Leader of the Pack in Image compared to Price
Written: Nov 08 '02 (Updated Nov 20 '02)
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Pros: Vivid picture, Great value compared to price
Cons: Viewing at angles if muted, Sometimes sound comes in loud on comercials
The Bottom Line: I compared many televisions in this price range and this one offers the best picture at a very reasonable price.
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| brightfalconbp's Full Review: Philips 55PP9701 55 in. TV |
The world just keeps getting more complicated. There is more of everything, traffic, lines, and of course products. And each day there are new buzz words. Words like Interpolation, Comb filters etc. Those words are linked to the High definition television industry. I think one of the most confusing products in recent years is High definition Televisions… Or HDTV's for short.
In this review I will go over some of the things I have learned in my search for a good High density Television at a reasonable cost.
I will try to go over what some of the features mean in layman's terms as this review progresses. There are lots of choices and few that seem to know the good points of one technology compared to another.
When I first started comparing HDTV's I was amazed at the variety of formats available and also features.
Rear Projection: These look as if they are regular televisions in the front but weigh a lot less. And also are best if watched in the front. Side viewing tends to be muted.
LCD Screens: This is a newcomer to the industry. The big advantage is clarity is similar to Rear Projection Televisions. They have a very small footprint that makes them appear to be as a picture on the wall and not a television. But one will pay for that privilege. They are many times 8 times more expensive than Rear Projection televisions.
Plasma Technology: These do not have the narrow footprint of LCD televisions but the clarity is
approximately 40% clearer than Rear Projection televisions.
For me the winner is in the battle of Price compared to performance, Rear Projection Televisions. I will go into details later on features. But overall they have very clear pictures compared to price. I would not recommend buying a standard projection television. They have lines about every .25 inches and are not even half as clear as projection televisions. One of the thrills of owning a Rear projection HDTV is seeing a dvd that you have seen many times before and now objects in the background that were muddled before are strikingly clear. It is dazzling to say the least and very realistic.
Once I decided on a technology I started the process of comparing. I compared rear projection TV's from Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Toshiba and Philips, and Hitachi.
Now you can talk all day about features and buzz words. But when it comes down to what matters I feel that picture quality and the overall color is what I want. And of course I want it for the best price I can get it for.
I work with color so I can see color shifts that some may find imperceptible. The Toshibas I looked at had a slight magenta cast on the flesh tones.
All in all if price was of no concern the Hitachi HDTVs looked magnificent. Flesh tones looked real and the overall clarity was impressive. A salesman told me that Hitachi was the original developer of the HDTV technology so it makes sense that they would be. But they are also the most expensive of that list I gave. So that ruled out Hitachi for me. I only budgeted $1,500 dollars and I wanted to get as much TV as I could for that price.
From my research I discovered that Philips actually had the inside elements of Hitachi in some of their HDTVs. And Philips is much less expensive than Hitachi. This is called an OEM arrangement in retail but what it means is the expensive on is sold under a less expensive name. This to a consumer means big savings if they do enough research to find these hidden deals.
I was walking in a Circuit City and came across a Philips 55" High density television. The output looked grainy. But from quizzing the salesman I discovered that it had the exact same circuitry as the Hitachi in the store. I was surprised when I started comparing the two that the menus and features were even the same for the two competing brands.
I was able to find a display model Philips model 55PP9401 (55" rear projection HDTV) for $1,500 and it even included a DVD player for free with the purchase. I paid $60 more and upgraded to a Hitachi DVD player to go with it. The main reason I did it is it makes sense if your spending the extra money for a HDTV to have a DVD player that is comparable of playing movies in a format that optimizes the TV's abilities. What I am talking about specifically is to be able to see the clearest picture its necessary to go out from the DVD player using a special cable that is has separate connectors for red, green and blue signals, sound and the gray portions of the image that make up shadow details and provide for smooth shading in facial tones. My existing DVD player did not have the nicer output capability. Standard Cable connectors if used with an HDTV from a DVD player will produce a signal that is approximately 35% less quality. Another cable called S-Video will produce a quality that is 13% less. So the RGB cables make sense for any HDTV you purchase. Also spend the extra money to get gold connectors. The cleaner the connections the better the overall quality.
Features and simplified explanations of what they are:
HDTV: Very clear picture, so much so you think they are looking in a glass in front of the box your looking into from your living room.
Standard Rear projection: Old technology, images are grainy and when you go up close you can see the projection lines. Worse you will wish later you had gotten an HDTV. Sometimes they are even the same price as was the case in my shopping.
Rear Projection: The image is projected on the screen. But to the average person it looks like any other TV.
PIP: This means you can watch one program and cruse others. Actually Philips has several ways of doing this. You can even decide where you want the second smaller screen to be placed. Handy if your watching a cooking show and you don't want to cover up the mixing. It's even possible to switch back and forth from the channel your surfing to the one your watching. Its enough to turn even the quietest housewife into a TV addict.
First-Surface Mirror: This is a mirror inside the TV that makes it so the TV can be narrower. You don't have to worrie about it. Its in there and it makes it so it can work without taking up your whole living room in depth space.
3D Y/C Comb Filter: The comb filter is one of Hitachi's technologies. Think of it as a very advanced color contrast, hue, and overall vividness control. And best of all its built in. It makes the blacks look darker and the flesh tones look smoother. With it you will have crisp color details. It makes all the colors more vivid. More important it makes it so when you watch your favorite cooking channel or sports event you will get hungry because the food looks real. Water splashing looks like you may need to invest in a flood gate or be bombarded with water. It is that good.
Auto IntelliSense Focus: Some HDTV's I looked at like Panasonic require the user to manually align each Red, Green and Blue signal. It can be a bit tricky. Not doing it correctly will lead to blurred images. Intellisense is a button that does all that automatically. It flashes intellisense on the screen and you see the three colors line up and your done. No manual aligns necessary.
Protective filter: This is just a clear plastic cover that protects the TV's so they are not easily scratched.
Menu driven on screen color controls: This is one of the things that I really like of this TV. Its very easy to jump from adjusting the color to tweaking the sound. There are many default color modes that are in layman terms that are easy to understand. Terminology is used such as cooler flesh tones, or warmer flesh tones. Or Movie mode that puts all things, color, contrast and picture so it as close as possible resembles a movie theater. And I can tell you from owning it, it does work. I am not going over every features but its very simple to change sound settings, or adjust the picture using the menu driven screen.
AutoPicture™ This is basically a default setting that makes it so the picture on the television looks good out of the box. So you don't have to adjust the contrast. You can start enjoying it from day one. But if you want to tweak it, there are plenty of controls for that to.
Interpolation: This is a technology that takes an existing television picture and makes it so that it looks good on the big television. If this was not used then the picture would have too much contrast and look grainy. So think of this as the magic clear picture feature.
Black Stretch: This is a technology that makes it so that the blacks are darker and the overall details are enhanced. It is done by enhancing the enlargement of the gray information in the image and focuses on that alone making the overall picture much more dynamic.
Blue Stretch: This is not what it appears. What it is is a method of adding blue to white making it appear psychologically whiter than it really is. When you combine this with projected lights of searchlights it is as brilliant as a movie theater. Having dazzling whites is as important as having dark blacks.
Green Stretch : Through adjusting the green balance overall it is possible to control the flesh tones to make them very realistic. Also this makes it possible to enhance the flesh tones and not effect the other colors that are not flesh tones. This is done automatically using this technology.
Video DNR (Dynamic Noise Reduction: Sometimes having too much detail if a signal is weak is a bad thing. It can actually hurt the overall image quality. So DNR is a smart technology that looks for over graininess and if it finds that its there corrects it out of the picture making poor reception images better than they would be without this feature.
HD Component Format Conversion 1080i/480p Scan with Line Doubling: There has been a lot of debate on HDTV boxes that are soposed to broadcast in true HDTV format which is higher quality. I will say this after using this TV for 5 months. The component conversion in this TV automatically increases all that you need for a dazzling picture. So why pay more for something that does more if it already appears to be doing it now. Well I don't know about you but I think I would rather save the extra $800 and go to London in the Winter which is $330 round trip.
Iluminated remote: This is a nice feature that makes it so you can change channels easier in the night. But what I don't like of this and other remotes is the text on the remote is too small. As we get older our ability to focus diminishes. It would be better If the buttons were larger and easier to read.
Action Freeze: This makes it so you can take a screen capture of the TV. Or three in a row. This is interesting but I find I don't really use it. I used it one time when watching a cooking show to get the recipe that was quickly displayed on the screen.
Front A/V jacks and connectiors: For any game boxes this makes for a fast hookup.
Warrenty protections: I would say one thing to the idea of buying one of these, don't. They would not be trying to sell them to you if they had a high repair rate. They are extra incentives above the cost for the TV. You may ask what happens if something goes wrong? If something does go wrong this TV has a one year parts and labor warranty. I did have a small blue line that appeared after a month. I called up Phillips and they sent a local repair representative that was able to fix it. So in essence I got the same service as someone that paid for a warrenty. Can you say, Dream vacation. Save your money for the things you really deserve, a nice vacation.
Automute: Actually this TV has two modes of mute. One 30 percent lower so you can still hear it but talk on the phone and hear to. The other is a complete mute. One thing that I like is AutoMute automatically activates closed captioning when the Mute button is pressed.
Captions: There are many captions options on this TV I find when I am on the phone it is easier to concentrate on the caller with captions than with sound on.
AutoLock: I use this as blackmail for my teenager. If he does not keep his grades up with this feature I can put a password on his favorite channels. This makes it so its easy to block offensive channels from children. This is a very useful feature, especially if you're a single parent with teenagers.
OnScreen Clock with Sleep Timer: This is there but I cant see falling asleep in front of a big TV like this. For one thing it eats electricity. .
Advanced sound technology, SRS 3D Surround Sound Sound: I have a home theater system. But I rarely use it with this TV as the included speakers do a very good job. So if you on a limited budget the surround sound is very dynamic and crisp… it includes a 24-watt dbx Hi-Fi Stereo Sound System, 12 watts RMS per channel. That does not sound like much but it does okay in real application.
I am very happy with my HDTV. I hope that my simple explanation of the features it has and many like it make it easier in your search for an HDTV. Remember buy as much TV as you can in a given budget.
One last bit of advice: When you go to look at HDTV's bring a DVD player with you. The sales people tend to put the display models on a coaxial cable so the reception looks grainy when you compare it to the more expensive models that are running of DVD players. So if your comparing two TV's run a DVD your familiar with through both of them and compare the quality.
I have had some friends I know looking for HDTV's ask me about the projection TV's in wide format. These TV's are set up to watch wide format DVD's or other shows broadcast in wide format.
These TV's have a disadvantage that if one wants to watch a regular TV program the program is either distorted to fit the TV or displayed in a smaller size. So you only get to see a smaller program for regular TV programs. Since most of us watch alot of regular TV and a few movies it makes sense to get a large HDTV and watch those movies in Wide format mode that puts black boxes on the top and bottom of the screen. Here is an example. Lets say were comparing viewing a regular TV program on a Panasonic 44" Wide HDTV with the Philips 55" TV. On the Panasonic the image is square so to display it correctly black bars are displayed on each side. So the actual image area you can see is say 30". On the Philips you get to see the full width of 55" X say 40" deep. So your getting alot more viewing area. Please let me know if you found this review helpful. Best regards to you!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1500
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Epinions.com ID:
brightfalconbp
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Location: San Diego, CA USA
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
I like Art, music, writing. I love all kinds of movies.
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