as it tended to needlessly zoom in and squash certain material, and of course you will lose 1:1 pixel mapping by changing the format to anything but "full".

Further update: Cnet.co.uk reader Toby Cook has emailed us to let us know that Philips has now released updated firmware to solve this problem. It can be downloaded from the Philips support site and transferred to the TV using a USB memory key.