HDTV Reviews

The Philips Cineos 37PF9731D has been getting some top class reviews, and TrustedReviews have animpressive review where they say, it’s the best LCD television that I have ever laid eyes on. Now, I’m not generally in the habit of giving the ending away at the beginning of my reviews, but in the case of this television I couldn’t really help myself, it really is that good.

The 37PF9731D is the replacement for the highly acclaimed Philips 37PF9830. This new set therefore has quite a bit to live up to, but boy does it deliver! Like its predecessor, the 37PF9731D incorporates a 37in panel with a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080. This means that the 37PF9731D can be considered a “Full HD” or “True HD” screen, depending on who’s marketing blurb you want to quote. In reality, it means that you’re getting 1,080 lines displayed to provide an even more detailed image than the more common 768 line HD TVs can muster.

This new set therefore has quite a bit to live up to, but boy does it deliver! Like its predecessor, the 37PF9731D incorporates a 37in panel with a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080. This means that the 37PF9731D can be considered a “Full HD” or “True HD” screen, depending on who’s marketing blurb you want to quote. In reality, it means that you’re getting 1,080 lines displayed to provide an even more detailed image than the more common 768 line HD TVs can muster.

The 37PF9731D has a decent array of codecs built into it and I found that I could playback an array of XviD video files. Even more impressive is that you don’t have to stream your files over a network, you can plug them straight in. You see the 37PF9731D also has a pair of USB ports so you can dump your video on a USB key and play it directly. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a multi-format memory card reader, so you can whip your card straight out of your digital camera and show the pictures on a big screen.

First up we have Pixel Plus 3 HD – that latest version of Philips’ highly acclaimed image processing engine. This brings with it a host of improvements like better colour accuracy and reduced noise. In practice I found Pixel Plus 3 HD to be absolutely superb. Despite the fact that Philips is clearly concentrating on making HD sources look as good as they can be, Pixel Plus 3 HD made a huge difference to standard definition sources.

As it stands, the 37PF9731D is a simply stunning LCD TV that eclipses pretty much everything else I’ve seen to date. The image quality is superb with high definition sources, while even standard definition signals are handled with aplomb. The latter is particularly impressive considering that there is a lot of scaling going on when showing SD video on a 1080 line screen.

Throw three-sided Ambilight into the equation and you’re left with a TV that oozes quality, features, style and innovation. Put simply, if I had the cash spare right now, this is the TV I’d want on my living room wall.
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Philips 37PF9731D PDF