Design
The Philips 26PF5320 has contemporary written all over it. Its speakers are mounted on the left and right edges of the screen so it's a very wide unit, but its sharp corners, silver and black finish and wide presence reinforce its modern appearance. It may have been nicer if Philips had made the black bevel smaller though, as it puts quite a wide border around the screen.
The television itself is a fully integrated unit which includes the stand, screen, analog tuner and two speakers, although, the stand can be removed for wall mounting. The TV simply "sits" on the stand, so when you lift up the television, the stand remains on the table, which might make moving the TV around a little tricky. At the bottom of the rectangular foot, the stand has a rotating disc which lets you manually swivel the whole TV without scratching the table.
Features
There is only an analog tuner included in the unit. While it is definitely one of the better quality analog tuners we have seen, it still does not do the high resolution, "HD ready", 1366 x 768 pixel screen justice. One interesting feature however which complements the analog receiver is the ability to zoom to 14:9. 14:9 is perfect for zooming analog shows which have the narrow black bars at the top and bottom as a wide-screen compromise for 4:3 viewers. While it does not the fill the entire 16:9 wide screen, it is better than watching a show with large portions of the screen unused on the left and right, or even worse, stretching the picture to fit the screen which totally distorts the image.
The majority of the inputs are mounted at the back facing down. This makes wall mounting more practical, but plugging cables in, regardless of whether the TV is wall mounted or sitting on a stand, is really difficult. For temporary connections, there is a side mounted combination S-video/RCA connector for easy access along with a headphone jack. There are four inputs on the back of the Philips. There is one HDMI port, which is good for all-digital connections, but there is only one component input for other HD connections, which will be an inconvenience if you want to connect both a DVD player and HD tuner with component cables. There is a D-Sub input for connecting your computer, but surprisingly, you cannot use the whole screen and are restricted to using a maximum of 1024x768 which is disappointing.
The remote control is unusually light and uses a flat button style lithium cell battery. It makes the remote feel little on the fragile side. We ran into a bit of trouble when we received the TV, as the battery in the remote had gone flat. It did not take us long to realise that without the battery, we could not change inputs as it was not part of the standard menu which we could access from the TV mounted controls. Changing inputs required a dedicated button on the remote. This is something to consider, as you will not be able to use the TV properly if you cannot use the remote.
Performance
We were very impressed with the overall performance of this TV. As with most televisions, the correct audio and visual settings have to be set before getting the best out of the unit. There are a variety of audio and visual presets which adjust the colour and contrast of the image as well as the equalizer for sound. Generally we found that the "natural" setting was the most visually appealing and also have a good compromise of contrast and tonal range. With the audio presets, "theatre" definitely had the most punch.
The analog tuner as mentioned before was surprisingly good but still should not be used on a high resolution TV like this one. When a high definition tuner was connected via component video, the TV's image quality really shined; the image was stunning. The picture was very stable and had no discernable artefacts. Colours are very vibrant and there is a good tonal range maintaining detail in both shadow and highlight areas.
We connected to a PC, testing the screen with the first person shooter Half Life 2 and found no problems playing the game. Motion is very fluid and there is no ghosting or blurring from slow response whatsoever.
Our only gripe with the Philips is the lack of grunt with its audio. Just watching TV normally with our HD tuner required the volume setting to be as high at 75 percent. This does not leave much room if you want the TV much louder. However with a manual equalizer, there is plenty of control when it comes to manipulating the sound itself.
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Troels Lund
22/05/2007, 11:03 PM
rating
8/10
Good for the price
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