# Philips 56PFL9954H 21/9



## event horizon (Nov 12, 2009)

Hello everyone, i was just wondering if anyone has any experience with either setting up or general usage of the Philips superwidescreen TV? I'll only be using it for blu ray or upscaled DVD playback, where i understand this thing excels.

I decided to take the plunge & i should be picking up one of these some time this week  A serious reduction in price & free 5 year guarantee kind of helped a tad. I'm not used to breaking things or having them break down, but the promise that if it can't be fixed it'd be replaced with something of at least the same quality & type finally did it. Philips appear to be bringing out the same screen but 3D capable later this year so not a lot to loose really :T

Also while i'm at it, has anyone any opinions on the Digital Video Essentials - HD Basics setup blu ray disc?

Thanks in advance...

bests, Mark.


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## Alan Brown (Jun 7, 2006)

Anyone serious about HD video performance should own both the 'DVE: HD Basics' program, and the 'Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark' disc. Just Google both terms for plenty of technical and user reviews.

Best regards and beautiful pictures,
Alan Brown, President
CinemaQuest, Inc.
A Lion AV Consultants Affiliate

"Advancing the art and science of electronic imaging"


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## event horizon (Nov 12, 2009)

Cheers for the reply Alan. I'm glad i didn't waste my money then as i have a soon to be unsealed HD Basics disc here :T

I think i'll wait until i pick up the Philips to calibrate that though, my present TV will be used along with a different blu ray player so will do that another time.

Cheers for the suggestion of another disc to look for, i'll have a look about 

Regards, Mark.


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## event horizon (Nov 12, 2009)

All good news  Managed to find the Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark disc which should be delivered shortly... Cheers again Alan!

Picked up the TV yesterday & got it £1000 cheaper than when i agreed to buy it :rofl: If anyone wants one of these monsters & are in the UK please try Richer Sounds. I think they are advertising it at £2149.95, though i did see at one point that it was £1999.95 which is what i payed. Got to be better than the original price of £4500 :yikes: Free 5 year warranty certainly helps :T

No stand as standard though, but they do come with a wall bracket. I'm sure i can knock something together to use the wall bracket & manufacture a stand. No way am i paying £170 for something i can make for less than £5 :blink:

A few days & it should be up & running... Bye bye black bars on any 2.35 & 2.4-1 blu rays :wave:


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## event horizon (Nov 12, 2009)

Just in case anyone is interested this thing is now fully calibrated & set up to produce some good pictures :T

The first TV turned out to be a duffer, looks like it was a swap out & then used in a shop. Part of the backlight was also flickering every few seconds :hissyfit: Well it was replaced with a brand new TV which came up with the proper setup menu when first switched on - good news. The slight delay meant i could paint the stand that i made, more good news.

Hows it perform, well anyone buying one will need to set the thing up carefully. For starters switch off the "perfect pixel" setting, this also disables the 200Hz setting but it's not a problem. The display has a 1ms response time, i'm not going to argue as now there is absolutely no smearing of anything no matter what happens. The TV itself when playing 2.35 - 2.40:1 movies needs to scale the picture to 2560 x 1080P (but you can run it in 16/9 mode & have black bars all around the screen - unscaled) & asking it to do much more will result in problems. I noticed this when playing 2012 at the point where Woody Harrelson was on top of the mountain near Yellowstone & the camera panned around, his radio antennas where jumping accross the screen. Turn everything off & it looks marvelous 

Out of the box it's pretty close to how it should be calibrated as long as a few things are altered.

Hows the picture... Well lets just say i prefer watching Avatar with the top & bottom of the picture cropped off & blown up to 2560 x 1080P. I have never watched so many blu rays before, every time i play something that i haven't seen previously on this TV it just about blows my mind  Blacks are gorgeous given that it is an LCD TV at 80,000:1. Colours are great & it has about the best sound from any flat panel you could imagine. I don't tend to listen via the TV speakers unless it's daytime though.

The best bit is the scaling though, like people say about 2.35:1 lenses for projectors giving you 1080P this goes one better & scales horizontally to 2560 pixels as well as vertical lines to 1080P.

I doubt my projector will get much use even though it'll throw a 110" screen in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, this just looks wonderful...

By the way, i don't work for Philips :rofl: Honestly i couldn't or should i say wouldn't be happy going back to watching films with black bars above & below the picture. It just seems totally natural to have the full screen filled with no bars :T

Contrary to a good few reviews the picture setting isn't a problem. Just don't use the auto setting! If viewing 2.35:1 pics select 21/9 once the menu is cleared, if viewing 1.85:1 then you can either watch with black bars left & right or blow it up & lose a bit of the picture but scale up the important stuff in the middle of the screen.

Time for a film


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## event horizon (Nov 12, 2009)

Just picked up another blu ray test disc :T This one is dedicated to finding out how good de-interlacing is on your equipment & scaling etc. This might not appear to be important but i happen to have quite a few BBC documentaries such as Earth, South Pacific (Wild Pacific in USA) & others such as Ganges & Wild China. These are all 1080i discs so i thought it relevant to see how things are performing 

The disc in question is Silicon Optix HD HQV Benchmark blu ray version 1. Not tried it yet admittedly as i'm just enjoying my setup so much :rofl:

A friend popped round recently & remarked on how the 21/9 TV is easy on the eyes due to the aspect ratio, yes it's big but it's not dominating like a 1.85:1 TV would be as it's not as tall. To get the same screen size on a 2.35:1 encode i'd need at least a 70" TV :yikes:

Just thought i'd stick up a few screen shots. Taken from paused blu ray on a 12MP Fuji camera & obviously compressed to fit on here. It's remarkable how you soon get totally used to viewing Cinemascope recordings with no black bars top & bottom. I haven't used my Toshiba once since this was installed 

A couple from Lord Of The Rings..
















& a couple from X Men Origins Wolverine..
















Obviously 2560 pixels looks much better than these pics can even attempt to show. I saw somewhere recently where some bloke married his dog :rofl: I'm not that mad but i certainly love what this TV does :T


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