At £1,800, the 40PFL9704 represents a serious outlay in these days when you can pick up 42in Panasonic plasma screens for between £500 and £600. But its design, feature count, multimedia capabilities and above all picture and sound quality make it the very definition of a premium TV.Read full review
Thanks for the review John, I'd been looking forward to this one as I'm interested in the 46in version of this set. I've seen the 9664s in the flesh and thought their pictures were the most detailed and fluid I have seen on an LCD, and had an almost 3-D quality to them. If the 9704s have this as well as plasma-like contrast, then they must be pretty spectacular.
LED matrix backlighting is definitely the gold standard for LCD contrast and worth the money. Unfortunately there are too many LED-edge-lit LCD TVs and not enough LED-matrix-lit TVs on the market.
This looks really nice, I'm loving the design direction that Philips have gone down with their TV's recently, especially the use of aluminium.
The only shame is that it's quite so expensive - for this money, I'd prefer to stump up the extra £300 and go for the 55" Toshiba. Saying that, if the size limit is about 40" and the budget is wide open, this looks really nice. If Philips can put this kind of design on their lesser TV's, they will get a lot of interest.
I have the 46" version of this TV and I can confirm it doesn't have an inbuilt Freeview HD tuner. It is a bit of a shame but understandable given this TV was released last year (I got mine end of October in the UK)and no DVB-T2 tuners were available then.
I bought this model 4 weeks ago. Linked up to a Sky HD+ box and Philips Blue Ray player, the picture quality is exceptional. Astoundingly, watching terrestrial TV (such as BBC1)via the freeview tuner gives a better picture than watching via Sky, with some programs having an almost HD quality about them (such as Dr Who). How could I have ever watched television without Ambilight? This was a revelation for me! It makes watching TV enter a whole new dimension, engulfing you into the action!I was concerned about sound quality, but found I needn't have worried, it is awesome and that's without a sound system connected up! Setting up the TV was straight forward and took just minutes to complete. Connecting up my router, PS2 and Wii was very easy and I had the whole set-up completed and networked in about thirty minutes!! The menu is laid out well, with sub menus being intuitive (Thankfully. Don't you just hate reading instruction manuals?)
This TV has touch sensitive controls on the frame! The remote is one of the best I have ever used, but cannot understand why Philips omitted to have it back lit. Sure there are some confirmation lights on some buttons, but in lowered lighting, it is so difficult to ensure you are pressing the correct buttons! Image and sound quality 9/10?....come on! The picture is outstanding, for all the stated reasons. The sound is impressive as well. I defy anyone to crank up the volume and not be impressed with it! 8/10 for value? Well true, it is an expensive piece of kit, but worth every penny! Anybody looking to buy a TV now and not giving this TV serious consideration may as well not bother.I'm sure that the nice sales person at Comet, Currys or heaven forbid PC World will be more than happy to sell you a second rate TV and get you to cough up for their extended warranty (You never know when anything will go wrong!). The one serious downfall for me, is the lack of a keyboard to navigate around the internet and NetTV. What a bad omission!
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