Philips 42PFL7432D review

A USB input and a heaphone jack join the usual array of side-panel connections.

Performance
As we mentioned at the top of this review, the Philips' accurate post-calibration color was its major strength, but it didn't deliver the depth of black we've come to expect from late-model LCD HDTVs in its price range.

Prior to our comparison evaluation, we calibrated the 42PFL7432D for optimal picture quality in our completely darkened room, first by attenuating its torch-mode light output to a more comfortable 40 footlamberts (FTL). The lack of a backlight control probably contributed to the set's less than stellar black-level performance, but we did appreciate the full color temperature detail controls, which allowed us to improve quite a bit on the Warm preset's measurements. After calibration, the Philips' grayscale was excellent and quite linear, especially for an LCD. For details, check out the Geek box below, and for our full user-menu settings scroll down to the tips section or just click here.

For our comparison, we set the 42PFL7432D up next to a few other HDTVs we had on hand, including the similarly priced 40-inch Toshiba 40RF350U LCD and a couple of more expensive sets, namely the 46-inch Samsung LN-T4671F and the Sony KDS-55A3000 (our new color reference). We spun up the beautiful-looking Apocalypto on Blu-ray courtesy of the Samsung BD-P1200.

In more difficult darker scenes, such as the campfire gathering in chapter 4, we noticed that the Philips didn't produce quite as deep of a shade of black as the other sets in the room. The shadows along the ground and the dark sky behind the tribe appeared more washed out than we'd like to see. We also noticed that details in shadows, such as the shaded side of one of the tribeswomen's bodies as she faced the fire, looked a bit more distinct on the Sony and the Samsung, while on the Philips we couldn't really discern the deepest parts of the shadow as well.

In its favor, the Philips showed very good color accuracy in both light and dark scenes. The shadows and darker areas stayed neutral instead of shifting into blue/green as they did on the Toshiba. The prominent green of the jungle plants stood up well against the superb Sony, looking lush and realistic. We also appreciated the accurate tone of the tribesmen's skin, which looked entirely too bluish and strange on the Toshiba. Our main issue with the Philips' color has to do with saturation as opposed to accuracy; its less deep black levels made colors look less rich than those of any of the other sets and robbed those deep forest scenes of a little punch.

According to test patterns, the Philips, as we expect from any 1080p HDTV nowadays, had no trouble resolving all of the details of 1080i and 1080p sources. Apocalypto looked sharp and well-resolved, although we didn't detect any difference in detail on any of the HDTVs we compared; they're all 1080p models. Performing the 1080i deinterlacing tests from HQV on Blu-ray, the 42PF7432D handled film-based sources well--as evinced by the clean grille of the RV in Ghost Rider, our most-dependable real-world test--but failed with video-based sources. We don't consider this failure a major issue, however, since it will be difficult to spot in real-world situations. We watched some hockey on HDNet, for example, and couldn't spot any issues caused by the deinterlacing failure.

We also kept a close eye out for blurring, comparing the Philips to the 120Hz Samsung, and it was only really noticeable--and then only in a minor way--on a fast-moving ticker from ESPNHD. Finally, we checked out Philips Pixel Perfect HD mode and really couldn't discern any difference between leaving it on or off.

Uniformity across the Philips' screen was quite impressive for an LCD. With a dark field, such as the sky behind the storytelling elder near the campfire, we did notice that the upper-right quadrant was a bit brighter than the rest, but this brighter area wasn't as obvious as we've seen on many other LCDs. Compared with most other LCDs we've tested, the Philips' off-angle performance was below average, washing out in dark scenes when seen from one spot over on the couch, and was especially poor when seen from above or below.

We also spent some time with the Ambilight function, although to properly test it, we moved the TV in front of a white projection screen (the matte-black walls of our theater rendered the light basically invisible). As in the past, we found most of the modes that mimic the onscreen action with the colors of the lights--called Relaxed, Moderate, and Dynamic and offering progressively more saturation and quicker color change--relatively distracting. During the hunt of the tapir at the beginning of Apocalypto for example, the light would start as primarily green as the beast ran through the jungle, then shift to off-white when the screen became mostly dark (that was quite disconcerting), then brownish or reddish as the beast and the hunters careened across the screen. Of these three, Relaxed was the least distracting, and occasionally we appreciated how it seemed to open up the expanse of the screen, such as the shots of the morning sky and the sunset at the beginning of chapters 3 and 4, respectively. More often, however, the colors seemed incorrect, such as the strange fade to purple when the elder appears during the campfire scene; when this happened, we had a hard time maintaining focus on the film itself.

Vastly more preferable to our eyes was the Color option, which keeps the lights at a constant color. We determined that none of the three presets came close to the ideal backlight color temperature of 6,500K, although with a bit of tweaking we were able to calibrate the light to about 7,200K (see the picture settings tip below). This light is still a bit blue, however, so if you're interested in a correct backlight, which can help reduce eyestrain in a dark room, we'd recommend a separate one made specifically for home theater and attuned to 6,500K.

Standard-def video processing on the 42PFL7432D was superb, although if your cable or satellite box performs the upconverting to HD resolutions itself, you won't get the benefits of this aspect of the Philips' picture quality. If you feed it 480i sources, however, it may well outperform your box's converter. The set resolved every detail of the DVD according to HQV's color bars pattern, and details in the bricks on the bridge and the grass appeared relatively sharp. The set did a superb job of smoothing out jagged diagonal lines, such as the stripes of the waving American flag. We were also very impressed by the ability of the four noise-reduction settings to clean up the worst areas of moving motes and video "snow" in the skies and sunsets on the disc. Our only complaint--and it's minor--regarding the Philips' standard-def processing is that it takes a long second or so for the set to engage 2:3 pull-down detection.

Juice box

Philips 42PFL7432D	Picture settings
	Default	Calibrated	Power Save
Picture on (watts)	134.04	97.46	N/A
Picture on (watts/sq. inch)	0.18	0.13	N/A
Standby (watts)	2.07	2.07	N/A
Cost per year	$41.96	$30.85	N/A
Score (considering size)	Good
Score (overall)	Good