Philips 32PF9966 32" Widescreen HDTV-Ready Flat-Panel LCD TV

Rating:
Summary: Unbelievable Deal!!!
Review: I purchased this LCD Flat Panel about a month ago from Amazon for the amazing price of $2399.99. The picture looks fantastic and the ambilight technology is great for watching television in a dark room. I shopped around quite a bit before I purchased my television and this one compares very favorably with the comparable models that are priced one thousand dollars more. When I first saw this price for this TV, I thought that it must be too good to be true, but I took a chance on it, sure that I was going to regret it. But you know what? I haven't. In fact, I am considering buying another one before either the price goes up or the set is no longer available. The set even comes with mounting brackets to hang it on the wall (something that is rare among these sets).

Rating:
Summary: Great for 1080i and DVD. Not so great for SDTV and 720p.
Review: I recently purchased this set from J&R through Amazon. I've had it set up for over a week now and, overall, I'm reasonably happy with it, but nothing is perfect. Here are my observations:

- High Definition performance is outstanding, at least to my untrained eye. Good-quality HD content (like Discovery HD Theater and shows like "CSI") is just stunningly beautiful to watch on this set. Great colors, good black level, excellent detail. The picture detail is slightly sharper on HDMI than component, but it looks great on both and you'd probably never notice the difference at a normal viewing distance. My only major complaint with HD is that while the set can display 480p, 720p, and 1080i, it doesn't scale 720p to the full screen size. It displays 720p signals in a 1280x720 window in the middle of the 1366x768 screen. It scales 1080i and 480p to the full screen size, so why not 720p? Also, it seems that the "Pixel Plus" processing is disabled for 720p signals. On the bright side, 720p is displayed nicely, even without Pixel Plus, if you don't mind the wasted screen real estate around the edges.

- Pixel Plus. The demo mode does show an improvement in the quality of HD signals on the side with Pixel Plus, especially color and sharpness. On standard-def signals, I can't see much difference, though. The spec. sheet for this set is vauge about whether it supports Pixel Plus version 1 or 2. The Service Menu allows you to choose either version, and once you choose version 2, references to "Pixel Plus" in the menus and the demo mode change to "Pixel Plus 2", so I assume that it really does support Pixel Plus 2.

- HDMI. It results in a shaper display, but there are implementation problems with my cable box (Scientific Atlanta 8300HD) and/or the 32PF9966 which are irritating. There are sometimes problems when the box and TV try to "sync up" with each other. Others have claimed that the SA8300HD has problems doing this with other TV sets as well, so don't hold this one against Philips. Once they do manage to get synced with each other, the picture and sound are exceptionally good with HDMI. I'm working-around the problem right now by "dual connecting" the cable box to the TV via both component and HDMI. When the HDMI can't sync up, I just switch over to component, which gets the TV in the right display mode, then switch back to HDMI.

- Built-in sound. Very good! It's good enough that I usually just use the built-in sound instead of routing the sound to my old 2-channel receiver. You can also use the built-in speakers as a center channel if you have a surround-sound stereo.

- DVD playback quality. Very good! You definitely need to use 480p/progressive scan, though, when using the component input. (I haven't tried the S-Video input since my DVD player doesn't have an S-Video output.) When I set my DVD player to 480i output over component, the image is visibly degraded. Maybe this is due to my DVD player; I really have no idea. All semi-modern DVD players support 480p output, so this shouldn't be a problem for most people.

- Standard Definition TV. The good news is that if you have a good quality SDTV signal, it does a good job displaying it. The bad news is that low-quality signals (noisy analog channels or super-compressed digital shows) look really bad, with washed-out colors and a lot of "graininess". This seems to be a common problem with HD displays.

- Construction. Philips must build these things like tanks. When mine arrived, the box was completely mangled on one end and crudely taped back together. I saw the delivery guy take it out of the truck, and, sure, enough, they had completely ignored the printed warnings to ship it upright and it was FLAT on its side. When I peeked through the holes in the box and saw cracked Styrofoam packing material, I was sure the panel couldn't possibly have survived. But I was shocked to find that there wasn't a scratch on the thing and it worked perfectly. This particular model is built in Belgium, BTW.

- Esthetics. Definitely a winner, IMHO, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It does have a very wide bezel, which some people like and some don't. (It probably helped mine survive the rough shipping by supporting the LCD glass more rigidly, but that's just a guess.) The base is made of a single sheet of thick glass in front and two metal supports in the rear. It's very sturdy. You'd think that it would scratch the table surface, but it doesn't at all. It comes with all the hardware you would need to mount it on the wall.

- Ambilight. This is a color-changing light that is projected onto the wall behind the set. In the default mode, it tracks the colors displayed on the screen, but you can also set it to a fixed color of your choice. You can also use it as a "mood light" when the TV is off. It's kind of cute, but it's really designed for when you have the set wall-mounted on a white or near-white wall. I have mine in an entertainment center, so I basically just turned it off. Also, the Ambilight emits a faint high-pitched whine, like a florescent lamp. You can only hear it if you are near the TV, but it's kind of irritating if you are standing right next to it. Luckily, you can turn off the Ambilight if it bugs you.

- User menus. I find the menus on this set to be exceptionally well designed. I just wish my DVD player had such a slick menu system!

- Service Menu. You can access it by entering the following sequence on the remote control: 062596[Info]. There are all sorts of adjustments that one can make, including tweaking the RGB color levels individually and setting the Pixel Plus version to 1 or 2. There are also settings which probably shouldn't be messed with, like what brand of LCD panel is installed in the set (mine says "Sharp"). It will tell you the version number of the firmware, any error codes that have been noted, and the total number of hours that your TV has been turned on. My set is noting errors, but that seems to be pretty normal with Philips TVs. Maybe they should be called "status codes" instead of error codes.

As I said, I'm pretty pleased overall, but I mainly watch HDTV, DVDs, and high-quality SDTV. The 720p limitations don't really bother me, but be aware of them. The problems with low-quality SDTV signals may not be any worse than other fixed-pixel HDTV sets since they ALL seemed to look terrible when I viewed them in a store.

Rating:
Summary: My Views
Review: Philips did a magnificent job with this LCD. The sound quality is fantastic. The black color is superb, the ambient light play a big part in watching movies and sporting events.The image and color is also great. This is one of the best LCD 32 inches around.Go for it..overall is fantastic.