Colors and Ideal Settings

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 56 PFL 9954 H's colors and presets really are, and how to get the best out of the TV's picture.

Color Fidelity:

This type of graph tells experts which type of lamp the TV uses.

With a sharp peak in the green region of the spectrum (545 nanometers), the TV's color spectrum is typical of the fluorescent tubes used in LCD TVs.

In the most natural preset, CINEMA, the Philips already shows very respectable colors. Skin tones, primary colors, and even grayscales look convincing, whether the TV is displaying a Blu-ray blockbuster or just a normal TV signal.

But we noticed that, particularly in dark areas of the picture, the color temperature is too high. This means nighttime scenes in black-and-white movies, such as "Casablanca" always show a blue tint. With typical, modern movies, such as "Casino Royale" or "Spider-Man 3", you don't notice this problem. Overall, the color fidelity is decent, but not perfect.

Color Temperature:

The brighter the picture's contents, the closer the Philips' color temperature comes to the specified ideal value of 6,500 Kelvin. Overall, the color temperature varies strongly, namely between 8,400 and 6,700 Kelvin. With an average value of 7,500 Kelvin, the Philips is a little on the cool side.

Color decoding causes no problems - the Philips displays colors correctly from both DVDs and Blu-rays. The color gamut largely matches the EBU color space, the relevant PAL-TV standard- although not 100 percent. The deviations are so small that even experienced observers won't notice them.

Picture Settings:
The Philips provides five picture presets, and you can also adjust the display to your taste using a large number of controls. The CINEMA preset delivers the picture that most resembles what you'd see in a movie-theater, and with the most neutral colors. VIVID, STANDARD, GAME, and ENERGY SAVING, on the other hand, produce striking, bluish, and less-authentic images than those from the CINEMA preset.

Only one memory location is available for storing your own picture settings. If, therefore, you change the contrast in VIVID mode, this overwrites the setting you'd previously stored in the PERSONAL preset. The Philips does, however, store separate settings for each video input - a sensible move.

Typically for a Philips LCD TV, the CONTRAST setting on this 21:9-format model is a little wayward. Besides the contrast, this setting also influences the strength of the backlight. From 0 to 63, it adjusts the contrast from minimum to maximum, at minimum background brightness (backlight intensity). Above this threshold, the setting automatically increases the screen's brightness by increasing the strength of the backlight. This isn't an ideal solution - the two parameters should be controlled separately, as is the case with all other TV manufacturers.

In terms of special picture controls, the Philips offers settings for improving motion clarity (200 HZ CLEAR LCD), as well as for automatically adjusting the backlight to match the picture content (DYNAMIC BACKLIGHT) or the ambient illumination (LIGHT SENSOR).

Calibration

In the menu PICTURE -> CUSTOM TINT, the user can adjust the color temperature. WHITE POINT RED, WHITE POINT GREEN, and WHITE POINT BLUE adjust the color balance of bright areas of the picture; RED BLACK LEVEL OFFSET and GREEN BLACK LEVEL OFFSET adjust the balance of dark areas.

But it's nearly impossible to improve upon the preset's color temperature adjustment - at least it wasn't worth the effort on our test model. When we tried to correct the high color temperature in dark areas of the picture, we just traded it for another - even more irritating - color error: The Philips now showed a strong red tint in certain grayscales. We then gave up trying to correct the colors.

Therefore, despite having the option to enter a user-defined color temperature, we were forced to let the blue tint remain in dark scenes.

The Philips differentiates grayscales well. With a gamma characteristic of 2.5, it's set a bit darker than many other TVs, but this setting is ideal for watching movies in a dark environment.

Thanks to a powerful backlight, the picture is clearly visible even in daylight, and you don't get the impression that its looks too gloomy. Any compression artifacts that may be present in movies - typically seen in dark areas of the picture - will be less visible with this setup than with a brighter gamma setting of 2.2, for example.

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.

Ideal Settings

Smart Setting: PERSONAL (based on CINEMA)

Contrast: 75

Brightness: 55

Sharpness: 1

Color: 50

Noise Reduction: Off

Tint: Warm

PC Mode: On

Perfect Pixel HD Menu:

Advanced Sharpness: Off

Dynamic Contrast: Off

Dynamic Backlight: BEST PICTURE

MPEG Artefact Reduction: Off

Color Enhancement: Off