Thanks to the entire team at Connexion Villefranche Sur Saône, which allowed us to conduct this test in their store.

Philips which is known for its ''Sense and Simplicity'' presents a ''simple HD'' 32 inch television, the PFL7562D.  For the essentials, it’s equipped with the Pixel Plus 2 HD engine, Digital Natural Motion and a digital TV tuner.  Other functions include Active Control, smoothing curves as well as 3/2 and 2/2 motion pull down.  Specifications mention a response time of 8 ms and a dynamic contrast of 4000:1, which as usual seems a bit unrealistic.
Connectivity is found on three panels on the back composed of 2 HDMI, a YUV, 2 SCART RGB and a USB port in order to read basic JPEG, MP3 or even MPEG-2 files.

What’s the best use for this TV?

After turning this TV on everything functions well with the ''Simplicity'' menus.  However, this is only normal so let’s move on to video rendering with the digital tuner.  The result was unanimous and noise control is truly perfect with this manufacturer.  As for DVDs, they don’t offer all the details of HD sequences but we were blown away by the excellent efforts of Phillips’ engineers in this area.  Purists will still see a slight grain in backgrounds, but this is still the current best on the market.  Furthermore, curves on objects don’t suffer from the aliasing effect, which is often common with the competition. 

When we make the transition to HD the image is enriched with detail and there are sharp sequences without noise.  Connecting a PC on the HDMI, we did notice some overscan and Philips seems to have passed on a special zoom mode.  Nevertheless, in 1280 x 720 pixels the image remains readable and stable.  Finally, Philips like everyone else has set an excessive color temperature of 10500° K (and therefore resulting in more bluish colors).  You will have to go in the OSD to find a more normal (and neutral) 6500° K.

Advanced adjustments

For those not familiar with this brand, do not be surprised by the opening menu when takes up the entire screen.  You will have to go to the precise setting you want to change and hope to catch a glimpse of the edge of the image.  There is a help function (also available on the 37PF9731D) which guides beginners through a series of 5 images divided in half.  Depending on your choices, the TV will then be adjusted (see box).  Here are the settings we came up with which resulted in a slightly more balanced color temperature: Contrast 100, Brightness 50, Color 54, and the rest on default settings.  Next, go into the individual color adjustment menu and use the following values : R-WP 15, G-WP 12, B-WP 5, R-BL 0 and G-BL 0.  Your image should then have a more desirable color temperature of around 6540° K, but these settings won’t improve color fidelity as average DeltaE goes from 5 to 4.9.  This is largely inferior to the LG LB1R which proudly offers an average difference of only 2.4 between its colors and ideal ones.

In terms of reactivity, the 8 ms had good results in our PixPerAn test with the ‘’famous’’ Digital Natural Motion (DNM).  Unfortunately, it was the opposite for moving text and you will most likely want to deactivate the DNM when watching movies. It strongly increases image stability, but like the 100 Hz, it deforms movie sequences.

Next, the claimed contrast of 4000:1 is actually closer to 620:1.  It’s barely enough (and especially not even close to specifications) but is sufficient to not have a white veil-like effect covering the screen.  Black turns out to be an average 0.41 cd/m2, or in other words, not very deep and slightly washed out. (For comparison, the deepest blacks were measured on Sony Bravias at 0.3 cd/m2). Pixel Plus 2 HD takes care of intensifying sharpness in backgrounds, so leave it activated as well as the MPEG artifact reduction function (compression defects) which tends to blot out details.