The main interest of the Philips 46PFL9704H is behind the screen, where a grid of LEDs provide backlighting to create what should be an excellent quality image.

Philips doesn't stop there though, and has included all of the features you'd expect on a high-end TV: access to online content, a stylish finish, a multimedia player and, of course, the manufacturer's favorite, Ambilight.  This system illuminates the wall behind the TV with colours that match those currently on screen. 

Build quality and design

Philips made a lot of promises about this television, but didn't keep all of them.  That's especially true with the multimedia player, which only supported a very small number of the files we tried on it.  Apart from JPEG photos, MP3 audio and a handful of video formats, it can't access anything else.  It's a shame, especially as you can connect an external hard drive formatted as NTFS directly to the PFL9704H, but it seems a dedicated multimedia hard drive would be a better choice.

There's quite a lot of content available online using on the Net TV platform.  To get access to it, you need to connect the PFL9704H to the Internet using the Ethernet port, and you can then enjoy YouTube videos, weather forecasts and content from eBay, TomTom and plenty of other sites.  It's just unfortunate that all of these services are currently tied to individual manufacturers and that there's no common portal.  

Everything else is absolutely as expected, with no fewer than five HDMI ports and a very stylish remote, which isn't, unfortunately, backlit, which is a shame for a TV in this part of the market.

Using the PFL9704H as display for a PC works perfectly, as long as you don't forget to activate the 'PC Mode' in the menu.  If you don't, it still works, but the image quality is not quite as good.  Doing so also deactivates the HDNM filters, which make movements more fluid, and 200 Hz.  The input lag is 57 ms, which most gamers would find too much.  For everybody else, though, that's nothing to worry about.

Image Quality

Now we get to the heart of the PFL9704H: its LED backlighting and the top quality image that it promises to produce.  Of course, it can't do anything until you actually turn dynamic backlighting on--but the problem is that doing so adversely effects how even light levels are across the surface of the screen, with greys that stay too black and overexposed whites.  Here's an example from one of our testcards:

We weren't surprised to find this happening, and it's something we'd expect from other manufacturers' TVs as well: it's a drawback of LED technology in general and not a problem faced only by Philips.

That said, only the most demanding of viewers--real Home Cinema fans in search of a perfectly neutral image--will be able to notice this issue.  Most other people will be taken in by the impression of very deep blacks and images with plenty of contrast.

However, even when you use the settings which we thought most appropriate for Home Cinema (see inset), contrast didn't disappear entirely.  Far from it, in fact: we measured a contrast ratio of 2513:1, a finding which makes the PFL9704H one of the best TVs in this regard.

These high levels of contrast are also visible in practice, as we discovered when we confirmed our lab findings by watching some movies.  That also allowed us to observe that this TV has almost no ghosting.  Only a few small traces were visible, but the PFL9704H still managed to pull off a score of 4.5/5 in this section.  That is principally thanks to the 200 Hz mode.  Unfortunately, we also spotted some problems, mostly down to the over-enthusiasm of the HD Natural Motion filter.  It certainly removes any hint of jerkiness, but it also leaves a long trail behind fast-moving objects.  We would have preferred a slightly less aggressive approach, especially as we only had the HDNM filter at its lowest possible setting.

The viewing angles are quite narrow, with blacks appearing a lot lighter as you move away from the centre-line of the screen.  Finally, we noticed a few small errors as we started some of the tests: the PFL9704H seems to struggle for a second or two before finally settling on the resolution and refresh rate for a particular input.

Sound Quality

Once again, Philips has managed to produce a TV that beats most of the competition with its audio performance.  It's not rocket science: two tweeters at the front make sure you can hear all of the details, while the two speakers at the produce mid-range and bass sounds, helped by two vents that reinforce the sub-woofer effect.  It's nothing like the sound produced by real Home Cinema speakers, but it's a lot better than the majority of Philips' competitors.

Energy Consumption

Activating the dynamic backlighting does allow you to reduce the amount of power required by the PFL9704H--but, as we mentioned above, it also reduces the quality of the images you're viewing.

When you don't include it, this TV requires 170 W while switched on, which is about average for current LCD TVs, whether backlit by LEDs or otherwise.  Moving to standby almost completely eliminates the energy consumption, which falls to below 0.1 W.