Philips PF9996 review: Philips PF9996

Philips 32PF9996
Philips helped to start the flat-panel TV craze years ago with its plasma commercials, and the company has always tried to position its sets as leaders in design. The 32PF9996, a 32-inch LCD, is no exception. While it is a matter of taste, it's arguably as stylish as models such as the Samsung LT-P326W, and its built-in Ambilight backlighting will definitely turn heads when you turn it on. In terms of performance, this Philips's black level and color temperature are clearly better than those of many panels we've tested. However, the real question is whether you're willing to fork over the extra dough for this Philips over a budget model such as Syntax's Olevia LT32HV.

It's official: clear Plexiglas is the new silver. In this case, it forms the base of the stand and surrounds the 32PF9996's frame. Moving in from the Plexiglas border, you'll find the artfully concealed speakers, then a silver plastic frame, then a black bezel, then the screen. Thanks to the panel's lack of 720p scaling, you get another black box around the picture when you watch 720p material (more about this later). Buttons for power, volume, and channel control; menu access; and input selection are on top of the panel.

Like its big brother, the 42PF9996, this 32-inch LCD boasts a pair of fluorescent lights on its backside. You can adjust the intensity and color of the light, choose to have the color reflect the onscreen content, or select from a few preset colors, including intense blue and red. You can even turn on the backlight while the TV itself is turned off. If you care about seeing accurate color, however, you'll probably want to leave the backlight off for serious viewing. Even on the Soft White setting, the light appeared too orange, which adversely affected how we perceived onscreen colors.

The pretty silver remote isn't backlit and doesn't have direct input access. Instead, switching inputs requires one of three actions: holding down the AV+ button for a couple of seconds, then pressing repeatedly to scroll through the inputs; using the channel rocker switch to select channels lower than 1; or pressing the Info button, then navigating through that menu. There's no reason changing sources should be this complicated.

The 32PF9996's native resolution of 1,366x768 is enough to display full 720p HDTV. Unlike most panels, this Philips displays 720p sources without any scaling at all. The upside is that it's a rock-solid, full-resolution picture. The downside is that black bars surround all sides of the picture. We appreciated the lack of scaling artifacts and the sharper picture, but most folks won't want to look at those bars. All other incoming signals are scaled to match the available pixels. The built-in NTSC tuner serves up regular TV, but if you want HDTV, you'll have to add an external ATSC tuner or an HD satellite or cable box.

Single tuner picture-in-picture and independent input memories top the list of convenience features. Philips also includes a slew of automatic picture adjustments. It's best to turn off Color Enhancement, DNR (which stands for Dynamic Noise Reduction), and Dynamic Contrast for high-quality sources, as they'll only cause garish colors, softness, and fluctuations in black and white levels, respectively. We preferred to set the Digital Processing option to Standard instead of Pixel Plus 2.

The numerous aspect-ratio selections include Automatic, which fills the screen with all sources except 720p; Super Zoom, which stretches the sides of 4:3 sources to fill the screen; 4:3, which displays 4:3 sources with black bars to either side; Movie Expand 14:9, which zooms 14:9 letterboxed content to fit screen height; Movie Expand 16:9, which zooms letterboxed content to fill the screen; 16:9 Subtitle, which shifts Movie Expand 16:9 upward so that subtitles are visible; and Wide-screen, which displays 16:9 sources properly. Unfortunately, you can't change aspects with HDTV sources, and only two options (4:3 and Wide-screen) are available for 480p sources--a real bummer if you want to fill the screen with a nonanamorphic letterboxed DVD.

You get a decent array of rear-panel inputs, including two high-bandwidth component, two S-Video, two composite, one HDMI, one coaxial, four RCA stereo audio, and one center channel, so you can use the TV's speakers as a dedicated center-channel speaker. A set of side-panel A/V inputs is also available for camcorder hookups. Outputs include one composite video, one stereo RCA audio pair, and one subwoofer out on the rear, plus a headphone minijack output on the side.

Out of the box in the warm setting, the Philips's color temperature measured better than we've seen on many LCDs (see the geek box). Though blue on the darker end of the grayscale, it came extremely close to the 6,500K standard at the high end. We were unable, at press time, to conduct a proper grayscale calibration, although we did play with the user controls. After our adjustments, the darker end was a little better, but still blue, and the high end measured a perfect 6,500K. The color decoder showed noticeable red push. Compared to many LCDs, in which reds appear orange, the primary colors looked accurate.

The Philips lacks 2:3 pull-down detection, so a progressive-scan DVD player is a must for this set. Setting our player to nonprogressive mode, we saw jagged lines and unnecessary motion artifacts during such slow pans as the opening sequence of Star Trek: Insurrection. "Chapter Four: The Breach of Deeping Wall," from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, revealed the 32PF9996's decent black-level performance. The panel can't produce a real black, but it does a good job of preserving detail in darker scenes. For example, you can clearly see the Uruk Hai warrior's face as he places a bomb at the gate of Deeping Wall. Details in the bricks of the gateway don't plunge into swaths of darkness as they do on lesser LCD panels.

As mentioned earlier, this panel doesn't scale 720p HDTV sources at all, so they won't fill the screen. On the other hand, they will be displayed at full resolution with every detail visible. In addition, compared to Samsung's LT-P326W, this Philips displayed HDNet's Art Mann Presents: Arizona in 720p, with almost no noise. Despite the host's banal chicanery, we were mesmerized by the wonderfully detailed footage of drunk college students partying in Tempe. Switching our HDTV receiver to 1080i mode, we noticed scaling artifacts, similar to those in the Samsung, entering the picture.

The 32PF9996's performance is clearly a step above this year's crop of budget LCDs. Even the Olevia LT32HV, which bested all the other budget panels we tested so far, has a slightly worse black level and significantly worse color temperature than this Philips. The difference in price is nothing to take lightly, but neither is the difference in quality. Sharp's LC32GD4U offers slightly better picture quality and superior features, but it does cost a couple hundred more.

Editor's note: We have changed the rating in this review to reflect recent changes in our rating scale. Click here to find out more.