Hands-On With Philips' New Dream HD LCD TV
Your heroes at Switched came away impressed after our hands-on with Philips' latest high definition (HD) LCD television sets last night. The new sets comprise Philips' 2008 "Design Collection", featuring round-edges surrounded by acrylic framing in all TVs ranging from 19 to 52 inches (diagonal). Forgive us for jumping to the dessert course of the meal, but we think it best to go into detail about the Ultimate Dream TV, the top-of-the-line product from Philip's new 7000 Series that is being hailed as a winner of the 2008 CEA Innovations Award for Design and Engineering.
As it's known in technical jargon, this 52PFL7603D model features something called 120 Hz ClearLCD Technology. This screen innovation improves the shadows and detail made up in the ever-important black levels. As far as images and on-screen motion goes, the 7000 Series Dream TV operates at 120 Hz rather than the 60 Hz found in many sets today, an improvement in response time that eliminates most (if not all) streaking. What may be the coolest, though, is the new HD Digital Natural Motion technology that stabilizes moving images and reduces frame stutter.
The Dream model also includes an invisible speaker system that pipes great quality sound from the bottom of the TV throughout the acrylic frame and out to you in Ambisound form (that's just Philips elitist way of not saying "virtual surround sound" like everyone else). All of the TVs in the 7000 series offer four HDMI 1.3a inputs with built-in consumer electronics control (CEC), in addition to a picture calibrating feature that offers a convenient series of two image modes instead of making you tweak all of the levels yourself. We thought that was cool, but you hardcore picture-tweaking freaks will most likely be annoyed.
At the end of the demo, the gee-whiz Philips rep set up a "shootout" among Sony and Samsung's 2007 HD LCD sets versus Philips' 2007 and new 2008 products. The 2008 Philips easily won due to its great color, smooth motion and high detail. The 2007 model was much less dominant, but it still seemed to have better image detail, as we could see the blades of grass on its screen more distinctly than in its competitors'. To be fair, we would have loved to see the three companies go head to head to head on equal footing, but Sony and Samsung weren't around to speak for themselves.
The Dream TV comes out in May at a whopping retail price of $2,799, while the cheapest, 42 inch 7000 series option debuts in March at $1,699. The only difference outside of size is that the latter lacks only Ambilight, a feature that provides well-balanced light on the screen and behind the set. Philips also has both a 3000 and 5000 HD LCD series, though they come with fewer bells and whistles as the price goes down.
The handy chart below includes release dates and prices for those of you itching to spend some cash on a new HDTV in 2008.
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