Colors and Ideal Settings

In the presets "Vivid", "Standard", "Energy Saving", and "Game", the Philips' picture tends to look sterile and chilly. Balanced colors only appear in the "Movie" preset; here, the color temperature is adjusted to 6,500 Kelvin, as intended in TV standards.

Fine-tuning for the optimal picture, just like they see in the film studio: In this chapter, we'll show you how good the Philips 47 PFL 9703 D's colors and presets really are, and how to get the best out of the TV's picture.

Color Fidelity:
In a visual test with a wide variety of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, the Philips performed outstandingly, delivering high color-fidelity. Especially skin tones, which show up even the slightest color error on a TV as a visible discoloration, look totally convincing and natural on the Philips. Sony's competing KDL-52 V 5500, on the other hand, gives faces a very slight pink tint.

Still, the Sony's saturated green and cyan tones are better - these appear too radiant on the Philips. This is because the Philips' color gamut is strongly extended in the primary color green, an effect you can see clearly in the CIE triangle of the TV's factory setup. There is no possibility to correct this. Excellent: Side-on viewing hardly affects the Philips' color reproduction, whereas many competing TVs would show discolorations.

Black-and-white movies such as "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" display natural-looking grayscales on the 47 PFL 9703 D, but the color uniformity is not quite perfect.

Notice the cloud cover in the first chapter of the movie: While the edges of the picture look neutral, the center of the picture shows a slight red tint - this isn't that bad, but it's clearly visible if you're looking for it. Slight coloration appears in dark pictures: Blacks tend to look rather dark-blue, dark grayscales look brownish.

Calibration and Ideal Settings

Gray tones are offset somewhat toward pink on the Philips 47 PFL 9703 D, and the primary color green looks too radiant. Since there are no color controls, there's nothing the user can do to remedy these problems.

We achieved an optimal Blu-ray HDTV movie picture using the settings listed below. You may need to make slight changes to these settings as a result of manufacturing variations, HDMI-transmission variables, and differences between Blu-ray players.

Smart Setting: Personal, based on Movie

Contrast: 59

Brightness: 57

Color: 47

Sharpness: 2

Noise Reduction: Off

Tint: Warm

HD Natural Motion: Off or Minimum

100 Hz Clear LCD: On

Advanced Sharpness: Off

Dynamic Contrast: Off

Dynamic Backlight: Off

MPEG Artefact Reduction: Off

Color Enhancement: Off

Active Control: Off

Light Sensor: On

Picture Format: Unscaled