Philips 37/42/47PFL9632/9732 really a 1080i panel

[admin_exported]

Hi guys,

I was hoping someone could enlighten me here. I've been reading on another forum that according to a review here: and owners of the Philips 37/42/47PFL9632/9732 sets, they are not proper 1080i panels. Supposedly, when a 1080p source is playing the TV converts this to 1080i to process it and then back to 1080p to display it. This results in artifacts being displayed and completely unnecessary video processing, which is causing extreme lag, particularly while gaming. I cannot confim this myself because I don't own the set (yet) but I would be very interested to find out the real truth before I decide to buy it.

The lag problem seems to be apparent when gaming on PS3 via 1080p HDMI or component. Folk are complaining that they aren't killing as well as they do in online gaming or their moves aren't being performed in time when playing a football game. It is believed that the average lag time is around 120ms which is certainly way too much.

I know the solution would be to output in 1080i mode, but if this is true, why are Philips selling it as a 1080p set? Lots of people have contacted Philips looking for answers but so far they have said nothing. I was wondering if someone here could tell us the real truth, or find out from Philips. I really want one of these sets put this contraversy is putting me off.

Thanks all

 

[Andy Clough]

Hi there.

I've just forwarded your question on to the guys at Philips, so as soon as they come back to me with an answer, I'll let you know.

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you Andy! Very much appreciated

 

[Andy Clough]

OK, just to prove we offer a super-speedy service, here's the 'official' reply from Philips UK:

We can answer the question in two halves.

First, all of the processing in these sets is performed at 1080P, in fact the processing is the most advanced of any set on the market in comparing - and where necessary modifying - every single pixel with surrounding pixels in both the vertical and horizontal plane to ensure absolutely sharpness and exact transition from white to black.

So, a 1080P signal will remain 1080P throughout the processing chain. A 1080i signal will be de-interlaced into a 1080P signal before the processing is performed.

The second part of the question is with regards to the response time and games. These Philips sets are the only models currently available with HD motion compensation - HD Natural Motion - to remove film judder. This process is particularly important for Blu-ray where movies are output at 1080P but at 24 frames and where the addition of extra frames is the only way to prevent judder - because without motion compensation, even when doubling or quadrupling the screen refresh, the number of motion changes stays the same.

However, HD Natural Motion requires a very large amount of processing power and the gaming delay is caused by the application of this processing.

The simple solution is to turn off HD Natural Motion when gaming because games do not suffer from the judder caused by the low frame rate of movies.

All other processing can be left on.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for posting such a quick reply

I have recently purchased the 42" version of this set and have been suffering the same problem

When connected to my PC with running 1920x1080p resolution I notice that when ever the mouse is moved or a window is moved it results in a interlaced effect and a huge amount of lag. this does not happen when the resolution is lowered to 720p ?

I have the TV set to PC mode, and have tried with all processing options disabled. ( as suggested by Philips reply)

The TV has been upgraded to the latest firmware, but this has not made any difference.

It does appear that this tv for some reason converts any progressive source above 720p to 1080i then to 1080p rater than keeping it progressive.

This is causing big problems when playing movies fromm the PC, the audio is out of sync to the picture, even with Dolby Digital or DTS soundtracks.

I have found that the audio needs to be dealyed by upto 120ms inorder to re-sync the sound track. surley this cannot be correct, I did not have to do this for my previous LCD screen which 7 years old.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the extremely quick reply Andy! Very much appreciated. However, this reply seems to have outraged a few people. Some owners claim that switching off HD Natural Motion makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. In fact, one owner went to the depth of testing lag side by side with the Phlips set and a PC monitor. He used a stop watch program with his computer connected to both screens simultaneously which would display the start/stop time when he pressed a button on his pc controller/mouse. The Philips set was about 100ms slower in all tests. This was measured with all settings on AND off. So, in essence, turning of HD Natural Motion makes no difference. Do the folk at Philips have any kind of evidende to reflect this? Are they denying that there is an issue with lag on this particular set? I would be more than happy to provide them with some of these pictures with the permission from the particular owner who carried out these tests.

Also, why is it that there are far more visual artifacts over 1080p than 1080i, especially considering the fact that there is no 1080i to 1080p processing involved?

Many thanks for your extremely speedy reply. Great work!

 

[Anonymous]

A guy from another forum asked an interesting question (as below)

"If it keeps it as 1080p throughout the chain then where do the de-interlacing effects come from and how does it manage to lose resolution?

Those things would not be possible if it was 1080p throughout and had 1:1 pixel mapping surely?"

Reviews at http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/Philips-37PFL9632D and http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/televisions/0,39030218,49293838-2,00.htm agreed that this was a problem they noticed, so why are Philips not admitting there this, or side-stepping the question?

Thanks again.

Viper

 

[Anonymous]

There is another review at cnet (of the 47PFL9732D) which focuses on the quirks of the 1080i and 1080p issue:

http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/philips-47pfl9732d/4505-6482_7-32313010.html?tag=pdtl-list

In this review they say:

"The Philips, as expected, did resolve every line of a 1080i and a 1080p resolution source, and details on the set looked as sharp as on any of the other HDTVs in the room. We did appreciate the fact that the 47PFL9732D passed the film resolution loss test from the HQV Blu-ray disc--which most HDTVs fail--but for some reason it failed the video resolution loss test, which most HDTVs ace. Go figure. Either way, we'd prefer to see the film test pass, although as usual we had a difficult time spotting the difference in program material."

This is the same problem highlighted in the HDTV test review and something Philips need to look into.

 

[Anonymous]

Any thing Andy? Pretty please

 

[Anonymous]

Any news on the 1080i / p issue anyone?

 

[Anonymous]

It seems that this thread is now dead in the water. Still no proper answers

 

[Anonymous]

Viper, you're probably right. I emailed Philips directly almost a week ago about the 1080i/p problems and they never replied. Doesn't really inspire any confidence in an explanation and/or fix appearing soon, if ever.

 

[Anonymous]

I recently bought a 42pfl7862D/10 which is advertised as a Full HD model with 1080p support. I immediately noticed that when connected to a PC which outputs 1920x1080@60Hz the TV basically displays it as 1080i. That is NOT what I paid for. So, after a long debate with Philips customer support they sent me the following e-mail:

"You have bought TV set but not PC monitor which I think at size of 42
inches is much more expensive than TV set what you have bought. At the
price of 42PFL7862 you can buy Dell monitor 30 inches size (30'' Dell
LCD-TV 3007WFP).
As I said LCD display can't work in interlaced mode. And problems what
you see are signal processing artefacts but not related to
interlaced/non-interlaced problems.
Why there are more expensive TV sets in the market than this particular TV set?
My conclusion is that your expectations are too high for the price point what you have chosen."

So basically - people shouldn't expect to get what the product box says. I mean, come on! And pointing out the fact that there are better and more expensive displays out there - what kind of an argument is that...

I'm VERY disappointed in Philips, I hope I'd read these reviews before buying this TV which is basically a 720p set...