Philips 58PFL9956

Philips is currently the only TV manufacturer to offer a choice between two displays with a 21:9 aspect ratio.  We've been testing the Platinum version, which is 58'' from corner to corner with no other sizes available.  Philips is no newcomer to the field, and is now on its third generation of televisions with the 21:9, or 2.35, aspect ratio.   That's the most commonly used format for shooting films, which is why you see black bands above and below the screen when you watch films on an ordinary 16:9 (1.78) TV.  In theory, that should make the PFL9956H perfect for watching films.

Design Quality and Build

Philips has plumped for Full LED backlighting, with a thousand individual LEDs spread out across the entire surface of the display rather than around the outside.  This should help could back on clouding, improve contrast and help keep backlighting levels consistent across the whole surface of the screen.  The downside is a thicker frame: this one measures 6.4 cm from front to back compared to an average of around three centimetres on TVs with Edge LED backlighting.

Four HDMI ports are split between the back and sides of the TV, which is one down from the last model, the PFL9954H.  There are also two USB ports, an Ethernet port and built-in WiFi.  The latter offer support for DLNA networks as well as for Philips' Net TV service and other online content.

We also give the built-in media player a go, and were pleased by the results, as we are on Philips' 16:9 TVs.  USB storage devices formatted using NTFS were supported, and the majority of video formats we tried worked without any problems.  However, only newer versions of MKV files were readable; older files didn't work.  Individual subtitle tracks and chapters weren't supported either.

The remote control looks great, but doesn't, unfortunately, have backlit buttons.




As you'd expect, Philips has included its Ambilight technology—the 'Spectra 3' version in this case.  Three rows of LEDs along each side of the TV and at the top project coloured lighting that matches what's on screen on to the wall behind.  If you're really scared of the dark, then it can be fun, and it also helps make black levels look darker.

Ghosting and Input Lag

Responsiveness
Light Background	Dark Background	Average

Philips has sub-contracted the job of making the display inside this TV to Sharp. That was a safe bet, at least in terms of responsiveness.  With a ghosting time of just 8 ms, it's one of the fastest displays we've seen of late and up there with some of the best plasmas.

The input lag is also excellent, and the 33 ms, or two frames of delay, that it has compared to a traditional CRT monitor are absolutely negligible.  That excellent performance is only possible without the Ambilight system though: turning it on doubles the input lag to 66 ms because of the extra time the TV needs to process the current frame and adapt the coloured lighting to match.

Image Quality

Given that this TV is aimed squarely at Home Cinema fans, you might have expected to find Cinema mode as the default option.  Well, you'd be wrong!  Like with Philips' other TVs, the PFL9956H is in Standard mode when you get it out of the box.  We can only suggest you change it as quickly as possible so you don't end up having to endure washed-out colours, over-exposed whites and greys that are indistinguishable from black.

Once in Cinema mode, the so-called 'image improvement' filters are deactivated and the picture is much more natural.  Weirdly, the dynamic backlighting, which normally works a treat with Full LED systems, also disappears.

We were puzzled but soon worked out why: as well as pushing the average gamma up to 2.7, leaving greyscale tones looking too dark, it leaves the colours looking unnatural too, pushing the deltaE as high as 5.7.  We can see why Philips left it turned off!


After switching to Cinema mode, you don't need to make any further adjustments: the picture is perfectly even, coming out flawlessly on our tests for both gamma and colour temperature.  Colours are reproduced accurately too, with the average deltaE never ending up beyond 1.9.  

Contrast ratio in Cinema mode: 2830:1

Fortunately, turning off the dynamic backlighting doesn't have too much of an impact on the contrast ratio, which only slips slightly from 3300:1 to 2830:1, which is still an excellent result for Philips!

Our Thoughts On 21:9

Let's take a closer look at that unusual choice of aspect ratio.  It seems that Philips hasn't fixed the problems that we had last time we tested one of its 21:9 TVs.  Once again, the display here has a resolution of 2560 x 1080 pixels, but HD films are encoded at 1920 x 1080 pixels.  When you watch films with the 2.35 aspect ratio, only 1920 x 817 pixels are used, and the rest is a black border around the picture.  The PFL9956H can resize the source to make it fit the 2560 x 1080 pixel display, but some of the quality is lost along the way.  It would have been a better idea to use a 1920 x 817 pixel display, which would have been perfect for watching films in 2.35 mode.

The advantage of the 2560 x 1080 resolution is that you can watch HD content, which measures 1920 x 1080 pixels in its original format.  The 640 x 1080 'extra' pixels aren't used and become a black border around the outside.  That turns your 58'' TV into one with only 47'' on display!  Of course, you can also choose to let the PFL9956H do the upscaling and use the whole screen, but that has a negative impact on the quality, stretching and twisting the picture.

When we last looked at it back in 2009, we weren't convinced by the 21:9 aspect ratio, because important detail is lost during the upscaling process.  Other formats, meanwhile, end up either stretched or letterboxed.  We think a 60'' with the more common 16:9 aspect ratio, like the Sharp LC-60LE63533 for example, is a safer bet.  It can show HD content in any aspect ratio, maintaining the original format without any stretching.

Clouding

Whether you are using the dynamic backlighting or not, there's no problem with clouding, and not a point of light leaks out of Sharp's ASV panel anywhere.  It's a flawless performance!

Image Quality: 3D

As is often the case, there's a filter which automatically converts 2D to 3D, but it doesn't actually do very much.  The impression that you're watching in three dimensions is all too light, and sometimes objects that should be at the same depth appear behind or in front of where they should be.  It all looks very weird.

None of these problems occur with native 3D content, and you get a great sense of both depth of field and objects leaping out of the screen.  But given the response times, we were expecting to see less crosstalk, the troublesome interference between the signals destined for the left and right eye.  Most things in 3D end up looking double, with strange ghost images.  We took a closer look at this problem to see what was causing it.

Here's what we saw through the glasses (Philips 58PFL9956H above, Philips 47PFL9706H below):

The frame from the feed for the left eye begins to become visible before the feed from the right eye has disappeared.
 

Crosstalk can be reduced by turning of the backlighting as the frame flicks between the video feed for each eye.  In theory, that should give more time for the previous frame to disappear entirely, but as you can see in the picture above, the left hand frame (which is the next one to be shown) becomes visible before the backlighting has been switched off.

Worse still, the glasses are uncomfortable to wear.  They feel cheap and plasticky and are missing rubber around the arms which would have made them more comfortable.  They do, however, allow fairly wide viewing angles.

Two pairs are included, so you'll need to spend a little more if you want a pair for the whole family.

Audio Quality

Frequency Response

Green area: good. Orange area: satisfactory. White area: unacceptable.
Voices should sound clear (in the range 300 Hz-3.5 kHz), but there is no sign of bass.

The 58PFL9956 does a good job of covering the frequency range of ordinary voices (from 300 Hz to 3.5 kHz), and deeper tones (as far as 120 Hz) are acceptable too, something that isn't true of all TVs.  Outside of these two zones, though, the frequency response drops off noticeably, leaving bass totally non-existent and odd-sounding treble.

Energy Consumption

Most LED TVs keep energy consumption down and the 58PFL9956 is no exception.  It isn't quite as efficient as an Edge LED TV however.  While switched on, we measured consumption of 175 W, which works out at 189 W/m²; compare that to the cheapest TVs that fall below 100 W/m².  On standby, the TV only uses 1 W.