On the subject of menus, the Philips has a quite good menu system that's easy to navigate and seems logically laid out. It's not the most beautiful thing we've ever seen, but it's functional. The TV will even help you adjust the picture settings through a wizard system that shows you a series of images and asks you which you prefer. By answering these questions, you're adjusting the brightness, sharpness and other TV settings without even realising it. Very clever.
Blu-ray material looked terrific. We put on Spider-Man 3 and were impressed by the strong colours and image detail. We also noticed that the special effects in the movie are little cack at times, and it's fair to assume we noticed that because the Philips produced such a clear picture.
Black levels were good too, and the viewing angle was quite wide, so movie fans will appreciate that. We opted to turn off the motion smoothing mode -- but if you use it you'll probably be pleased by the job it does, especially on the lower setting, which smoothes the picture without totally removing all of the charm of film.
Overall, we were very happy with the TV's HD performance and thrilled by the sound system, and we found the Freeview performance to be fairly good, though not perfect.
Conclusion
The 42PFL7603 might be cheaper than the 9703, but considering the Freeview picture isn't that impressive and the Ambilight isn't anywhere near as involving, we think you should stick to the very capable 42PFL9703.
If you want better value for money, look at the Panasonic plasma range, which has 1080p TVs, some with built-in freesat, that cost significantly less than this TV. If you want an LCD, check out the Z-series Toshiba TVs or perhaps one of the new ultra-slim Samsung LCDs.
Edited by Marian Smith
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John Ryder 3 March 2009
Good: Would be ok without the design fault and dishonest Philips people
Bad: Design faults, then you have to pay for their mistake
Comment: I was unlucky enough to have purchased a Philips tv and my advice is buy another make. By the time I noticed the green line at the top of the screen design fault, the guarantee had expired. Naturally I contacted Philips to ask what they were going to do to fix this faulty product I had been sold and to my astonishment they weren't prepared to do anything. I'm afraid Philips are liars, they said that the fault wasn't there from the start (although hundreds of online reviews complaining about the "green line fault" beg to differ). They said I would have to pay £240+ to have an engineer repair it. OK, so I'm paying nearly half the cost of the tv to fix a fault that you didn't fix during production, and what's more you offer firmware to fix it if you are lucky enough to have USB feature, which of course I wasn't. When a company offers firmware to fix a fault, it's because they have made a mistake, so in effect I am being made to pay for their mistake. Looking around on internet review web sites I was quite saddened to find other people like me who had been ripped off by Philips in a similar way. Just out of interest, my friend once bought a Philips dvd recorder that had a design fault which meant it wouldn't let the user leave the menu, rendering it useless. Luckily enough he was able to return it to his local Asda, unlucky for me I had to deal with Philips who show only contempt towards their customers. The reason I mentioned that incident about my friend was because Philips' argument was that all their products are tested and never leave production with any faults, quite a ridiculous claim, and proven to be untrue. Once again I urge you not to buy Philips products to save you any grief which might and probably will occur. Thank you.
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