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 56 PFL 9954 H 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:

The diagram shown here gives the Philips' contrast ratio in various picture modes and using various measurement methods.

A high contrast ratio is one of the most important indicators of a TV's quality. It ensures the picture has plasticity and an impression of depth. Black areas of the picture should look as black as possible, instead of showing a pale haze.

Philips only achieves average values in this discipline. Within a picture, and in the most color-neutral setting, its contrast ratio is approximately 1,200:1. This means that white areas of the picture glow around 1,200-times brighter than black areas. These values only make sense when compared with those of other TVs: The current, best plasma TVs, such as the Pioneer KRP-500, can produce contrast values of over 6,000:1 - worlds apart from this Philips.

If you study the contrast diagram above, you'll notice that the Philips' On/Off contrast in particular increases relative to its factory setting when our ideal settings are applied. We adjusted, among others, the DYNAMIC BACKLIGHT setting from OFF to BEST PICTURE.

When adjusted in this way, the Philips dims its backlight gently, but quickly, as soon as the picture is predominantly black - the system effectively counteracts the effect of the eye's adaptation. As soon as the picture contains bright elements again, the Philips increases its lamp output to the original value. This setting produces deeper blacks and higher contrast.

ANSI Contrast:

With this checker-board test pattern, we determine the so-called ANSI contrast.

This value is a measure of how strongly white areas of a picture brighten up nearby black areas. The higher the checker-board contrast, the more intense the black and white areas of a picture will look. The ANSI contrast on the Philips, at over 450:1, is at a very high level - black areas in the picture look vivid, even in bright viewing conditions.

Black Level Test:

On the 56 PFL 9954 H, black areas always show a certain violet-bluish residual illumination - this should not be the case. But, the TV is at a slight advantage in these matters: Normal, 16:9-format TVs show black bars above and below CinemaScope movies, and these bars often show an unattractive tint. On the Philips, whose 21:9-format screen already matches the aspect ratio of such movies, there are no such bars. This means nighttime scenes will look subjectively richer than on 16:9 TVs with a similar level of contrast. Nevertheless, we can't let Philips off: The gloomy indoor shots in the ninth chapter of climate-thriller "The Day After Tomorrow" look less three-dimensional than on the Pioneer plasma (KRP-500), since the Philips constantly adds a light haze to dark shades.

Viewing Angle Dependence:

Only viewers sitting directly in the middle of this TV will enjoy optimal picture quality. As you can see from the diagram above, the picture's contrast drops significantly even at small angles from center. The picture then looks flat. In addition, grayscales show a colored tint when viewed at an angle - sometimes yellowish, sometimes violet. Some LCD TVs perform better in this discipline, but the basic problem is common to all LCDs. Only plasma TVs offer a great picture from almost any viewing angle.

Video Processing of Standard Signals:

Like every modern TV, the 56 PFL 9954 H offers a range of video connections. The following applies in general: Use HDMI whenever possible - this is the only way to input video and audio into the TV in top, digital quality. But, since not all consumer-electronics devices are equipped with this interface, users often still rely on a TV's analog video connections. Many older satellite-TV receivers in Europe offer Scart-RGB as their highest-quality output.

With the test pattern above (multiburst), we check how finely a TV can differentiate details. Here, we can see that the Philips does not derive the maximum possible detail from a Scart signal. The two resolution patterns on the far right are hardly visible - this means the finest details in a picture will also blur. TVs with optimal Scart-processing, such as plasma TVs from Panasonic, offer a finer picture here.

Besides fine detail, the quality of the TV's de-interlacing is also decisive for the ultimate picture. For the analog video inputs such as composite, S-Video (Y/C), Scart-RGB, and YUV-Interlace (YUV-576i), the picture is always supplied in so-called "interlaced" frames. The TV then has to combine these correctly into full, or "progressive", pictures. This is often the source of errors: In camera pans, for example, we often see stair-step or comb-like effects on the edges of objects.

The video processor in the Philips is, by and large, excellent, but does trip up in especially tricky passages. In the eighth chapter of "Space Cowboys", for example, where we see a picket fence after a roller-coaster ride, the fine pattern of the fence flickers on the Philips.

Picture-cropping (overscan) is another important quality criterion. With this test pattern, we determine how much a TV cuts off from the edges of a video signal. This is important because the TV then enlarges the remainder of the picture to fill the screen, reducing the image's sharpness. It also makes any errors in the supplied video signal more obvious.

At around 12 percent, the Philips' overscan is high for analog picture sources (composite, S-Video, Scart-RGB, and YUV), at least in the factory preset. But we've got a trick to suggest, which works on all inputs and at all resolutions on this 21:9-format TV: Simply activate the PC MODE in the picture menu; this switches off overscan completely, and the picture impression improves. The disadvantage: You can then no longer deactivate AUTOFORMAT or the HD NATURAL MOTION image-enhancement technology.

Video Processing of HDTV Signals:

The HDTV processing is clean and precise. Test patterns with the finest, pixel-sized checkerboard patterns appear with no loss of information on the Philips in all of the input resolutions we tested (1080/24p/60i/60p), so long as you deactivate overscan or set the aspect ratio to UNSCALED.

Especially on this 21:9-format TV, good scaling of the input signal is crucial for the picture's sharpness - and particularly for HDTV. Traditional flat-panel TVs match each pixel of a Blu-ray signal one-to-one with a pixel on the screen, regardless of whether the movie is in 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 format. The Philips, however, is forced to scale the picture every time and enlarge, for example, an ultra-wide, CinemaScope movie until it fills the full height of the screen.

Let's look at an example: The visible picture in "Casino Royale" on Blu-ray comprises 1,920 pixels in the horizontal direction and 800 pixels in the vertical direction. For the Philips to fill its screen with this picture, it has to spread the 800 vertical pixels across 1,080 pixels and the 1,920 horizontal pixels across 2,560. This automatically results in a slight loss of sharpness, since the resulting magnification is not a whole-number multiplication.

With test patterns, there was a visible loss of information; movie pictures, on the other hand, looked great - the accurate scaling leads neither to visible double edges nor to a noticeable loss of sharpness.

We use this pattern to check, among others, whether a TV's color-decoding works correctly for DVDs and Blu-ray discs. The Philips shows no weaknesses whatsoever.

Movie-fans can doubly rejoice: This is the first TV from the Dutch manufacturer to display 24p Blu-ray signals properly. Other Philips models showed a slight, irregular judder during motion ("3:2-pulldown judder"), as normally results from movie signals arriving at 60 Hertz. You can see this well in the computer-animated opening titles of the Bond movie "Casino Royale". On this model, the symbols on the playing cards move through the picture with regular judder - as they would in the movie theater - so long as you've deactivated HD NATURAL MOTION. You'll find more information about the TV's motion depiction in the Picture Uniformity and Digital Picture Errors chapter.

Aspect Ratios:
The special, 21:9 screen-format on the Philips affects the choice of aspect ratios in the menu. Instead of 1.78:1, the ratio of width to height on the Philips is 2.36:1. 4:3 pictures fill 56 percent of the screen area, with thick, black bars to the left and right. With TV pictures in 16:9-format, the screen is 75-percent filled, but bars still appear. The screen is only filled completely when displaying CinemaScope movies.

As well as an automatic format-selection mode, the Philips provides a large range of optional aspect ratios, which doesn’t always make operation easy. Basically, you’ll know you’ve chosen the right format if the picture doesn’t look distorted and there are only bars at the side of the picture. You should only see black bars at the top and bottom of the picture during movies that were shot in special formats, such as the history-epic “Ben-Hur” (DVD, 2.70:1).

In general, the AUTOFORMAT setting automatically selects the correct aspect ratio after a short analysis. In the movie “The Dark Knight” on Blu-ray, which contains sequences in both 1.78:1 and 2.40:1, however, the system is not effective. We expected the 1.78:1 sections to appear correctly, with side bars, but this wasn’t the case.

The automated switching takes around 20 seconds every time, and therefore displays the 1.78:1 pictures in "botch" mode: The picture is partially cropped top and bottom, and the remaining picture content spreads non-linearly sideways to fill the screen.

In the following special cases, neither the automatic switching nor a manual setting will deliver the correct format with HDMI signals. There are no problems, however, in TV mode, for HDTV via the built-in cable receiver, or with Blu-rays.

PAL-4:3 material, up-scaled to HDMI-1080i/p:

1.33:1 movies                no suitable format, input these in 576i/p
1.66 – 1.85:1 movies -> MOVIE EXPAND 16:9
2.20 – 2.40:1 movies      no suitable format, input these in 576i/p

PAL-16:9 material, via HDMI-576i/p:

1.33 – 1.85:1 movies -> 16:9
2.20 – 2.40:1 movies      no suitable format, input these in 1080i/p

Things get complicated if the automatic format-switching doesn’t work in PC MODE — we fundamentally recommend this mode, since it eliminates unattractive overscan. In this case, you have to select the correct aspect ratio manually. While doing this, please keep our tips in mind (see below). For movies in the common format, 1.85:1, you have to live with side bars, as well as thin bars above and below the picture (optimum format: 16:9).

The CINEMA 21:9 format is particularly interesting. With this, the Philips displays extra-wide movies (2.20 – 2.40:1) over the entire screen. Using three Blu-ray movies, we checked whether the picture geometry was correct (with overscan switched off, PC MODE ON). The result was that the CINEMA 21:9 format is not 100-percent accurate:

Example 1:
“Patton” (2.20:1) -> screen is full, but with slight overscan.
Visible picture format: 2.36:1.

Example 2:
“The Day After Tomorrow” (2.35:1) -> slightly squashed in the vertical direction, thin black bars top and bottom.
Visible picture format: 2.42:1.

Example 3:
“Spider-Man 3” (2.40:1) -> slightly squashed in the vertical direction, thin bars top and bottom.
Visible picture format: 2.48:1.

And, lastly, a few tips for correct format-selection:

Tip 1:

Display 4:3-pictures correctly

For squash-free and full reproduction of 4:3 programs, you need to make one change in the menu: MENU -> PICTURE -> AUTO FORMAT MODE -> change from AUTO FILL to AUTO ZOOM.

Tip 2:

Shift the picture

For most formats, you can shift the displayed image section using the cursor buttons on the remote.

Tip 3:

Stay away from the following formats:

SUPER ZOOM, SUPER ZOOM 16:9, and CINEMA 21:9 SUBTITLE all stretch the picture out of proportion, so the image is always distorted — better simply ignore these options.

Tip 4:

The UNSCALED format

UNSCALED displays the picture one-to-one, with no scaling whatsoever. One pixel in the video signal is assigned to one pixel on the screen. This way, you see the picture in a section of the screen, with black bars around it. With PAL signals, the majority of the screen remains black; with HDTV, at most the 16:9 section of the screen is filled.

Tip 5:

Use PC MODE ON

The AUTOFORMAT setting is only available with PC MODE set to OFF. Those wanting to see a picture with the maximum detail, however, should nevertheless switch on PC MODE — the Philips then displays the picture with no edge-cropping (no overscan).

Tip 6:

Subtitles for CinemaScope movies

With 21:9 playback, the subtitles often end up outside of the visible picture area. You can solve this problem with a suitable Blu-ray player that can shift the subtitles into the visible area — so far, only the Philips BDP 9100 is capable of this.


Tuner Picture:

In the CINEMA preset, the analog tuner picture looks a bit over-sharpened and the noise-filter blurs fine details, especially during motion. But if you turn down the sharpness and turn off DYNAMIC CONTRAST and NOISE REDUCTION, you'll see a picture with natural sharpness and convincing colors.

Even with the noise-filter turned off, the 21:9 TV blurs the finest details a little. You can see this in a direct comparison with Pioneer's excellent plasma the KRP-500, whose tuner picture shows more noise but a finer picture.

For TV-viewing, there are no problems relating to the correct presentation of various picture formats. But please note our comments in the Aspect ratios section, where we explain the use of the different picture-format settings.

The digital tuner picture shows more sharpness than the analog cable picture, as you'd expect, and the fine-detail reproduction is accurate.

Picture Uniformity and Digital Picture Errors:
An ideal TV displays a constant picture across the entire screen area. Neither the color reproduction nor the brightness nor the contrast should vary. The best way to detect variations is using test patterns.

Our biggest observation on the Philips came with test patterns containing dark grayscales. The picture is brighter around the edges, where it also shows a slight discoloration. When we looked more closely, we saw a fine, striped pattern, but this is not noticeable with normal movie material.

A further challenge for LCD TVs is to display fast motion without blurring. With movies, the Philips delivers essentially competent motion-clarity, even without HD NATURAL MOTION and 200 HZ CLEAR LCD (which can only be activated in conjunction with HD NATURAL MOTION).

Fast and bright objects, such as the ice flow at the beginning of "The Day After Tomorrow" appear with a double edge, but almost no blurring - this is similar behavior to that of most plasma TVs and 100-Hz CRTs. Darker, fast-moving objects, on the other hand, blur very strongly, which is quite noticeable even in normal movie playback: The black playing-card symbols in the opening titles of "Casino Royale" show an obvious trailing effect.

For video material, we recommend using HD NATURAL MOTION and 200 HZ CLEAR LCD. The technology considerably improves the motion clarity, but the Philips cannot match the clarity of TVs from Sony's Z series, for example. Fast, bright images appear surprisingly clear, but dark structures show an obvious, blurred tail, with or without 200 HZ CLEAR LCD.

With film-based material, HD NATURAL MOTION removes the movie-theater-style stutter, but we didn't find the picture impression very attractive. With both DVD and HDTV movies, complex scenes occasionally suffer from noise around objects' edges. Because the technology introduces artificial, intermediate images, motion looks way too smooth, and the movie-look is lost - movies look more like TV.