Look at enough HDTVs, and you'll find that each has its own personality. Specifically, by checking the out-of-box image on the different video presets, and the design and options for the menus, you can get a pretty quick feel for whether a set's maker takes its TV seriously and did its homework.
Using that logic, Philips is that geeky kid who sat up-front in your third-grade class and raised his hand a bit too energetically, a bit too often. But here, that's a good thing. The new Philips 42PFL7432D 42-inch LCD HDTV is an overachiever that's both a solid performer and a standout for its user interface — a clear sign that the company thought long and hard before slapping on its logo.
With its gloss-black bezel, smoked-glass base, and swiveling, silver post, this Philips strikes the same understated pose as most other LCDs. But starting with its 1080p-resolution screen and Ambilight glow panels (now a Philips trademark), there's a wealth of features to help you get the most out of the display. Especially notable is an innovative Settings Assistant. Turning on the TV for the first time, you're stepped through a series of screens showing split images of landscapes and people, each side reflecting a different setting for key contrast, brightness, sharpness, and color-enhancement controls. You simply select your preference and move on. This clever feature should at least help nontechnical viewers get their Philips sets out of the hyperbright “torch” mode intended for retail floors — a very good thing, indeed.
SETUP
Along with the obligatory trio of HDMI inputs found on most new HDTVs, the Philips has the usual complement of component-, composite-, and S-video connections. A convenience pack on the left side of the screen offers up a headphone jack and a USB input for viewing photos straight from a camera. There's no VGA input, but computers are supported via HDMI.
It took me a while to get through all of the TV's menu options. The interface is clean and intuitive — attractive to look at and easy to use after a brief initiation. However, I was bummed at how much of the screen image was blocked by the menu while making adjustments, as well as how the menu fully covered the image until a specific adjustment was selected.
I loved this set's remote. It's artfully uncluttered and partially backlit — and keys that aren't backlit are smartly placed. Hitting the Input key calls up a menu from which to select your sources or toggle through them, and the Aspect key offers several zoom options and a pixel-for-pixel mode that shows HDTV with no overscan.
The TV has three picture presets, labeled Vivid, Natural, and Movie. When you select one, it's automatically applied to all inputs. Fortunately, you can still make the full range of video adjustments for each input, and your results are stored.
There's a wider than usual variety of auto picture settings, but only the Dynamic Contrast feature had a noticeably positive effect. Although measurements showed it pushed the grays a bit blue on dark scenes, it made for blacker blacks and more punch than I could achieve with it turned off. So after calibrating the set, I left it on its minimum setting for most viewing. In Movie mode with Warm color temperature, grayscale tracked a tad toward blue, but it was much improved after tweaking the red, green, and blue controls in the user menu.
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The Short Form |
| Price $1,650 ($1,799 list) / philipsusa.com / 888-744-5477 |
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Snapshot
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| A good picture, Ambilight, and outstanding menu options make for an excellent value in this 1080p LCD. |
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Plus
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| •Accurate color and solid blacks for an LCD •Simple, user-friendly remote •Clean reproduction of 480i/p programs •Extensive Ambilight options |
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Minus
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| •Onscreen menus block video image |
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Key Features
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| •1,920 x 1,080-pixel screen •Two-sided Ambilight backlight •Auto Settings Assistant •Backlit remote •Inputs: 3 HDMI; 1 component-video; 1 component-/composite-/S-video; 1 composite-/S-video; 1 composite-video; RF antenna; USB •41.3 x 27 x 4.5 in; 60.8 lb |
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Test Bench
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| With the Philips's Movie and Warm color-temperature presets, grayscale showed a blue bias and tracked ±736 K off the 6,500-K target from 30 to 100 IRE. Adjustments in the user menu reduced this to ±109 K, excepting a modest 218-K lean toward blue at 50 IRE — good for an LCD. Color points were spot-on for red and only slightly off for green and blue; color decoder error was —7% for green and 0% for both red and blue. The set fully resolved 1080i/p and 720p test patterns via HDMI, but they were slightly softer and showed mild noise via component. Gray fields had good uniformity for an LCD, though the very darkest (30 IRE and below) were a bit brighter in the top-right/bottom-left corners than in the center. The set failed the video- and film-mode deinterlacing torture tests on the Silicon Optix HD test disc when delivered as 1080i, but no instability was obvious in program material. Full Lab Results |
PERFORMANCE
I began my critical viewing of the Philips with a look at the first few tense minutes of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center on HD DVD, and I was quickly impressed with the solidity of the image: It had little evidence of the busy, jittery quality I see on some LCDs. And I found color accuracy unusally good for an LCD. As a New Yorker, I appreciated the convincing blue stripes on a white Metro Transit bus and the red awnings on the bodegas in lower Manhattan. World Trade Center has a muted look, but the screen really popped alive with a long shot of the bus full of Port Authority cops speeding across 14th Street toward the burning skyscrapers. The TV dramatically captured the sun-bathed brick buildings and the gawkers lining the avenue, along with the dark plumes coming off the Twin Towers in the clear fall sky. Detail was outstanding: I could even see the street number on a sign across the intersection, and close-ups on the face of Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) easily revealed his stubble.
Meanwhile, a high-def broadcast on HDNet of the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan flop Joe Versus the Volcano looked especially stunning. Scenes of the two actors floating in the ocean on a makeshift raft of roped-together sailor trunks showed a good range of natural colors, from the yellow of Ryan's rain slicker and the khaki of Hanks's safari suit to the detail in the studs and buckles of the red leather trunks. Blacks were good and dark on the night scenes (again, with Dynamic Contrast engaged), and the set nicely revealed shadow details in the moonlit surface of the ocean.
Reproduction of standard-def was another strong suit for the Philips. It tamed most of the video noise inherent in typical 480i broadcasts and some DVDs even before I engaged its noise-reduction menu option. Turning that circuit to its maximum setting further cleaned up the worst signals without robbing significant detail, and its activation did not noticeably degrade clean HD signals.
BOTTOM LINE
After a slow start, it's almost hard to believe how far LCD TVs have come in the last year, but we're now testing models with the kind of accurate color and solid blacks that even an enthusiast could live with. Philips clearly had both the everyday shopper and the serious viewer in mind with the 42PFL7432D 42-inch LCD HDTV, and it shows. The set's good picture quality, extensive menu options, excellent remote, Ambilight feature, and competitive $1,650 street price make this 42-incher a solid value in a crowded field.
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