A little help with my TV please? Philips 47PFL8404H. Fantastic tv and most frustrating at the same time!

[admin_exported]

Hi guys, new to the forum, long time magazine reader though.

Right, I bought this tv from a friend, I got a good deal, it's only around 7 months old.

It doesn't matter what I seem to do with the settings I can't arrive at a picture that I'm happy with.

With some things the picture is fantastic. Others terrible.

Non HD Sky pictures are awful.

HD Sky pictures bloody lovely, especially if its a kids cartoon or something along those lines.

Bluray is hit and miss. Again, colourful cartoons look lovely. Kick Ass looks good. Watch Aliens vs Predator last night and in places it was like watching a noisy VHS! Not what I should expect from a TV at this level.

So I'm always tweaking the pic with every film I watch.

As well as the noisy picture especially in darker scenes, there is a lot of motion blur where images seem to jerk across the screen. They also have a watery outline especially when its a moving object or person against a light background.

Doesn't matter what I do with the settings it's still there. I can't believe a TV thats so capable can be so flawed. I spoke to Philips who suggested a firmware update. I did this, still no difference. Does an optimum picture setting exist that eliminates noise on bluray, the watery outline and the motion blur?

It's more noticable with bluray thb than Sky HD but it's still there no matter what and is very hit or miss depending on what I'm watching.

Could it be my Bluray player and cableing? I've got a Sharp BDHP21 and use freebie HDMI cables all round.

Current settings on Bluray and Sky HD channels are:

Contrast: 90

Brightness: 50

Colour: 50

Sharpness: 2

Noise Reduction: off

Tint: Normal

Light sensor: off

HD Natural Motion: min

100hz: on

Advance sharp: off

Dynamic contrast: off

Dynamic backlight: best picture

MPEG artifact reduction: off

Sorry for the long read, I'd hate to have to get rid of the TV so hope someone can help!

 

[Clare Newsome]

I'll ask the test team if they have any input on this - I know they've found Philips probably the trickiest to get right in terms of settings etc, but worth the perseverence.

 

[Anonymous]

Ok Clare thanks

 

[Anonymous]

No one?

 

[Amadeus1756]

I bought a 32" 9000 model earlier in the year and like you, found that the picture could be wonderful - incredible.

However, like you, I found that it needed to be tweaked all the time - watching movies, changing channel even. As a side note, it also kept going mute (reboot fixed that), changing channels when coming out of the EPG, and even losing the picture entirely (sound still there tho - again, a reboot fixed this). I eventually took it back, got my money back and bought a Panasonic, which doesn't require so much tweaking but the picture isn't as good (can get very obvious dark corners which I did ask about on the forum here but seemingly hasn't been a problem for others).

Hopefully you'll resolve it to your satisfaction. I was pretty gutted that I had to send mine back. It was nice in so many ways.

Note to WHF: Replying to this gives me an error about the length of the subject line being too long. Not sure how it could have been creating initially unless there is some inconsistency to the rules being applied.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Hi, bit of a philips TV fan so here goes. For the sake of calibration turn off the motion + 100hz for now. Select a good quality SD channel on Sky HD, suggest Daybreak on ITV as can be super clean once calibrated. Then pick a scene with; Black and white 'now adjust the contrast until there is no over edging around objects, presenters'Aiming for a good balance between deep blacks and clear whites. Same again with brightness, aim for bright white but no 'overflow' of brightness into other surrounding pixels. Colour- choose a strong red or orange image and calibrate colour the same way, Red but no flaring of pixels into others parts of the picture. Lastly, Sharpness 'suggest you calibrate on '2' then adjust once others are complete' make sure there are no exagerated edges. Underset rather than overset. NOTE: You can freeze any image with the Sky Remote to enable calibration. SD and HD should now be great with no overedging. The picture may look a little flat now, dont worry! Actiavte the 100hz and Perfect Motion 'minimum' again and the image should be much fuller. Remeber each input will need calibarting individually so make sure you're Sky HD box has a seperate HDMI cable to that of the BD player or amp combo. Calibrate the BD player input using a THX disc on Star Wars or similar. Again turn the Motion/100hz off for setting and back on after. You see the Philips processing engine pulls all available pixel data 'noise' and all and amplifies it. So by eliminating blur of any kind through calibration you are essentially limiting the negative effect of the processing engine whilst milking the benefits. You will still find some TV/ Discs cause you problems. View the same thing on another piece of kit and you will see noise/ banding/ blocking on the program or disc itself, its just that the TV cannot distinguish between noise/ detail. BBC HD's variable quality is a good example. Lastly, adding a mains conditioner (Tacima £30), plus a new fully shielded Mains Lead (£35)significantly lowered the picture noise from my Sky Box. A new HDMI cable from Wireworld (£40) has taken my image to perfection. Also, please remember all TV's need time to run in, mine took 6 months to run at its best. Please feed back on here how you have got on.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Oh, and after all that it is worth looking for a 'system update' on website which can be downloaded to usb drive, instructions on web page, there was 1 for my 7404 which is same TV engine but the 8000 series has a few more tricks. Good Luck.

Oh, just noticed you're HDMI cable, found the Sky HD free one blurry and not very stable so upgraded to the highspeed Wireworld. SD especially improved dramatically.