Philips to put a large LCD 2.35 format TV on sale

May 2009 should see the arrival of the Philips 56PFL9954H, a 56 inch LCD television in 2.35 format.

You'll no doubt have noticed that it is difficult to enjoy a film or tv programme without losing part of the display in black bands – at least if you retain the original image ratio. The reason for this is the large number of formats used to shoot these days. Among those used are:

• The 4/3: also called the 1.33, this is the old tube TV ratio that is almost square.

• The 16/9: or 1.77, is the wide screen format that you get with the recent tube TVs and which is now used for all LCD and plasma TVs. The 16/9 is the format used for HD TNT on some TNT channels and some films.

• The 2.35: or cinemascope (that is also known as 21/9), is the traditional format for cinema. Wider than the 16/9, you get black bands above and below films shown on screens using 16/9, namely pretty much all screens on sale today.

This is why Philips had the idea of developing a new TV which could handle the format of the great majority of films release for cinema: the 56PFL9954H.


It has a double advantage: on the one hand, its 56 inch panel is impressive in itself, and on the other, films in 2.35 fill the whole surface of the screen. This means you can display an image that is around 70% larger than if you had a 16/9 screen of the same height. To put things in another way, you gain 20% in terms of display in comparison to a 16/9 screen of the same diagonal.

Philips 56PFL9954H

Black bands

However, the screen does pose a few problems. In the first place, black bands will appear on 16/9 films and on the sides of programmes in 4/3. This isn’t necessarily a big problem, given that this type of TV has been designed above all for lovers of home cinema who wish to get the most out of their collection of DVDs, Blu-rays, VODs or their video club subscription card. This TV will be an interesting alternative to a video projector, meaning you don’t need total darkness to show films, or to double up your TV/Projector outlay.

Obligatory upscaling

What is more of a problem is the panel definition of 2560x1080. If you know that HD (Blu-ray and TNT HD) use 1920x1080, you’ll understand that the 56PFL9954H will need to alter the original image so as to make it compatible with panel; an option that will slightly reduce the quality of the original, in the same way as HD TVs need to with SD films (DVD, etc…). It would have been easy to get around the problem if 2560 was a multiple of 1920, but thiis is unfortunately not the case. This means that we’ll have to wait to see what this TV gives after upscaling in order to have an idea of image quality.

We are impatient then to get our hands on one, especially as it will of course include everything that Philips does best in terms of TVs (Perfect Natural Motion, comatibility, DLNA, Ambilight, 5 HDMI sockets and a brand new Clear LCD 200 Hz to reduce ghosting.

For that, we’ll have to wait for May 2009, when it will come out at a cost to the consumer of 3 990 euros.

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