Picture Quality in Detail

The ultimate deciding factor for a flat-panel TV is, of course, the picture quality. In this chapter, we'll describe in detail how well the Philips 47 PFL 9703 D really performs in terms of contrast, black level, sharpness, and signal processing. We'll also back up our results with measurements from our test laboratory.

Contrast and Black Representation:
Compared to the performance of other, more-modern LCD TVs on the market, the Philips' contrast ratio is rather meager. Small white areas appear only around 900 times brighter than a black background. Other current LCD models, such as Sony's KDL-52 V 5500, often achieve values twice as high as this.

ANSI Contrast:

When in the "Optimum Picture" setting, the "Dynamic backlight" reduces the brightness of the backlight's lamps for dark pictures, but this only theoretically produces a large contrast ratio. It does increase the dynamic contrast to 13,500:1 if you measure the brightness of a completely black and completely white test pattern in sequence, but this helps little in reality - namely, dark pictures show hardly any depth.

Black Level Test:

This becomes clear with actual movie pictures. When Frodo & Co. wander through gloomy underground caverns in "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", blacks look rather pale, regardless whether the dynamic backlight setting is on or off. The setting dims the lights with a delay and then too abruptly. In the fade from/to black at the beginning of chapter twenty-eight, you see a rich black for just a fraction of a second.

Viewing Angle Dependence:
At very large viewing angles, such as from 60 degrees, the contrast drops by around two thirds, as is typical of LCD TVs. Although the supplied swivel pedestal allows you to direct the Philips easily toward the viewers, we still weren't happy: If you move even slightly up or down while viewing, black areas of the picture become significantly brighter.

In consolation, the Philips performs excellently in daylight when displaying bright scenes. In the "Movie" preset, the backlight delivers a luminance of around 430 candelas per square meter (cd/m2) when at maximum strength (Contrast set to 100), and therefore plenty of brightness for successful operation in a sun-drenched living room - few other LCD TVs offer this much brightness. The display's surface reflects incoming light diffusely, which often proves to be an advantage in very bright rooms. But it's still a touch too reflective and could dampen reflections better.

Video Processing of Standard Signals:

Video processing for the analog inputs is largely decent. Incoming interlaced signals generally convert to clean, though not perfect, progressive pictures. In some DVD movies, line flicker appears now and then: For example, in the fifth chapter of "Six Days Seven Nights", you can see slight disturbances on the sun loungers as the camera pans across the beach.

The quality impression of the standard video inputs - composite, S-Video, Scart-RGB, and YUV-576i - is okay, and follows the typical limitations of the technology; as ever, you should only use a composite input signal as a last resort.

One exception to crops up with signals arriving in YUV-576p format, which give a blurrier picture than with YUV-576i - this shouldn't be the case. The Scart-RGB input also suffers slight color-fringing on fine, contrast-rich lines.

This is no tragedy, since you'll get the best picture quality through the digital HDMI inputs anyway, with all picture details appearing highly crisp, including for 576i signals. We do have one small criticism of the HDMI picture: You cannot switch off picture-cropping (overscan) for standard-resolution (576i/576p) signals, but this behavior is the same in the vast majority of TVs.

Video Processing of HDTV Signals:

With HDTV signals from a Blu-ray disc, the Philips displays pictures in wonderful detail, whether the signal arrives in 1080/24p, 1080/60i or 1080/60p format. Well mastered movies such as "Casino Royale" display with corresponding clarity.

One of our most-used test scenes demonstrated this excellently: For a 60i input signal from "Casino Royale", most TVs show line-flicker on the fine decorative stripes of a sea-plane in chapter four; the Philips displayed the scene faultlessly. With video material, the TV only briefly flickered in certain test sequences ("HD-HQV Benchmark"); in a practical test with HDTV video-material such as "Antarctica Dreaming", it produces a clean picture.

Test patterns showed that the TV displays signals with pixel-for-pixel accuracy. Only the trickiest of tests, such as a checkerboard pattern with pixel-sized fields ("pixel phase"), show a slight Moiré pattern.

Blacker-than-black and whiter-than-white areas, which are crucial for finding the correct brightness and contrast settings with certain test discs, appear correctly on the Philips - only, however, with the backlight turned down (Contrast set to 59). This is because the Contrast setting controls both the contrast and the backlight's brightness - there's no separate setting for the backlight. If you set "Contrast" any higher, the whiter-than-white areas clip and develop a pink tint.

Disappointing and out of date: 24p playback shows an unattractive 3:2-pulldown judder. In the animated opening titles of "Casino Royale", for example, the playing cards move across the screen with an irregular judder instead of the classic, regular stutter seen in the movie theater.

To overcome this problem, you can switch on "HD Natural Motion". This setting provides pleasingly high motion-clarity, but also simultaneously removes the classic movie-stutter; motion now looks completely smooth, as in a TV recording - this doesn't suit every viewer's taste. If you look closely, you also notice slight pixel-noise around moving objects, since the setting has to meticulously calculate the direction of motion for every object in order to insert artificial intermediate frames.

Pesky: The 4:3 and letterbox-zoom formats are missing for HDTV input signals.

There isn't a lot of use for any HDTV signals not in 16:9-format. If you feed the Philips a 4:3- or letterbox-format movie from a satellite-TV receiver, the TV stretches the picture horizontally to fill the screen. The only hope of salvation is a good satellite receiver that offers the appropriate format settings.

Tuner Picture:
The integrated tuner's pictures initially look artificial, even in the best preset, "Movie". Fine skin pores blur in slow movements, and little detail is visible in dark areas of the picture. Colors are too gaudy, and occasional edge-ringing gives the picture a harsh feel.

With a few quick maneuvers, however, you can derive an excellent tuner picture from the Philips. Turn off the noise-reduction and the "Advanced sharpness", reduce the color saturation slightly, and deactivate the "Dynamic contrast" setting.

Et voilà: Now the Philips can differentiate shadowy areas accurately, the colors look well balanced, and the sharpness is impressive. Fine shades such as skin pores are visible even during motion. You should make these adjustments for all video inputs, since the Philips stores settings individually for each (also see the Colors and Ideal Settings section). In direct comparison with Sony's KDL-52 V 5500, the Philips delivers the finer analog TV picture. With digital reception, on the other hand, both TVs display an excellent picture.

Picture Uniformity and Digital Picture Errors:
With a reduced backlight brightness (Contrast setting between 50 and 65), the Philips delivers excellent motion-clarity, especially in movies. Fast-moving objects remain crisp, and show a double - but clearly visible - edge. Indeed, classical, 100-Hertz, CRT TVs do similar.

Unlike them, however, the Philips occasionally adds a red-green haze to moving edges - a type of color separation like that seen in one-chip DLP projectors. As you turn up the brightness, the effect increasingly disappears, but moving pictures blur more strongly. Overall, in movies, the Philips displays moving images better than most competing LCD models.

In pictures that have more motion phases - HDTV documentaries at 60 Hertz, for example, or TV pictures at 50 Hertz - the double edges make the picture look blurry. Here, the "HD Natural Motion" and "100 Hz Clear LCD" settings come in useful: Fast, ultra-crisp camera pans now appear significantly clearer - you'll only find these on a few discs, such as the Blu-ray "Antarctica Dreaming". Only Sony's current Z-series TVs, with 200-Hertz Motionflow technology, can beat the Philips on HDTV video - and these TVs are still inferior to the Philips for movies.

The residual illumination in black pictures is quite bright, but homogenous across the whole screen. If you display a completely gray or white screen, however, there are slight, viewing-angle-dependent discolorations (also see the Color Fidelity and Contrast and Black Representation sections). Overall, most viewers will have no trouble with picture uniformity on the 47 PFL 9703 D.