Philips 42PFL9803 review

Because of our past experiences with LED backlights, we were on the lookout for haloing around bright items on dark backgrounds. And by chance, we found an excellent demo -- a screensaver on our Blu-ray player. When the bright blue logo appeared on the black background we were indeed able to see a halo of light around it.

This artefact is one of the problems with LED backlights, and the Philips is certainly less prone to it than the Samsung we saw some time ago. It's also only going to be a problem on material where there's a black background and a bright object, so most regular viewing simply won't be affected.

Rather than a boring piano-black case, Philips has used this beautiful brushed aluminium design

So, let's talk specifics. We used several movies to assess the quality of the TV. Our old favourite, Casino Royale, looked fantastic. The opening scene retained all of its grit and stylish film noise and the title sequence looked brilliant with every colour seeming to leap off the screen and attack our eyeballs.

Philips also includes its Perfect Natural Motion system, which is designed to make film material look silky-smooth and lose any judder. To its credit, this system does work incredibly well. The result, however, is not to our taste. Film that generally has a very specific feel begins to take on a video-like quality.

While that might not sound like a problem, we are of the opinion that it destroys the director's vision. Obviously, this is a personal taste issue, and if you like smooth films, you'll love it. On the high setting, we did notice some artefacts associated with the processing. Some fast-moving objects have blocking around them.

Freeview looked very good indeed. The picture processing does a very good job of cleaning up the noisy signal and there is no MPEG noise at all. Colours also looked natural, and we thought everything from trees to skin was represented as it would appear in real life.

As much as we like the picture, we really don't think plasmas from Pioneer and Panasonic need to quake in their boots at this stage. The Philips doesn't quite manage the accurate balance of colour and natural look that our reference Pioneer LX-5090 does. We felt that sometimes we could see a slight dark blue hue to images. It's quite possible this is a side-effect of a different backlight system, as we've not noticed it on any other Philips TVs.

But with that said, this is the first generation of a technology. By next year, it's likely Philips will have made a TV that has even greater control over the array of LED lights, and in so doing, will make a TV that can look as impressive as any plasma.

As always, the sound from the Philips is incredibly strong. The company has the right attitude to built-in audio, providing front-firing tweeters and rear-mounted woofers. This means that movies sound terrific, and even action films with explosions are well handled.

Conclusion
So, what's our opinion of the 42PFL9803? Well, it's a good TV and we love the styling. At this price though, we didn't think the 9803 delivered as much as the Pioneer LX-5090. We would also suggest that any one of Panasonic's 1080p plasma screens will give you all the benefits of deep blacks and rich colours and often at significantly lower prices.

There's much to like about the 42PFL9803 -- the LED backlight does a great job under most circumstances. That said, for this money, we'd expect something that is slightly nearer perfection and this isn't there yet.