Philips Ambilight 40PFL9704H/12 (40PFL9704/12) 40inch LCD Television with LED Backlight, 200 Hz, Full HD 1080P, Net TV and Spectra 2 Ambilight

Just to run through some of that spec at the moment - they are all full HD, so they will cope with 720p, 1080i and 1080p resolution.  They are also 200Hz scanning.  Now, if you take a standard TV it scans at 50Hz, which means there are fifty pictures per second making up your image.  These sets have 200Hz - so 200 pictures per second.  What that does is control any fast movement extremely well so you get no delay or drag in the image.  So, full HD and 200Hz scanning.

The other important feature or fact to look at on a TV is the contrast ratio.  This particular range has got one of the highest contrast ratios you will get on any TV - you are looking at 5 million : 1 contrast, an extremely high contrast.  That determines how good that black level is.  The inkier the black level, the better depth of field you get in the picture, the more natural colour palette you achieve, and the more detail you get in the darker areas as well.

The reason this TV has such a good contrast ratio is because it is an LED TV.  It is LED back-lit.  You get some LED TVs which are edge-lit, where you just get the LEDs running round the edge of the screen.  But this is full LED - you have got LED lights behind the entire panel.  What that does is basically enable you to have localised dimming.  So if you get a dark area in any particular area in the centre of the screen, the LEDs can switch off in that particular area, giving you localised dimming, giving you a very good black level in just that particular area - rather than the LED switching off as an overall sort of black level for that area of the screen.  So it is full LED back-lit.

You have also got a set here which contains Philips’ latest Ambilight Spectra 3 technology.  Now, the ambilight system is unique to Philips.  With Philips ambilight system - and this is the Spectra 3 technology; there is also the Spectra 2 - Spectra 2 technology basically has the ambilights at either side of the screen; you have it at the right- and the left-hand side of the screen.  On the Spectra 3 technology you have also got the ambilights at the top of the screen as well.

What ambilight does is portray the colours that are on the screen behind the panel itself.  So if you were watching a movie, if you have got reds, or blues, or greens, or yellows displayed in a certain area of the screen, that colour is projected behind the TV as well.  What that does is first of all immerse you more in the movie that you are watching; and it also gives you the impression as if you have got a bigger screen than you actually have.  But it is a fantastic system that is pretty unique to Philips. It is called the Ambilight System, which is the Spectra 3 technology - and it works absolutely superbly well. 

So, we have had a brief look there at the Philips Ambilight Spectra 3 technology.  What we will do now is go through some of the features on the TV.  The remote control has a Home button, which is your Menu button.  I will give you a closer look at that there; that is the button there that gets you into your Menu system.  The remote control is finished in a sort of brushed aluminium finish - a beautiful look to the remote.  The TV is finished in the same finish as well, which is this sort of brushed aluminium finish to the TV. 

So if we press the Home button on the remote control it will put us into the Menu system on the TV.  Now, on here we have got first of all Watch TV which just puts us into the TV programmes.  Dropping down from there you have also got Net TV.  You can wire this up on the back of the TV - which we will look at in just a moment - you have got an Ethernet port which you can connect up to your PC at home and you can get onto things like YouTube; you can get onto video clips through the website, and various other things as well.  So you have got some net TV functions through this set.

If we go down to Setup, which is here - and all I am doing is going up, down, right and left on the remote.  If I press OK in the centre of the remote now, it will put us into the Setup Menu.  In the Setup Menu you have got a very good setup system on the Philips TV for setting up the picture quality. 

If we go into Settings Assist and just press OK - when you first get the TV, if you want to set it up for contrast, sharpness, colour, brightness, then rather than going through all the individual settings, if you go into this system here, we just press Start and it will split the screen in two and it will ask us which of these do we prefer.  So if you prefer the right-hand side of the screen, just click over to the right.  Press okay.  It will put a little tick on there.  And it will take you through various different picture options where it will ask you just to click on the image that you prefer.  And you just go through those different options on the screen, clicking each one; and you just look at the image and decide which you consider is sharper, more detail, has better colour resolution - and just select it for how you want the picture to appear.  It then asks you to store the image.  Okay, it now indicates that it is done - all the settings that you have requested.  And that’s it.  The TV is set up for the correct colour, contrast, brightness, sharpness - as to how you want that image to look.

However, if you want to adjust it manually, you can just click over into any of those settings - I will just come back out of that just for a moment.  And you have got a complete manual override - so you can adjust the contrast, brightness and colour individually.  There is your contrast.  We can click over into the contrast and we can bring that down.  And it is the same for all the other settings on there - for the brightness, and the colour, and the sharpness.  You can drop down into any of those.  Once you are onto that setting, the display is here - just click over to that section and you can raise the sharpness, or lower that; you can set up those individual settings to however you want it.  So you have got full manual override.  But you have got a very good Settings Assist menu which will set up everything for you, just taking you through those different picture options.

If we come out of there and just drop down onto the Sound menu, the output for this TV is 2 x 15 watts, which is quite high for a TV. You have got, yet again, base and treble.  And if you want to adjust the base or the treble, you just click on that particular setting and then you have got the adjustment here where then you can just raise the base or lower the base to whatever level you want. 

As we come down that menu, you have also got things like Surround Sound which you can have on or off, which will attempt to throw the sound out and around you as well. 

So, let’s have a look at the sockets on the rear of the TV now.  We have, starting at the top, a VGA input.  So if you want to connect your laptop or PC into it, you can do so through that socket. You have also got, coming down from there, Component In, which is the red/green/blue connection - a lot of DVDs and games consoles use Component - we have got Component on there.  The red and white socket underneath is the Audio In - so that is the audio feed for the Component input.

You have also got, just to the left of that, the red and white Audio Out - so if you want to take the sound externally from this TV through an amplifier you can do so using the analogue red and white sockets there for the sound output.  But next to it you have got a digital output which is a coaxial output.  So this socket here, you can take a digital coaxial cable to an external AV amplifier and you can have the sound fed digitally from the TV through an AV amp.

At the side of those sockets, you have also got two scart sockets.  Coming down from there you have got your aerial coaxial socket.  Coming further down the set you have got Audio In.  The Audio In is to run in conjunction maybe with sort of a DVI to HDMI input - we have got an audio input on here as well.  You have got four HDMI sockets just underneath the TV here.  You have also got, just going up from there, an Ethernet connection, so you can connect this up to your network system at home; as I said, you can get onto YouTube and various other facilities through the TV.

On the side of the set you have got another HDMI - so you have got five HDMIs in total on this TV; four on the rear and one on the side, making five.  Up from there you have got a USB connection, S-video connection, composite video which is the yellow, white and red socket here - yet again, games consoles such as Wii games consoles can use that connection.  And then you have also got a headphone socket as well.

So you have got a TV here which has full HD, 200Hz scanning, 5 million : 1 contrast; full LED back-lit.  You have got some web functions through the TV as well.  You have got a great sound system on there.  And it has also got the Philips Ambilight Spectra 3 technology.  It is hard to find fault in this set in any particular area.

What I would say is that this TV is on display in our Bolton or Leeds stores - pop into any of those stores if you want a full demonstration of it.  Or give me a call - my name is Chris; you can always see me or get hold of me at the Bolton store on 01204 861 861. 

You will find on our website there are a lot of other video clips on various things from TVs, to speakers, to amplifiers - please go through to our website if you want to see any other video clips - it is www.soundandvision.co.uk. 

Or if you are watching this on some video link somewhere, there will be a link at the side of the screen that you can just click through to, and that will also take you through to our website.  So please go through to our website or give me a call at the shop. 

Thank you.