Philips 42PFL6805H Econova

The PFL6805H Econova is Philips' catchy name for this new eco-friendly TV that's backlit using LEDs around the edge of the display.

It has a whole range of other features, including Pixel Precise HD, a 100 Hz mode and HD Natural Motion, but without an Ethernet port, there's no support for either DLNA home networks or access to NET TV services.

A green TV

To minimise its impact on the environment, Philips has used up 60% recycled aluminium in this TV, which is mostly found in the stand and the frame.  The remote control includes a photovoltaic cell on the back, so you don't need to buy new batteries.

The manufacturer has also made sure you can recycle all of the packaging, and all of the polystyrene padding and plastic bags have been replaced by paper and card, meaning you can recycle the lot.

Energy Consumption

As we had feared, the energy-saving features have a negative impact on the quality of the display: all this TV does to reduce its consumption is adjust the backlighting, much like many others.  We decided to turn that off and adjust the brightness ourselves so that a white test card was at 200 cd/m².


Even with the energy-saving features turned off, though, the Econova doesn't need much power.  On standby, it consumes the bare minimum of 0.1 W, the equivalent of only a few extra pennies on your electricity bill if you leave it plugged in all year.  When you switch it on, that climbs to 59 W, which is 41% lower than an equivalent model-impressive!

Build Quality and Design

Its green features aren't the only unusual thing about the Econova: it has a very innovative design too.  Instead of using the traditional glossy black plastic, Panasonic has decided to make the stand entirely from aluminium.  To round things off, the use of Edge LED backlighting means that the TV is no thicker than 4.3 cm.  When you get up close, it's easy to see that the finish is of excellent quality.

The connectivity options are all rather traditional, apart from the coaxial digital audio output, something that most manufacturers provide as an optical audio out.

On one side, you'll find a USB port where you can plug in an external storage device formatted using either FAT32 or NTFS and play your multimedia content directly.  Unfortunately, the media player only just about scrapes our average score thanks to the very short list of formats it can support: JPEG photos, MP3 music, and DivX5 and 6 video in SD and HD.  DivX 6 HD video worked fine up to 38 Mbps, but once we encoded it at a bitrate of 42 Mbps or more, playback became visibly jerky. The remote is stylish and its rounded shape makes it easy to hold, but Panasonic has taken minimalism too far, so there aren't enough buttons to allow for handy shortcuts.  To set things up, you have to go through the Welcome menu that you can see here:


In the same vein, Panasonic has tried to make things easy for new users by including an assistant designed to help you configure the TV.  Unfortunately, though, it just makes the menus seem even more complicated.


Connecting it to a PC went without a hitch, and the input lag is just the same as with a CRT monitor, meaning gamers won't be adveresly affected by using this TV.  Nobody else need worry about this factor.

Image Quality: Factory Settings

With its factory settings, the Econova has been finely tuned to produce a striking picture, something that most manufacturers are guilty of.  It doesn't reproduce colours accurately (deltaE: 7.9), has a strong blue tinge (colour temperature: 8826 K) and the gamma curve is wrong.  Fortunately, a quick visit to the image settings menu can improve things considerably.


Image Quality: Cinema Mode

In Cinema mode, all of the problems we mentioned in Standard mode disappear.  On the other hand, the picture is still very bright, and given you can't control the backlighting, we suggest you reduce the contrast instead.  When that's set to 61, our equipment revealed a brightness of 200 cd/m², which is perfect for everyday use.

The gamma is a little too low by default, so we'd set to it 3 or 4 to make for a more even distribution of colours.


Set up this way, the Econova has a perfectly workable contrast ratio of 1141:1, even if others TVs are actually much better.


Colours now look more natural, and our equipment measured a deltaE score of 2.6, which is an excellent result.  Remember that the deltaE is a calculation of the discrepancy between the colours requested by a graphics source and those actually shown on screen.  When this figure falls below 3.0, we usually consider any remaining problems are invisible to the naked eye.

The sharpness is taken a little too far for our taste with HD films, so we turned it down to 1.  Anybody who likes a particularly sharp look can always raise it to 2.  That could be especially likely given that upscaling SD sources is a little blurry and could do with a little extra kick.  We also turned off all of the filters in the Pixel Precise HD menu.  It's up to you to decide whether or not you want to turn on 100 Hz or HD Natural Motion: this can lead to artefacts around fast-moving objects and adds a 'camcorder' look to films, as a downside to the incredibly smooth movements it produces.

Audio Quality

You can hear dialogue perfectly on the Econova's speakers, but if you really want to enjoy your favourite film, we suggest you invest in a Home Cinema kit or a sound bar.