Review: Philips 47PFL9664 LCD HDTV Review
Philips’ 9000 series sits at the top of a fairly large selection of LCD TV ranges. Although that top-end range does include LED backlit displays, today’s 47PFL9664 is a 47” LCD HDTV which uses standard CCFL backlighting. Philips’ AmbiLight Spectra 2 is on board and claims to provide more immersive viewing, and there are a host of image processing technologies afforded by Philips’ own “Perfect Pixel HD Engine” chip. Let’s see if the entire package can come together to provide a top quality viewing experience.
With the 47PFL9664, Philips have produced a gorgeous looking, large screen HDTV with a few unique, but inessential features. Certain aspects of its picture quality are very accurate (especially so after calibration), but the image quality, whilst generally fairly good, is never remarkable unless the content you’re watching happens to be especially suited to avoiding the limitations of the LCD panel.
Sadly, I have to end this review as I so often do with LCD televisions. Although there are many likeable attributes of the Philips 47PFL9664, the sad reality is that LCD still imposes a number of performance limitations which make its place in premium TV products questionable. There are cheaper competing LCD and Plasma displays which produce deeper blacks with less viewing angle limitation, meaning that the 47PFL9664’s price tag will be a tough pill to swallow unless you’re absolutely sold on AmbiLight or Net TV.
Read the full review at AVForums.com/Reviews
