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You could also use the Ethernet port with a wireless bridge, though the bandwidth limitations of the current Wi-Fi formats means you’ll probably suffer some break up with video sources.

The USB ports, meanwhile, allow you to stream off the contents of a USB storage device, while the card reader slot lets you play back JPEG images from a digital camera card. In short, Philips has pretty much thought of everything.

The same philosophy carries through to the TV’s enormous features list. We’ve already covered Ambilight and a digital tuner, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg.
It’s particularly gratifying to find that Philips has retained the services of its new ClearLCD technology for this smaller 9731D model. Designed to tackle those twin LCD ‘troubles’ of motion blur and black levels, ClearLCD worked well on the 37PF9731D so we have no reason to suspect it won’t here.

As briefly as possible, Clear LCD works by boosting the power to the LCD array so the crystals ‘cycle’ through faster, and using an array of hot cathode fluorescent lamps (HCFLs) for its backlight that can be driven in a way that mimics the scanning approach of CRT TVs. You thus don’t have to have the usual LCD situation where all the pixels are lit to the same level at the same time and for the same duration.

The black level benefit comes from the fact that the HCFL backlight system can reduce its brightness by up to 30 per cent more than standard backlights.

The 32PF9731D’s other key picture booster is Pixel Plus 3 HD image processing, which delivers all the sharpness, detail, and colour benefits of previous versions of the technology but throws in some superb extra noise reduction circuitry.

We could waffle on for hours more about other features the 32PF9731D sports, but for space reasons we’ve harshly got to wrap up this section with something the TV doesn’t have that the 37in version does; namely a full HD, 1,920 x 1,080 native resolution.

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