Apologies in advance to all the techies, this is a layman's review.


Just got my new TV (Philips 32PW9527). Bought via Comet direct for £1051 delivered (a pretty good price I thought to myself).

Ordered via the internet around 3pm on Friday, delivered to the door at 2pm on Monday!! Even had a courtesy call prior from the blokes making the delivery to check someone was ready to take the delivery. So 10/10 on that score.

They offered to unbox and take away the packaging, a nice touch. However, I kept it in case I decided to return (within 7 days as allowed under the Distance Selling Act).

Put the self assembly stand together in about an hour. This is pretty good quality, in an IKEA style package. It is reassuringly heavy duty and the glass shelves look good. In combination with the television it looks beautiful.

Connected everything up and turned it on. It immediately went into automatice setup. Very intuitive and easy to do, even without spending hours reading the manual in advance. Menu is very Star Trek with flying balls and "pucks".

TV tuned itself no worries. I only have the one signal, via Telewest analogue cable - no aerial.

Following some initial basic tweaks (turned down extremely high contrast and softened the picture a few notches) the picture was crystal clear. I wondered how much of the Pixel Plus malarchy was marketing nonsense, but there is a split screen demo showing half screen with and half screen without and the difference is stark even to my undemanding eye.

With regard to geometry, it was pretty much perfect out of the box, just a slight tilt left to right, easily corrected under the standard (not service) menu.

The only "features" I have noticed to date have been a minor distortion on the right edge. I initially went into panic mode, but when I changed the channel to any of the terrestrials the problem disappeared an the picture was solid as a rock on all four edges. So I am guessing it is the crappy feed from Telewest. Anyway, it is not sufficiently noticable to bother me on the channels where it appears (Sky etc.)

There was also a very very faint light vertical band near the left edge. But once again, this was channel specific and even disappeared when I checked for it again the next morning (possibly not noticable in daylight or lit conditions)

As for bells and whistles. There is a large number of preset formats available for picture and sound. It appears that, although you can turn off Pixel Plus, you can not turn of the digital processing. Also, it is fixed in 100hz. After some experimention I found it best to let the tele do all the work, since I could not improve on its efforts (barring normal contrast, colour etc.). Having said that, I am yet to put it through its paces fully with a digital feed (I have a Sony DAV system), so this view might change.

All up, I am delighted with this. I think it is an outstanding piece of kit. It has a beautiful picture, sound is pretty good (although I rely on my DAV for that hence the 9527 and not 9607). It looks outstanding, extremely important now that televisions tend to be the biggest piece of furniture in the room.

As a final piece of advice to those more risk averse buyers. Rather than opt for the ridiculous retailer extended warrantees, this set came with a optional warrantee on the tube included in the box from Philips (underwritten by Domestic and General Insurance). This gives an extra 5 years cover, on top of the standard 12 months, for the TUBE ONLY for £69. Considering that this is probably the most expensive part of a large wide screen tel. this strikes me as a far superior option to the rip off warrantees offered by most retailers.


In summary, I would definitely recommend this set.

A big thanks to all forum members.

I have been reading this forum for a few weeks as background to my purchase.

Lucky for me, because I nearly stepped in a sony FQ75.

Thanks for your thoughts. I'm in the market for a new telly and was considering the 9607.

Looks like Philips are getting better at last.

I like you bought a philips from comet direct and very happy with set and delivery service.

Personally i wouldn't sign up for crt warranty as vast majority will outlast 5 years with no trouble

[Joe Pineapples]

hi pd1965

I've been looking at getting one of these myself. Can you tell me if yours came with the philips tube (looks flat right to the edges), or the Pana (dot on the edge at either side, half-way down). The one i looked at in Curry's yesterday, had the philips tube, which looks better in my opinion - at least it looks flatter anyway.

cheers

dean

Mine came with the Philips tube

I also belong to pixel plus fan club with my 36" PW9527,
Philips all the way..

I got one of the original philips 32" about 7/8 years ago, cant remember the exact model no. but it came top two years running in the hcc best of breed .

really like the picture-in-picture option as it has a dual tuner. Do the new tellies still ahve this - I'd miss it me thinks.

[Joe Pineapples]

nope, unfortunately they dont have dual tuners - though they do have split screen (tv/text) - not sure if you can have a tv/AV input (sky/dvd), or not though.

dean

Yes, Philips has 36" model that has twin tuners. One top of the class model, with 5.1 speakers, PP and all.. so was the price around 4000€ (euros)..
Some models (9767) have feature , that You can have eight pictures around main picture.. then choose what to watch..[S]2[X]

Well, I have OneForAll-8 Home Theater remote controller (urc-8550)..
Pretty handy gadged.. One button macros.. internet update..
That commands my AMP, DVD, VCR, TV, SAT, Tape and lights..

Thanks for the thoughts.

Can I ask you whether you have noticed any problems with digital artefacts or blurring on fast moving images???

I am in the process of trying to decide between the much discussed Toshiba 26ZD or the 9527.

As I work for a subsid of Philips I can get it from 1527 Euros (950 quid) which is another reason to be pushing towards the Philips.


Thanks for any thoughts and or comments.


Dave.

One week owned telly.. not anyhow jerky, blurred or orher artifacts noticed. Only some pixel props, caused by miss directed sat-dish..( should get on the roof again.. )

I tested my 9527 at store for two hours before I accepted and dragged the thing to home.. (2550€) 36"..

Some interesting comments few pages back on "Pixel + Perfect picture ?"

Thanks for the comments core. My main concern is the for me my standard viewing habits are DVD and football.

Whereas I am sure (I have tested) and am pleased with DVD picture I was concerned that viewing sports would be difficult and that there would be a problem with digital artefacts.

But seems from what you say that there is no real problem.


I will check out the other thread as well.


Thanks,


Dave