Good riddance: Philips' remote controls no longer use a dial control for navigation. This nine-millimeter-deep handset provides comfortable operation.

Remote Control and On-Screen Menu:
The on-screen menu often covers the whole screen, making it hard to get an overview of what's going on. Nevertheless, Philips has done away with the oversensitive dial-control on the remote in favor of a more sensible navigation cross. The latter does not, however, double up as channel and volume controls. Channel lists, a back button, and Level 2.5 Teletext all contribute to the TV's excellent operation.

Two plugs connect the TV and connections box, but run via a single cable.

Connections:
A separate connections box accompanies the Philips, taking on most of the cable tangle and leaving the TV to hang neatly on the wall. The TV connects to the box via a single cable, and otherwise only requires a power lead. On the box you'll find all of the usual connectivity - three HDMI inputs, two Scarts, one YUV, one VGA, and an analog audio output.

What you won't find is an S-Video input, and neither Scart socket accepts this signal type either, meaning some camcorder users will be forced to rely on a composite input and miss out on the full quality of their videos.

Now you're talking - there's no shortage of connectivity on the so-called "TV hub".

TV Tuner:
The tuner also receives its signals via the connections box's antenna socket. This accepts analog TV and DVB-T (Freeview), as well as (unofficially) DVB-C in countries where this is supported. In the United Kingdom, for example, customers are not permitted to attach third-party equipment to the cable network, meaning they'll still need a set-top box for the 42 PES 0001 D.

Where DVB-C is available, the Philips will also receive signals in HD resolution - note, however, that the relevant tuner only becomes active if the user selects a Scandinavian country as the TV's location.

We probed the Philips' contrast using a scene from "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" (running time 1:38:46) in which small, bright spots from streetlights stand out from a pitch-black night-sky. The Philips delivered a rich picture with neutral colors, but the picture became significantly brighter when viewed side-on, and lost some differentiation.

In the sequel movie "Kill Bill: Vol. 2", we examined the black-and-white opening sequence (running time 01:10) - ideally, the grayscales should show no coloration whatsoever. In general, the Philips' color temperature is too high, at 7,400 Kelvin (on average), compared to the ideal value (6,500 Kelvin). This gives the TV's pictures a general blue-violet tint, making scenes like this one look cold and sterile.

The Philips' CIE chart shows that, while the grayscale color temperature is fairly constant, all of the points sit slightly removed from their correct position on the crosshair.

The "Movie" preset delivered the Philips' most natural picture, with well-balanced colors, although only once we made a few adjustments (see Ideal Settings). The Scart connection delivers a balanced picture with decent de-interlacing, meaning slight line-flicker only occasionally appeared during camera pans. Fine lines in test patterns showed slight, colored fringing via Scart, but not on other inputs.

Although, in test patterns, the Philips dampened horizontal details and over-sharpened vertical details, these faults were not apparent in movie content. The bright, tropical scenes in the Blu-ray "Casino Royale", for example, rendered convincing skin tones and excellent motion clarity - so long as the backlight is running at reduced brightness (Contrast setting 63-75). The black-and-white sequence at the beginning of the movie suffered a slight lilac tint (color temperature 7,500 Kelvin), but nighttime scenes project a decent feeling of depth.

Motion depiction, on the other hand, disappointed - the poor 24p playback significantly reduced the Philips' score. Compared to inputting a 60-hertz signal, 24p input signals offered no advantage - the picture still showed judder. And, while "Digital Natural Motion" removes this judder, the technology smoothes the picture so strongly that action scenes, for example, lose their cinematic look and dramatic edge. To compound matters, the Philips forbids the user to change the picture format for 1080i/p-format signals.

The Philips ships with a removable, 30-watt speaker bar. In the factory setup, this produces boxy sound that's particularly irritating when you're listening to female voices. A few tweaks of the TV's equalizer - bass down, treble up - resulted in transparent, well-balanced music and speech. The lack of a digital audio output is disappointing - the only way to relay audio from the Philips is via the stereo analog cinch connection.

Smart Setting: Movie

Contrast: 70

Brightness: 53

Color: 52

Sharpness: 1

Tint: Warm

Active Control: Off

Picture Format: Unscaled

Perfect Pixel HD: All options turned off

Noise Reduction: Off

* These settings apply to realistic playback of HDTV/Blu-ray material through the HDMI interface in a darkened environment. Manufacturing and HDMI playback device deviations could necessitate slight adjustment.