Featured Brands
Other TV Brands
Most Popular TVs
Philips 37 PF 9641 D/10
The Philips 37 PF 9641 D/10 TV is a 37" (94 cm) LCD flat-panel TV from Philips with integrated lighting, and has been available since fall 2006 for about 2,400 GBP.
Florian Friedrich, October 18, 2006
- Great full black - something few LCDs can manage.
- A good factory setup always helps - the Philips 37 PF 9641 D/10's picture is well balanced.
- Rich feature-set, including integrated wall lighting.
- Absurd - the sharpness enhancement actually reduces picture detail.
- There is no picture format button on the remote.
- The colors could be more neutral.
The built-in "Ambilight" wall lighting system is a fascinating and effective technique. In combination with the good - but not perfect - picture, Philips is offering its fans a neat package here.
Philips is the market leader in the TV sector in a number of European countries. The manufacturer's ambition is to combine optimal picture handling with interesting features, and the luxury-class 37 PF 9641 D/10 is exactly the kind standard they wish to lead with.
2x 
2x 
1x 
1x
Digg
del.icio.us
Reddit
GoogleTechnology
"Ambilight":
For the layman, the most striking feature of this Philips TV is the background lighting, which goes by the name of "Ambilight". It illuminates the wall behind the TV, so that the TV does not dazzle the viewers.
This technology has now seen numerous stages of evolution - in the 37 PF 9641 D/10, the light shines from the left and right hand sides of the unit. In newer models, the light also shines upwards ("Ambilight Surround"), or from all four sides ("Ambilight Full Surround"). The new "Aurea" range, introduced at the IFA 2007 consumer electronics fair, also illuminates the frame around the screen according to the picture content.
The idea behind these lighting systems is to remove the age old problem of eye-strain due to watching TV in a dark room. Right from the early days of television, opticians have recommended using a lamp to illuminate the wall behind the TV screen. Philips has taken this concept one step further. "Ambilight" can, if you choose, change the color of this illumination to suit the picture content being displayed, spreading the field of vision outwards from the set, and therefore making the picture appear larger.
For some, this achieves the desired effect - viewing is more relaxed. For others it's just irritating, so the lights can be deactivated fully or, if you want, switched to "Color" mode, in which the color does not vary. You can also then choose to set the color temperature of the "Ambilight" to "Cool White" (6,500 Kelvin) which matches the recommended studio value for natural daylight.
Philips is equally proud of two of its other technologies, which it really talks up in its marketing hype - "Pixel Plus" and "Digital Natural Motion".
"Pixel Plus" and "Digital Natural Motion":
"Pixel Plus" tries to trick the viewer by giving an impression of increased sharpness. Any technician knows that no process in the world can bring something out of a signal that is simply not there in the first place, but you can often make it look that way. In this model, however, Philips has a problem. The "Pixel Plus" processor from 2006 cannot handle full HD resolution, so it first scales the image down to 1280 x 720 pixels, peps it up, and then blows it back up to 1920 x 1080.
"Digital Natural Motion" (DNM) aims, on the other hand, to smooth out motion in the picture. This technology effectively displays interpolated "in-between" frames to reduce judder. Films always juddered on the movie screen and on simpler 50Hz TVs. Most viewers do not notice this, but it does become more obvious during camera pans, for example.
This is what DNM tries to improve, while also smoothing edges of moving objects. Here again, there is a small problem - not everyone thinks this actually looks better, because it does not really look the same as in the movie theater and can actually introduce some picture defects. In newer Philips models, the current variants of "Pixel Plus" and "Digital Natural Motion" are combined as the "Perfect Pixel" setting.
Features
Apart from Philips' in-house extras (see "Technology" section), the feature-set of the 37 PF 9641 D/10 is not that unusual. There are built-in analog cable and terrestrial digital (DVB-T) receivers. Two Scart sockets and two HDMI inputs are fairly standard these days and will not exactly whip up a frenzy.
The TV does, however, have two more tricks up its sleeve - firstly, photos, videos and MP3 music files can be played back, no-fuss, from a USB stick, and secondly, the Philips offers digital audio inputs and outputs.
The screen is full HD resolution, i.e. 1920 x 1080 pixels. Whether that's really sensible on a screen of this size is yet to be seen. In most living rooms, the usual viewing distance would prevent even the most eagle-eyed of viewers from perceiving the finer HD-details.
Operation
On-Screen Menu:
In 2006, Philips overhauled and standardized the on-screen menus of all its devices. In principle, then, you should manage just fine with the 37 PF 9641 D/10's menus. It is logically structured, easily legible and responsive. It does, however, cover up much of the content on the screen, which is a little irritating.
Nevertheless, the Philips fascinates with its ease of operation - among others, it has a sensibly ordered channel list, the new and improved Teletext 2.5 and the much loved 'Back' button, for switching back and forth between the current and last viewed channel.
Remote Control:
The remote itself is a bit bulky, but otherwise comfortable to use. Stupidly, however, for this generation of control devices, Philips got rid of the picture format button, which is particularly frustrating on a 16:9 format widescreen set. Now you have to go via the "Option" button and a submenu.
TV and DVD Picture Quality
The Philips gives a great natural picture from its built in receivers. It neither aggressively sharpens the edges nor over-enhances the picture. The one shortcoming is the very obvious presence of stepped edges during camera pans. Video material from a DVD player connected via Scart-RGB is clean and well balanced. False edges are nowhere to be seen, and even darker details are crisply reproduced, but the final touch of sharpness and resolution is not quite there. In camera pans, such as the beach scene from "Six Days, Seven Nights," a stepping effect is visible on slanted edges.
A real achievement: Even in dark scenes, the residual light from the backlighting is very neutral, although only for front-on viewing. The picture brightens dramatically if viewed from the side. Films with lots of bright scenes look pleasingly vivid, and on first inspection, the colors look natural, but black-and-white sequences in particular are slightly tinted. This cannot be completely remedied - in the "Normal" tint setting (9,100 Kelvin), the Philips gives images a violet cast, and with "warmth", the white is neutral, but gray tones look somewhat bluish.
HDTV Picture Quality
Even Philips cannot let go of the dreaded overscan on this model. This is a relic from the stone age of TV, where the picture is magnified to hide faults at its edges - the resulting loss of sharpness is a total waste of HDTV capabilities.
As explained in the "Technology" section, the "Pixel Plus" processor in this model cannot handle full HDTV resolution pictures. In terms of technical measurements, both these problems have a strong effect - the Philips over-sharpens test pictures and does not display full HD resolution.
All of this sounds bad, but actually makes little difference in practice when viewing HD DVD or Blu-ray films. "King Kong" looks atmospheric, deep and sharp. It is only when compared with other full HD sets that the Philips loses out at short viewing distances.
In black-and-white scenes, the Philips shines once again, with a lush, profound black, although again with light color casting. Progressive signals at 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution are not accepted at all by the 37 PF 9641 D/10, and therefore the original 24p movie frame rate format is also not supported.
Computer Operation and Sound Quality
Computer Operation:
It's a long time since TV developers and computer monitor specialists worked side by side at Philips - unfortunately. Despite the high resolution panel, the 37 PF 9641 D/10 is barely useful as a PC monitor. Connected via the analog VGA, it will only accept pictures in 4:3 format up to 1024 x 768 pixels, and a maximum of 1280 x 720 pixels via the DVI-HDMI interface. Both are well below the panel's native resolution, which is not accessible at all in PC mode, leaving text looking washed out.
Sound Quality:
During testing, speech was clearly reproduced by the built-in stereo loudspeakers, but music was a little muddy and discolored. In particular, the bass tones are hardly contoured. You can help it a little bit with the equalizer, but ultimately, this does not work wonders.
Settings for the best home-theatre performance*
Contrast: 75
Brightness: 55
Color: 47
Sharpness: 2
Tint: Normal (9,100 K) or Custom (7,000 K)
Custom Tint: R-WP 120, G-WP 102, B-WP 67, R-BL 6, G-BL 7
Pixel Plus: On
Dynamic Contrast: Off
DNR: Off
MPEG Artifact Reduction: Off
Color Enhancement: Off
Active Control: Off
Light Sensor: Off
* applied to realistic playback from HD DVD/Blu-ray material through the HDMI interface in a darkened environment. Manufacturing and HDMI playback device deviations may necessitate slight adjustment.
Quick Points Summary
Lamps: The picture looks bigger thanks to the "Ambilight" shining left and right from the screen, giving a relaxed viewing experience.
Average: Two Scart sockets and two HDMI inputs are not exactly opulent. For analog PC signals, you need to use an adapter on the YUV input.
Clear, but a bit long: The elegant remote control is not ideal, even in large hands. Also, it lacks a picture format button.
A bit off: Even after extensive fine tuning, the Philips cannot get it 100% right.