You Ambilight Up My Life

September 11th, 2008 -- by default
Source: The Perfect Vision

Watching any flat-panel TV—especially those that have not had their out-of-the-box brightness tamed—in total darkness can lead to eye strain. The best way to combat this is to put a so-called “bias light” behind the set, which shifts your eyes’ dynamic range to match that of the TV. Many Philips flat-panel TVs, such as the 47PFL9732D, include a unique feature called Ambilight, which places lights behind the edges of the screen. In its default mode, Ambilight changes color and brightness according to the picture, which provides a real light show that I find very distracting. However, it can be set to a fixed color and brightness, which serves the purpose of a bias light very well.

Features

120Hz operation said to reduce motion blur.
Ambilight on sides only, not top or bottom; to provide a real bias light, set it to constant white color at 10 percent of set’s peak brightness.
Settings Assistant automatically sets the user controls after presenting a series of spilt-screen images and asking which side you prefer; settings from this process were not far off from my manual settings; very cool!
1:1 pixel-mapping mode displays every pixel in a 1080i or 1080p signal with no image-softening overscan scaling.

User Interface

Remote

Super-simple.
Not universal, but still no dedicated input-selection buttons.
Bottom half illuminated; why not the top half?

Menu System

Fills entire screen, can see two levels at once.
Picture controls are 4 levels deep, 5 to actually adjust!
During adjustment, the picture control obscures a third of the screen, making it difficult to see what you’re doing.
Menu returns after only 10 seconds of inactivity.

Recommended User Settings

Picture Menu

Contrast: 70
Brightness: 48
Color: 70
Tint: 10
Sharpness: 4
Color Temperature: Normal
Perfect Pixel HD: On
Dynamic Contrast: Off
Noise Reduction: Maximum
MPEG Artifact Reduction: Off
Color Enhancement: Off
Active Control: Off
Light Sensor: Off
Picture Format: Unscaled

Ambilight menu

Ambilight: On
Brightness: 25
Mode: Color
Color Cool: White

Performance

	Detail	Color	Blacks	Shadow Detail	Artifacts/Noise
Blu-ray (Seven Years in Tibet)	Excellent; sweat on prisoners’ faces sharp and clear.	Generally beautiful; red monks’ robes, blue sky, skin tones all natural; greens a bit exaggerated.	Letterbox bars unobtrusive.	Reasonably good in night and dim interior scenes.	No problems noted; noise reduction very effective on test discs.
DVD (Topsy-Turvy)	Very good for DVD; audience clearly rendered, brocade costumes sharp.	Gorgeous multicolored costumes, green wallpaper; skin tones natural.	No opportunity to test.	Reasonably good in carriage interior at night.	Smooth motion; no problems noted.

Note: Swapping HDMI cables while set was on caused some sort of problem with Dish Network receiver, and set would not lock onto signal; as a result, I was unable to test with HDTV and SDTV signals via HDMI.

Ambient Light Tolerance: Not great at my settings; set has no backlight control, but contrast control adjusts both black and white level like a backlight control; can be maxed out without clipping, so can be raised to compete with more room light.
Viewing Angle: Quite good for an LCD.
Audio: Very stuffy, muffled.

Conclusion

The 47PFL9732D is a study in extremes. I really hate Ambilight when it’s set to change color and brightness along with the picture, though I suppose there are many who will enjoy the light show. However, I love it when it’s set to perform as a bias light—that is, a constant neutral white at 10 percent of the TV’s peak light output. Overall, the 47PFL9732D’s picture quality is excellent, and the Settings Assistant gets the picture controls in the right ballpark, but the menu system needs a serious overhaul, and the audio performance is poor. If you can live with the downsides, you’ll be rewarded with a great picture and less eye strain than most sets tend to cause.

Philips 47PFL9732D LCD TV