Everything about the Panasonic P58V10 is big.

Its 58in screen; its unexpectedly (by today’s svelte standards) expansive bezel; its feature list and, unfortunately, its price, which at around £3.5k seems to exist in some sort of alternate commercial reality to the ultra-aggressive one currently being fought over by the likes of Samsung, LG and Toshiba.

Although as we’re about to discover, the P58V10’s no-expense-spared approach pays such handsome dividends that the screen should find a fan base among the AV cognoscenti for whom money is still no object.

Features

Sitting just one rung from the top of Panasonic’s large screen ladder, the P58V10 is fearsomely well specified.

The panel is, of course, endowed with a full HD pixel count.

But rather more eye-catching is its claimed contrast ratio of 2million:1, and the fact that it uses Panasonic’s new NeoPDP panel design, with its enhanced brightness and greater running economies.

The P58V10 is not, as we hinted in our introduction, the slinkiest TV in the world, but then a TV of such a size and price commonly ends up in a dedicated AV room where its hefty design is much easier to accommodate.

When it comes to connections, the P58V10 does enough to keep demanding users happy, thanks to its four HDMIs, an SD card slot capable of playing AVCHD and DivX video files as well as JPEG photos, plus an Ethernet port.

The latter is significant for two reasons. First, as with all of Panasonic’s mid and upper range sets, the P58V10 has a built-in Freesat tuner, so the port will enable you to access the BBC iPlayer when it finally rolls out across the whole Freesat product line.

The Ethernet connection also makes it possible for you to access Panasonic’s content-controlled portion of the Internet, dubbed VieraCast. Here you can easily navigate through specially constructed versions of YouTube, EuroSport and Picasa.

While this content isn’t exactly copious right now, it is likely to increase in the coming months.

Ideally, a TV as costly as the P58V10 might have run to a fifth HDMI and included built-in Wi-Fi, but most people should be able to easily work around these issues.

Where the P58V10 really justifies its price is with its picture processing. It boasts, for instance, Panasonic’s so-called 600Hz system, where frame interpolation processing inserts enough extra ’sub-field’ frames of image data to permit Panasonic to claim a 600Hz effect, even though the screen doesn’t physically refresh 600 times per second.

The set also boasts the Pro 4 version of the brand’s general purpose V-real video processing engine, as well as, its Digital Cinema Colour system, which uses top of the line processing to produce a range of colours close to that achieved by the new commercial digital cinemas cropping up with increasing regularity nowadays.

Finally, while the P58V10 isn’t quite as infinitely flexible during picture set up as we’d like it to be, it does at least try to take some of the headache out of optimising images by including a picture preset that’s been calibrated and formally approved by the independent THX quality assurance brand.

Ease of use

Aside from burying its keyframe interpolation options in a slightly obscure sub-menu, the P58V10 is an exercise in simplicity, with a clear, but hugely effective, remote control with simple and clear on-screen menus.

The THX preset can take a lot of the sweat out of the initial calibration efforts we’d always recommend you put in with any decent TV.

Picture

While the P58V10 isn’t without its picture flaws, which we’ll cover presently, it’s at its jaw-dropping best when doing what it will surely be its main occupation: playing movies from Blu-ray, Sky HD or HD games.

With these sorts of pristine high-definition sources, it produces one of the most flat-out cinematic pictures we’ve seen.

Dark scenes, for instance, are a joy to behold compared with most flat TVs, as the P58V10 delivers that key movie ingredient of deep, natural but also subtly shaded and detailed black levels in a way no straight LCD TV, and precious few LED sets, can come close to.

Even more striking, for us, is the P58V10’s colour response. For as well as delivering the unusual (for plasma) vibrancy noted with most other NeoPDP designs, the P58V10 also avoids the orange-tinged reds and slightly green undertone to many dark scenes, which were so noticeable on various other Panasonic plasmas throughout 2009.

This is especially true if you use the set’s Digital Cinema Colour option, which also boosts the range of the colour palette.

Further helping to make the P58V10 a movie screen par excellence is its wondrous knack of reproducing detail in HD sources – including, of course, the pair of high-definition channels currently offered on Freesat.

The sensation of clarity with the P58V10’s pictures also owes a debt of gratitude to the ‘600Hz’ engine, as the image suffers markedly less judder and edge flickering than we tend to see with Panasonic’s non-600Hz plasmas.

While the panel’s HD pictures are imperious, though, they’re not quite perfect, owing to the very occasional forced colour and appearance of a low-level processing artefact, which occurs if you’re using the TV’s Intelligent Frame Creation frame creation system.

Oddly, the picture suffers from quite a few more rogue colours when you switch to standard definition material.

However you can make improvements by toning down the colour settings for standard-definition viewing, and in other ways the set’s Freeview/standard-def Freesat pictures actually hold up surprisingly well considering the enormity of the screen they’re appearing on.

Sound

Although the P58V10’s size doesn’t quite lead to the sort of audio excellence we’d hoped for, the TV does, nonetheless, sound a lot more powerful, clear and dynamic than most of its flatscreen rivals.

Value

While the quality of the P58V10’s pictures suggests that there are some seriously high-end processing and manufacturing techniques going on behind the scenes, it’s still a shame that a screen of this high calibre is only likely to be affordable to a well-heeled minority.

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As a 40-inch LCD TV with LED backlighting, the first thing we need to do in this review is nail what bit of the LED world it belongs to.

And rather surprisingly, it turns out that it’s a direct LED model – as in, one where the LED lights are positioned directly behind the screen, rather than being positioned around the screen’s frame as happens with edge-lit LED LCD TVs such as Samsung’s B7000 and B8000 ranges.

The reason this is surprising is that direct LED lighting is still generally considered to be the ‘premium’ LED approach in quality terms, and so not the technology you might expect on a self-consciously affordable LED-lit TV.

It has to be said Samsung has done a pretty solid job of countering the ‘direct is best’ idea with some of the arguments it’s put forward to support its edge LED TVs – and there’s no denying that Samsung’s B7000 and B8000 ranges have been for the most part outstanding TVs.

But the direct LED TVs will always have one movie-loving trick the edge approach won’t: local dimming.

In other words, with direct LED TVs it’s possible to control each cluster of LEDs behind the screen individually, so that you could, for instance, have one cluster completely turned off to give a really deep black in that section of the picture, at the same time that the neighbouring cluster can be running at full brightness to give a really bright white.

You don’t have to be Albert Einstein to figure out that having local control over brightness in this way can have a pretty profound impact on contrast compared with normal LCD lighting, where the image is being driven by a single, always-on light source.

The only potential problem with the system – and one we’ll return to during the performance part of this test – is that there are nowhere near as many LED clusters lighting the picture as there are pixels in the full HD screen

Although Sharp is cagey about exactly how many clusters there are, we suspect the number is substantially less than the 224 being sported by, say, Philips’ new PFL9704 direct LED screens.

What this means in picture terms is that the local dimming might not be able to get the light levels exactly right for every pixel in the picture.

This was certainly a big issue with early direct LED TVs, but successive generations have made huge improvements, so hopefully the 40″ 40LE700E will continue this progression.

One smaller point worth making about the 40LE700E’s LED make up is that it uses white dimming rather than the RGB dimming found on a few much more expensive LED-lit TVs – including Sharp’s own ultra high-end XS1E models and Sony’s Z4500s.

RGB dimming is reckoned to give a richer, more expansive colour performance – though we have to say from what we’ve seen that the cheaper white version used here arguably produces a colour palette better suited to current video standards.

Turning to rather more prosaic matters, the 40LE700E is a bit of a mixed bag aesthetically.

Viewed straight on, its glossy, minimalist bezel, bold triangular blue power light and subtle infusion of blue along the extreme bottom edge make for an attractive proposition.

But if you’re sat to the side, you can’t help but notice how chunky and utterly bland its rear is. In this respect, at least, edge LED-lit TVs have a clear advantage.

The 40LE700E’s connections improve on those found on its cheaper LE600E siblings in that they include a handy extra HDMI – bringing the total to four – and add a USB port capable of playing MP3 audio and JPEG photo files.

All the other bits and bobs you’d normally expect on any modern TV – Scarts, CAM slot to support the Freeview tuner, digital audio output and so on – are also present and correct.

You don’t get any Ethernet or wireless connectivity for accessing PC files or the internet, but we can live without this if it’s one of the reasons Sharp’s been able to make the LE700E so affordable.

Since it’s what chiefly separates the LE700E range from the LE600E range, you could argue that the most important single feature of the 40LE700E is its 100Hz engine, there to double the frame rate and in the process hopefully reduce LCD’s tendency to blur moving objects.

In fact, adding to the potential importance of this feature is the fact that our main criticism of the LE600E models has been the extent to which they suffer from motion blur. So if the 40LE700E can put this issue to bed, we’re likely to be very happy bunnies.

First, the good news: When the 40LE700E is at the top of its game, its pictures are really pretty brilliant.

The bad news is that it’s not at the top of its game for as much of the time as we’d like it to be.

The key to the moments of brilliance we just referred to is, as we might have expected, the 40LE700E’s black level response.

The local dimming engine really does enable the set to blow the straight, CCFL-lit LCD crowd out of the water when it comes to showing dark scenes without the customary, distracting pall of greyness hanging over everything that should look black.

On the 40LE700E, if something is supposed to be black, it looks black.

What’s more, thanks to local dimming the 40LE700E doesn’t have to reduce the brightness of the picture as a whole in order to deliver its deep, rich black response.

So where a picture contains a mix of dark and bright elements, like the battling ships against the backdrop of outer space at the start of Star Wars III, the bright bits still look punchy and dynamic despite the profound blackness around them.

There’s hardly any of the general brightness dimming during dark scenes that you get with ordinary LCD TVs when they want to boost black level response.

The 40LE700E also impresses for the most part with its colours. Tones are boldly presented, with really full-on saturations that grab and hold your attention and make pictures look exceptionally dynamic without ever – well, hardly ever, anyway – slipping over into looking cartoonish.

The TV certainly hits a more natural (for video) colour temperature than any of Sharp’s non-LED LCD TVs. And pictures get a boost, too, from apparently improved subtlety when it comes to showing colour blends and transitions.

As a result, images definitely feel a touch more three dimensional (without actually being 3D in any way, of course!) than we’re used to seeing from Sharp.

Running through a few Blu-rays and Sky HD movies, meanwhile, reveals that the 40LE700E can pleasingly deliver a palpable sense of the extra sharpness and detail that makes HD the only video format we’re really happy watching these days.

Weaknesses

Even its standard definition pictures are pretty respectable provided the input is of a pretty decent standard in the first place.

If they’re not, however, the 40LE700E doesn’t have the processing cleverness to resurrect them as well as some rival TVs can – particularly the latest offerings from Philips, Samsung and even, to some extent, Toshiba.

They tend to look a little soft, as if the TV is resorting to this softening tactic to hide the fact that it doesn’t know how to deal with the noise inherent to your typical low-quality Freeview broadcast.

Now that we’re headed into negative territory, by far the biggest single problem we have with the 40LE700E is its motion handling.

For whenever something moves across or around the screen at any sort of speed, it blurs really quite noticeably.

This is crushingly disappointing given that the set provides 100Hz processing expressly to counter this common LCD motion problem. Yet while the 100Hz engine does reduce the amount of blurring somewhat compared with the non-100Hz LE600E series, it doesn’t go far enough to satisfy.

We also noted a few motion processing side effects at times, such as a flickering around the edges of moving objects.

Though thankfully these issues tended to be much less overt if we made sure we never used the set’s Film Mode in either of its Advanced settings at the same time that we used the 100Hz engine.

One final negative point finds the LE700E falling prey, predictably, to the so-called ‘blooming’ phenomenon, where the local dimming isn’t quite local enough to prevent auras of light appearing around really stand-out bright objects when they appear against very dark backdrops.

It would be wrong of us to overstate the impact of this ‘blooming’, for it’s actually very subtle, to the point of being invisible during ‘normal’ bright scenes. But it can sometimes have a subtle softening effect on really dark scenes.

While we appreciate the picture setup flexibility offered by the 40LE700E, we have to say that we’re not particularly big fans of Sharp’s current operating system.

Its on-screen menus look a bit too ‘teccy’ – like they’ve escaped from some commercial display designed for professional installation in an office or retail environment.

On a similar note, I also feel that the menus are not particularly well organised and could likely intimidate a novice TV user.

The remote control, meanwhile, is really quite cheap and nasty for a TV that, for all its cheapness relative to the market as a whole, actually sits at the top of Sharp’s current mainstream TV range.

It’s made from the lightest of plastic, its buttons are small and rubbery, and their layout doesn’t strike us as being particularly logical. Certainly we struggled badly to find the buttons we needed when viewing in a darkened room.

More menus

Delving deeper into the 40LE700E’s features, its long and intricate on-screen menus play host to a few bits of interest – though arguably not as many as might first appear.

Definitely the most important of these on-screen menu features is a colour management system that allows a surprisingly fulsome amount of tweaking.

It’s slightly oddly split across two different menu options, but in the end we got good mileage out of it in improving the colour palette considerably from the factory preset values.

Another surprisingly ambitious touch for such a self-consciously cheap TV is a gamma adjustment, while we also appreciated various noise reduction settings, a film mode and the option to turn the 100Hz system off if it doesn’t suit something you’re watching.

Finally, given the prominence of green issues at the moment, we guess Sharp will be keen for us to point out that as well as featuring a mercury-free chassis, the 40LE700E runs a claimed 40% more efficiently than a typical LCD TV of a similar size.

The 40LE700E’s audio probably actually falls somewhere between the three and four-star levels, but given the TV’s value for a 40-inch LED TV, we’ve felt generous and rounded it up to the four level.

On the plus side, it’s capable of revealing quite a lot of detail in a mix, and distributes this detail quite widely around your room.

The problems are familiar ones with flat TVs: a somewhat cramped mid range that sounds dense and muddy when pushed hard by an action scene, and a lack of bass response.

Good value

The 40LE700E is, to date, the cheapest 100Hz 40-42″ direct LED TV on the market, and so almost by default it has to rate as good value.

Especially as it delivers the main black level benefit of direct LED technology.

However, you don’t really need to spend all that much more to get yourself a slice of Samsung’s edge LED action, which might not quite match the Sharp on black level, but comfortably outguns it on motion handling, making its pictures overall more natural to watch.

Reaching a final conclusion on the Sharp 40LE700E is a pretty complicated business, for the simple reason that it’s such a mixed bag.

Its pictures deliver on its main LED promise, but let themselves down in other ways.

Its features are comprehensive in some ways, a little off the pace in others. Its sound works well at one end of the audio spectrum, but feels thin at the other. It’s good value in some respects, but acts its money in others.

Even its design is schizophrenic, with a pretty front and ugly rear. Time to rub our chins and go ‘hmmm…’.

We liked:

The 40LE700E’s price is attractive for a TV using direct LED technology and boasting 100Hz processing. The set’s design is easy on the eye when you’re looking right at it, too.

By far the most lovable thing about the 40LE700E, though, is the superb contrast of its pictures, as deep, deep blacks are able to sit within the same frame as crisp, dynamic colours and whites.

The picture knows how to reveal the sharpness of HD footage too, provided there’s not much motion around to soften things up, and finally we really appreciated some of the set-up flexibility – particularly the colour management feature.

We disliked:

This one’s easy: the set’s motion handling problems hang over the 40LE700E’s otherwise often glorious pictures like a brooding rain cloud in an otherwise clear sky.

The amount of motion blur on show, even with the 100Hz engine engaged, really can be quite distracting at times, especially during HD viewing when it suddenly takes the edge off the extreme sharpness on show during relatively static moments.

We’d have appreciated a bit more bass potential from the 40LE700E’s speakers too, and a touch more crispness to the set’s reproduction of average standard def sources.

Verdict:

In the end, the Sharp 40LE700E spends more time looking pretty damn good than it does looking blurry and disappointing, so it’s certainly worth hunting down for an audition, especially if you can find it for a knock-down price on some website or other.

It’s just a shame that during that audition you’ll have to weigh up whether the set’s motion handling weakness is a reasonable price to pay for the set’s affordable black level glories.

This review was written in conjunction with:

What Video & Hi-Def TV magazine

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With tumbling prices and features galore, standing out in the big-screen TV market isn’t easy.

However, Philips has managed it with distinction in the last 12 months – and amazingly the 40PFL9704 tops its previous successes.

It’s part of Philips’ 9000 series LED Pro range of TVs, which also includes the 46-inch Philips 46PFL9704.

A brushed aluminium frame and three-sided Ambilight system lends this 40″ LCD TV a unique look, but it’s the sheer quality of its hi-def pictures – and, more unusually, its built-in speakers – that give the 40PFL9704 the enviable status of being one of the best flatscreen TVs around.

Its on-screen success is largely down to what Philips calls LED Pro, a backlight system that features 224 LED lights arranged behind the entire screen, which can switch on and off individually.

Philips uses LED Pro to differentiate the 40PFL9704 from other less serious variants of LED tech available.

Compare this Philips’ ‘local dimming’ system (where any segment of the screen can be in total darkness while the segment beside can be at maximum brightness) to ‘edge’ LED lighting from the likes of Sony, Samsung and LG.

Edge LED systems are self-explanatory – LED lights around the frame shine light into the panel, potentially leaving the middle of the screen far less dynamic.

But although the 40PFL9704’s LED Pro system seems relatively high-end, it’s very similar to that found on Sharp’s recent sub-£700 LED TVs; at £1,800, this Philips is going to have to put in an exemplary performance.

Picture quality on this Full HD set is given a further boost by Philips own Perfect Pixel HD engine, the most interesting parts of which are a 200Hz system and Perfect Natural Motion, circuitry that’s designed to rid Blu-ray playback of blur and judder, respectively.

Ins and outs aren’t typical either, with a stunning five HDMI ports included alongside a multimedia USB port and, best of all, a built-in Wi-Fi module.

The latter allows the 40PFL9704 to stream music, video and photos from a computer on the same home network, though its primary function is to power this set’s Net TV feature.

A collection of widgets include some giving you access to YouTube videos and Ebay, and are operated solely from the TV’s remote control, a luscious affair that matches the TV’s silky metallic design.

Adding to its aura is Ambilight Spectra 3, a collection of yet more LED lights around the outside of the TV that projects coloured light on to the walls behind

Designed to reduce eye strain, Ambilight underlines the 40PFL9704’s high-end status. It’s presented here in its three-sided version, with lights around the sides and top of the rear of the TV.

Elsewhere in the 9704 Series is a 46-incher, while those after something even more unique should head for Philips’ 56PFL9954H. Otherwise known as Cinema 21:9, that £3,500 LCD TV can present Blu-ray discs in their native 2.35:1 or 2.40:1 aspect ratio.

The 40PFL9704’s performance with Blu-ray is irresistible.

Contrast is stunning, with a plasma-like richness to dark areas of the image.

During a space combat sequence in Star Trek on Blu-ray, the fine lights of far-off star systems are visible, with no halo whatsoever; LED Pro’s promise of local dimming is a reality and the screen hosts stunning contrast all over the display area.

Better still, the 40PFL9704’s wide viewing angle means you can watch from anywhere without any loss of colour or contrast – something that’s almost unheard of on an LCD TV (don’t let the 40PFL9704’s use of LED tech confuse you – this is an LCD TV at heart, which has been updated with a different backlighting system that aims to be more subtle).

Blu-ray smoothing

Though startling contrast is the 40PFL9704’s most delightful feature, it’s run pretty close by Perfect Natural Motion.

Working only with discs, not live TV, this tech estimates motion in the picture and corrects the judder – and it does it potently.

With Perfect Natural Motion on its lowest setting, Star Trek’s opening scene of a young Kirk racing a Chevrolet towards the Canyon is very fluent and easy to watch, though we did notice the occasional flicker.

In another scene where Kirk and Spock walk down the steps of Starfleet Academy, a noticeable flicker rings the edges of actors passing quickly through the shot in both the foreground and background.

The 200Hz system, which can only be used if Perfect Natural Motion is on at least the minimum setting, is slightly less accomplished.

During a panning close-up of fighting zebras from Life on Blu-ray, the 40PFL9704 arranges their markings without much judder or flicker, though there is a slight loss of resolution.

Soft Freeview pictures

In contrast to its superb HD performance, digital TV pictures look rather soft, with a sheen of processing across the picture; the 40PFL9704 does its best work on a hi-def diet.

That’s the one area that lets the 40PFL9704 down – and the main reason why you should consider, and certainly compare, this LED TV’s performance to that of a plasma.

Far friendlier to Freeview while being sharp enough with Blu-ray (and with comparable DVD performance), plasma’s continued success is proof that LCD manufacturers still have some work to do.

Although they appear to have solved LCD tech’s problem with contrast and reproducing deep black, it comes at a cost; the 40PFL9704’s price tag is around twice that of a decent plasma TV.

What you don’t tend to get on a plasma – aside from Panasonic’s high-end sets – is a host of extras that are included on the 40PFL9704, such as Wi-Fi, Net TV and video playback from USB.

Philips’ provision of five HDMI inputs is very welcome, though perhaps slightly overcooked for anyone but those who solely watch TV in high definition.

They’ll be useful to those with a couple of games consoles, a HDMI laptop, Sky +HD box – and anyone with designs on a Freeview HD set-top box.

Elsewhere, connectivity is just as comprehensive.

A set of component video inputs (which are capable of carrying a HD signal, bringing the 40PFL9704’s possible HD feed to a maximum of six!) are provided next to a couple of Scarts, a composite video input and even an S-video port – something that’s rapidly being deemed as unfashionable as almost all other TV brands remove them from new sets.

The USB port works well, while there is also a connection for a PC, some analogue stereo ins and outs, and a headphones jack.

No digital audio-out

Our only grumble about connectivity on the 40PFL9704 is the absence of an optical digital audio output.

A coaxial digital audio is provided, but the lack of optical could trouble some amplifiers.

Relegated from headline act to bit-part player on the 40PFL9704 is Ambilight, though it remains every bit the high-end feature.

Unique to Philips TVs, Ambilight Spectra 3 is a cinch to use – and as impressive as ever. Yet more LED lights are used, this time on the outside of the TV, hidden on the back of the frame.

The idea behind Ambilight is that it projects dynamically changing light that matches whatever is showing on the screen. So, for instance, images from a football match will usually mean green light from all sides, but when the camera goes to a close-up of the players, the colour of the shirts then get represented instead. It’s designed largely to reduce eye strain, though it puts on an impressive light show in itself.

A dedicated button on the remote toggles Ambilight on or off, while the on-screen menus contain settings to adjust its brightness, the separation of colours, and dominant colour – from warm white, blue, cool white or a colour of your own choice.

Ambilight can even be set to shine a white light when the TV is switched off, effectively acting as a lamp in your living room – as it uses LED lights, that’s a relatively eco-friendly idea.

Incidentally, having a lamp behind or alongside a big TV is a good idea; it’s easier on your eyes, and helps improve the perceived contrast you see on the screen – though a £10 lamp will do the job, making Ambilight seem an expensive luxury.

While the 40PFL9704 is hardly a media mogul, it does support most major file formats stored on a USB stick.

For such an expensive TV, media playback is rather restricted; in our tests we got MP4, MPEG, WMV and some AVI video files (though not most DivX movies) to play without any issues, alongside the usual MP3, WMA music and JPEG photos.

The absence of DivX HD support is a shame, if hardly a catastrophe, but it’s worth noting that bargain basement TVs from the likes of LG and Samsung can usually handle any file format you throw at them.

Stream over Wi-Fi

In contrast the 40PFL9704’s built-in Wi-Fi module is a real boon. Though hardly essential for a TV, we consider it a must-have on any product purporting to be a ‘connected TV’; having to either put a TV next to a broadband router or sliding an Ethernet cable around a living room will only delay the ‘net TV’ revolution.

That said, Wi-Fi streaming is very slow with video files, although it works much better with Net TV. It’s not the best platform of its type; browsing Ebay is a slow process, and much easier to do on a PC or laptop.

Most of the other widgets are fillers, though Screen Dreams gives you free access to a photo gallery of hi-res pictures that can be displayed full-screen.

With subwoofers strapped to its rear, the 40PFL9704 projects the most energetic sounds we’ve heard on a 40-inch TV this side of a Loewe screen.

Bass is slightly detached from the overall soundstage, but dialogue is always clear and far fuller than on most TVs.

A quasi ’surround’ mode doesn’t add much to what is already a great performance, but it does create even more depth and the occasional illusion of rear effects.

Easily worth the extra hulk it adds to the TV’s chassis, the 40PFL9704’s speakers are a runaway success and easily able to take the place of a separate home cinema system in a small living room.

For the last few years we’ve often wondered why some brands had dropped plasma in favour of LCD.

Although LCD tech continues to magnify even the slightest problem with images, Philips’ LED Pro at last delivers on the tech’s potential and achieves a picture quality that arguably tops the best plasmas.

Drenched in contrast and with minor blur, this elegant yet powerful LED set is decent value if you can afford it.

We liked:

Blu-ray discs with this much depth are something of a revelation, while accurate colours and a huge dollop of contrast make the 40PFL9704 a set to stun. There’s very little motion blur and on-screen action is lent even more fluidity by Perfect Natural Motion.

Arguably what makes this set truly stand out from the crowd is its audio. Powerful and nicely balanced stereo sound with plenty of bass is a rare thing indeed on a flatpanel TV.

The cost, of course, is slimness – this is a fat-panel compared to most – but serious AV fans will thank Philips for ignoring the trend for super-slim TVs in favour of some seriously punchy sonics.

Also worth a mention is the 40PFL9704’s versatility; it’s particularly good with Blu-ray and HDTV sources, but its treatment of DVD and even digital video files is also impressive.

We disliked:

Though undoubtedly a TV high on quality, the attractiveness of the 40PFL9704’s Perfect Natural Motion feature is ultimately down to personal taste.

We’re prepared to live with the odd blemish in exchange for some giddy depth, though others may not be.

The occasional – though distracting – flicker from Perfect Natural Motion aside (it’s best left on its lowest setting), the only other serious concern for some will be the 40PFL9704’s treatment of digital TV pics from its built-in Freeview tuner.

Soft, noisy and looking over-processed, it’s a serious low point on the 40PFL9704, though thankfully this slight weakness with standard definition doesn’t stretch to DVD, making this as good an all-rounder as any LCD TV.

Final verdict:

A benchmark LED set it may be, but a good plasma – which costs half the price – remains a good alternative. Our advice is to bide your time and shop around for a lower price, but don’t let the 40PFL9704 fall off your radar, because this is one luscious LED TV.

This review was written in conjunction with:

What Video & Hi-Def TV magazine

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The Panasonic TX-P42G10 uses plasma panel rather than the more common LCD technology. But that’s not it’s only unique selling point, for it is also our only contender with a built-in Freesat HD tuner.

It’s also nice to see that the plasma screen is one of Panasonic’s NeoPDP models, with their much-enhanced brightness and pared down running costs.

More good news finds the panel sporting a full HD resolution, which is a big deal in the plasma world, where precious few 42in screens manage better than HD Ready resolutions. To our knowledge, Panasonic remains the only maker of full HD 42in plasmas.

Continuing the numbers game, meanwhile, is the P42G10’s blistering 2million:1 claimed contrast ratio, which leaves the figures of even the best of our LCD rivals looking feeble. And still we haven’t got anywhere near the end of the P42G10’s attractions.

For it’s also got an SD card slot for playing JPEG photos and AVCHD movie files, an Ethernet port readying the TV for the imminent launch of the BBC’s eagerly anticipated Freesat iPlayer service, 600Hz processing for removing judder and flicker from pictures, plus the brand’s own V-real 4 processing.

There’s also proprietary Intelligent Frame Creation (IFC) processing, which inserts subframes of image data to enhance motion processing, although this is actually part of the 600Hz system.

Performance

The latter really does a very good job of reducing the judder that’s long been one of the few failings we’ve found with Panasonic plasmas, and it makes images seem generally more stable and colourful along the way.

Colours warrant more coverage, since their vibrancy and expansive tonal range, especially with HD, offers more proof of the worth of Panasonic’s NeoPDP technology. As you’d expect with plasma technology, the P42G10 also performs mightily well when it comes to black levels, which look deeper, more natural and more detailed than those of any of our LCD rivals.

Wrapping up a really terrific picture effort with HD is some outstanding sharpness, as the set really rams home that important full HD pixel count.

The P42G10’s flaws are relatively minor, consisting of a little residual judder during fast camera pans, some rare and quite low-level processing artefacts when engaging the IFC system, a few rogue colour tones (especially when watching SD sources) and a slightly soft look to standard-definition pictures.

With some decently robust audio the only barrier to total irresistibility is this screen’s rather steep price.

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After producing a stream of extravagantly specified premium TVs, Philips is finally catering for the less well off with the 42PFL7404, and we hope this doesn’t mean too many cut corners.

It certainly doesn’t look cheap: the glossy black bezel is extremely slender, and is dramatically offset by a transparent cowl curving forward around the TV’s extremities. However, there’s no sign of Philips’ usual Ambilight technology.

The set lacks the extravagant fifth HDMI and Ethernet port of models higher up the range, but most users will likely find the four provided HDMIs and the multimedia-savvy USB port more than adequate.

As per every Philips TV these days, even the relatively affordable ones, the 42PFL7404 is stuffed with picture processing. The ‘engine’ here is called Pixel Precise HD – a system that’s roughly half as powerful as Philips’ flagship Perfect Pixel HD engine.

While the former can’t handle as many pixels per second as its bigger brother, it still tackles such issues as motion blur, colour saturations, SD upscaling and noise suppression more potently than any other TV at this price range.

Performance

In fact, when fully optimised, the 42PFL7404’s images can look sensational. The sharpness with which it presents standard and high definition is a joy to behold, especially as the provided motion processing removes practically all traces of judder and blurring from objects as they traverse the screen.

Colours are phenomenally intense, too, radiating off the screen with such force that we almost suspected they were trying to hide other problems such as a poor black level response, perhaps.

But, actually, the black levels are good by LCD standards, and while its pictures aren’t as polished as those of Philips’ awesome 9000 series (there’s more grain and shimmering around objects with the motion processing engaged), they have nothing to be ashamed of. As long as you are careful with the set’s many picture adjustments, that is.

If you’re too heavy handed with the noise reduction, pictures become soft. Conversely, too much motion processing can produce lots of distracting side-effects. And some of the sharpness tools can lead to graininess if set too high.

It only takes a little initial experimentation and a reasonable level of ongoing commitment to keep things looking tickety boo, though, and your efforts are always handsomely rewarded.

Add to all the picture glories some solid audio that’s rather light on bass, and the 42PFL7404 adds up to a really compelling option for anyone whose budget points them towards the sub-£1,000 flatscreen price bracket.

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Cast your mind back to our review of the LG 42SL9000. That five-star-bagging set is, to all intents and purposes, the same as the LG 42SL9500 here, except that the latter is exclusive to Currys, while the former is available in other outlets, including Comet.

The 42SL9500 is similarly gorgeous with a blade-thin profile encased in a plate-like bezel that fades into transparency at its outermost edge and the whole thing sits on a swivelling stand.

Features

Like its stablemate, it’s an edge-lit LED model with a 1080p panel driven by LG’s much-admired XD Engine processing.

The backlight configuration makes the almost improbably slight depth of less than 30mm possible. And into this LG has managed to cram an equally unlikely amount of features.

You don’t get web widgets, but that’s about all that is missing from a roll call that includes Bluetooth connectivity for use with wireless headphones or for transferring such suitable music and picture files to the screen for playback.

The image electronics include 100Hz TruMotion digital scanning to smooth over any movement glitches, while an ‘Intelligent Sensor’ is on hand to monitor the ambient light levels in order to optimise brightness output.

The tweaks are sufficiently refined and far-reaching to enable calibration to professional standards, while a pitch-perfect Picture Wizard helps those of a less technical bent set up the screen to their liking without so much as a hint of anxiety. And if you lose the paper manual, LG has thoughtfully uploaded a virtual version into the set’s software for your perusal.

The 42SL9500, as with all top-line televisions from this manufacturer, is very well connected, with a quartet of HDMI inputs to handle all your hi-def requirements and is joined by all the other digital and analogue regulars, plus an optical digital audio output and a USB port.

Ease of use

We’re almost weary of telling anyone who will listen just how good LG’s current operating system is, but we’ll keep on banging the drum on its behalf until someone else invents something better (Philips’ gorgeous spectral-blue interface possibly notwithstanding).

Everything is arranged under large, attractively rendered tiles that, combined with a peerlessly intuitive architecture, make setup and adjustment about as easy as it could possibly be. There’s also a ‘quick’ menu arranged as a wheel that enables you to cycle through the parts of the system you’re likely to need most.

You can also assign different picture settings to each input if you want to accommodate the differing demands of, for example, TV and movie viewing.

Picture

LED is really getting its eye in these days and the 42SL9500 is one of the best we’ve seen.

The colour palette is one of the most lifelike you’ll encounter this side of plasma, with a range that can go from dazzlingly dynamic to authentic restraint in a moment, with the sorts of tones that must look absolutely right in order to pass muster (flesh, grass, sky and so forth) handled with apparently effortless fidelity.

Blacks are also surprisingly good, particularly if you take the time to adjust the brightness and contrast properly, and the LEDs manage to spread their light evenly across the screen, only occasionally leaving traces of their peripheral presence in conditions of almost total blackout.

Movement can jerk slightly now and then, but the LG manages about as well as we’ve come to expect from LCD and the overall experience, with both standard and high-definition source material, is hugely satisfying.

Sound

The 42SL9500 pulls off the same neat trick with its audio quality as its sibling, producing a sound that’s rich, deep and resonant enough to defy its almost two-dimensional body.

The bass levels aren’t going to register on the Richter Scale, but it’s loud enough to fill a decent-sized room at just a third of the way up and the ‘image’, if not three dimensional, is spacious and faithful, with a sparkling mid-range and passable cinematic presence when required.

Value

Buyers on a budget might balk at the grand-or-so price tag. On the other hand, it’s a good a telly as you’ll find at any price (and better than plenty of more expensive models); it’s got more features than anyone can possibly need and is stunningly attractive.

If you can’t forgive the Currys exclusivity, buy the nigh-on identical 42SL9000. Otherwise, this 42in LCD television should be at, or at least very close to, the top of your flatscreen shopping list.

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New LED technology, home networking and endless calibration options help make the Toshiba 55SV685DB a prime candidate for a hi-def home cinema setup, but its flaws leave it looking like an expensive luxury.

Features

The 55SV685DB’s key feature is its LED backlighting. Capable of switching on and off, according to the demands of any video source, its stack of white lights are capable of local dimming and promise the simultaneous delivery of inky blacks and bright whites on any part of the screen.

On-screen menus include a Backlight Adjustment Pro that optimises performance and shows a bar measuring ambient light and a graph that plots the exact brightness.

As befits the TV’s status as a high-end set, it possesses some advanced picture processing circuitry in the form of Active Vision M200.

Crucially, it includes a 200Hz frame rate to eliminate blur, while an additional film stabilisation mode creates extra smoothness. The last part of the processing jigsaw is Toshiba’s celebrated Resolution+, circuitry that’s designed to boost the quality of standard-def Freeview and DVD to hi-def levels of detail.

Almost any source can be attached to the 55SV685DB’s roster of in and outputs. An Ethernet LAN port powers the 55SV685DB’s DLNA networking feature; plug the TV into your broadband router and you can stream music, photos and video from a PC on the same home network.

In practice it’s easier to get such digital media files into the TV via the set’s USB Pro input. The SD card slot will only show JPEGs.

Ease of use

Thumbnail pictures from the SD card are slow to load, while the DLNA networking is also very frustrating.

Finding another PC on the network is a cinch, but actually viewing any type of media is convoluted and unreliable. The system can play MP3 music and JPEG photos, along with AVI and MPEG videos, but basic navigation is slow and dogged by delays.

The biggest problem by far is the remote control, which doesn’t take charge of these features. Skipping back a step isn’t possible and the TV is often left ‘hanging’.

An Auto Brightness feature removes the harshness of the factory settings. It’s especially useful since a lot of users will avoid the complicated menus.

Picture

The 55SV685D’s delivery of Blu-ray is breathtaking; it handles hi-def scenes from NASA’s Greatest Missions with rare skill, seeking out endless detail of the Discovery ship as it launches from Cape Canaveral.

A pin-sharp – though rapidly moving – helicopter leaves a trail of visible heat as it swoops by the rocket; the backdrop of billowing exhaust clouds and the ultra-bright orange tail of fire from the Shuttle look absolutely stunning.

The LEDs are doing their work here, separating bright areas of the image from the duller background with astonishing accuracy. When the Shuttle does reach space, the surroundings are jet black, whilst at the same time dark areas of its fuselage are clearly detailed.

The quoted contrast ratio is hard to believe, but it is impressively high, while the picture remains free of haloing. A more testing passage from The Matrix Reloaded demonstrates the 55SV685D’s skill with motion and judder.

The 200Hz scanning defines images slightly clearer on its own, but switch on the film mode and Blu-ray judder vanishes. The camera pans smoothly downwards into the depths of Zion, a shot that tends to lack stability on most LCD televisions.In another breathtaking scene, the edges of the fast-moving Nebakanezer are rendered silky smooth.

However, the 55SV685D’s treatment of digital TV pictures is frankly shoddy. Freeview and even cable channels suffer from noise, stepped diagonal edges and blocking, to the extent that they just don’t look real.

That’s not excusable at this price, and especially on a set that has Resolution+ onboard to upscale SD sources.

This system, when used on its lowest setting, does work, but even 720p hi-def footage on BBC HD looks soft.

Sound

As a rule, the bigger the TV, the better the sound and the 55SV685D proves this with plenty of stereo separation and a noticeably bigger range than on smaller sets. Using the standard setting, background effects are well-defined, with clear dialogue and the overall sound free from distortion.

Value

If you’re after a large screen with the latest LED technology for a dedicated home cinema system and you watch only Blu-ray, this set is hard to beat.

But there are cheaper plasma TVs available, which can deliver digital TV and DVD pictures that are far superior and in a more user-friendly manner.

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Any home cinema fan will tell you that big is best when it comes to screen size. It’s a philosophy Toshiba seems to understand too, having bolstered its Regza ranges to offer a choice of 55-inch sets, this one being the Toshiba 55ZV635D.

The high-end SV series really puts Toshiba back at the front of TV innovation, with local dimming LED backlights giving the mammoth display even more impact.

• Read TechRadar’s Toshiba 46SV685DB review

This ZV set is the more frugal non-LED option, which dramatically reduces the price, so makes this set, in terms of pounds per square inch, something of a bargain.

To keep the cost down elsewhere, Toshiba has avoided complicated multimedia features like online connectivity and wireless media streaming in favour of more sensible picture-enhancing features like 200Hz motion processing and Resolution+ video upscaling.

Other key boxes that Toshiba has ticked are Full HD resolution (naturally), a decent user interface and ample connectivity, including four HDMI ports. And as a bonus, there’s also a USB port for inputting MP3s, JPEGs and video (including DivX) files, and an SD card slot for loading your digital snaps. Needless to say, this 55in screen makes a fine photo-viewer.

It’s no wallflower either, even without the LED backlighting. The expansive screen is surrounded by a wide border that makes it look more like a 60in plasma, but its edges are softened by an attractive design feature that Toshiba calls Deep Lagoon.

It refers to the way the single front piece of glass, which runs right to the frame, fades from black to white at the edges to give an impression of depth.

It’s not the thinnest panel on the market either, although that’s no practical disadvantage, while the stereo speakers deliver sound from behind the panel.

Up against the wall

You can wallmount this set just like any other flatpanel TV, so long as your bracket is of a certain strength, but the supplied stand is of a sleek and sturdy design, too.

Setting up is a simple case of plugging in a terrestrial aerial and letting the auto-tune feature locate and load all of the Freeview and analogue channels. Toshiba has yet to offer a Freesat set, but with four HDMI ports there’s plenty of room for external set-top boxes.

Toshiba’s onscreen GUI isn’t as slick as the graphics of, say, Sony or Samsung, but it’s intuitive enough and with the big colour-coded keys of the remote control, it’s easy to operate the TV straight out of the box. It’s also relatively responsive, unlike the often rather sluggish channel changes you tend to find with Philips and older Samsung sets.

The 8-day EPG is also usefully arranged for at-a-glance scheduling. That big panoramic screen gives high-definition material real impact in Full HD mode. Using a 1080p24 feed (to avoid any scaling or processing) from a Panasonic Blu-ray player brings out the ravishing detail and vivid colours of JJ Abrams’ Star Trek.

The native 1080p resolution of the screen seems to bristle with warts-and-all detail. Not that the young crew of the Enterprise need to worry about their close-ups. It’s hard not to be impressed by the scale and accuracy of the picture, but in direct comparison, this set doesn’t have the dark blacks of Panasonic’s plasma screens and the colours are not the most vivid amongst LCD sets either.

And, compared to Toshiba’s own LED-lit panels, it’s clearly not breaking any records in the contrast department either – something our Tech Labs reinforce with the screen’s 1,150:1 contrast measurement in Dynamic mode.

Greyscaling is actually very good on the whole, but during the darker scenes, there are times when black clothing, for instance, simply merges into the scenery. Few precious artefacts Thankfully, the 55ZV635D’s features cut the mustard.

Toshiba’s Active Vision M200HD processing succeeds in reducing image lag without introducing motion artifacts. It’s essentially combining 100Hz processing with intelligent backlight scanning to create smooth movement without the judder that could otherwise be very jarring on a screen of this size.

It sounds like some kind of weapon of mass destruction, but the MetaBrain Engine is what Tosh calls the processing chip that powers its Active Vision picture enhancement suite and Resolution+. The latter tries it’s best, but standard-definition material can still look pretty awful on this 55in TV.

LCD panels at this size are quite unforgiving of poor source material and some general Freeview channels are broadcast at horribly over-compressed bitrates. My advice would be to rely as little as possible on upscaling and stick to HD material where possible.

No audio justice

It’s difficult for a TV of this stature to integrate speakers that can do it justice, and even at full volume, the 10W-per channel available doesn’t measure up to the scale of the picture. However, it’s by no means tinny, and the sound is well projected, so it’ll do to be getting along with.

Perhaps the best aspect of the audio is Dolby Volume – the simple circuit that equalizes your audio and stops those evil advertising soundtracks from deafening you in between programmes. It might not have the razzamatazz of its more expensive LED sibling, or the exciting online functionality of an Ethernet-equipped set, but I’d still recommend this dazzlingly detailed behemoth for home cinema duties.

LED backlighting is a big advantage in a bright room, but not essential for a dedicated cinema environment, and all of the key features, like a full set of inputs and decent motion processing, are present.

And those shy speakers won’t be an issue if you’re planning to do this cinematic set justice and partner it with a full 5.1 home cinema system.

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Yes, we had to do a double take at the 32AV615’s price, too. Surely a ‘big’ brand can’t really be selling a 32in LCD TV for less than £400? Well, we’ve checked and double checked and the price is definitely correct.

Which raises just one big question: what’s the catch? The main one is the 32AV615’s lack of Resolution+ processing.

This scaling circuitry, found on all the TVs higher up Toshiba’s current range, does a remarkably good job of re-sizing standard-definition pictures to suit HD Ready/full HD LCD screens. So it will doubtless be sorely missed on the 32AV615.

Another niggle is that the screen can’t take 1080p feeds (just 1080i), and the provision of three HDMIs where other Toshiba TVs have four. At this price, though, we’d have tolerated just two.

The set sports no multimedia accoutrements such as USB or SD ports, either, and only boasts an HD Ready resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels versus the full HD resolutions of most of our other contenders. But while we know some people are fixated on screen resolution, experience suggests that a good 32in HD ready TV can look better than an average full HD one.

More potentially troubling is the screen’s relatively low claimed contrast ratio of 18,000:1, although quoted figures are notoriously untrustworthy as a guide to real contrast performance.

From here on in, though, the news is mostly good. For instance, the onscreen menus contain a surprising amount of tweaks for such a budget screen, including an adaptive luma control, colour transient improvement, and flesh tone adjustment.

Performance

More importantly, the 32AV615’s picture quality is startlingly good for the money. Colours, for instance, are rich, reasonably natural and even quite subtle – a million miles from the murky mess usually found on ultra-budget TVs.

Objects moving across the screen don’t blur or stutter as much as expected, either, and although certainly softer than with Toshiba’s step-up 32AV635, standard-definition pictures are still eminently watchable, despite not having Resolution+ to help out.

HD images, meanwhile, are really quite sharp despite the set’s modest resolution. Even black levels are a cut above the grey mush usually witnessed on really cheap TVs, even though their depth does come at the expense of rather a lot of shadow detail at times.

With some pretty run-of-the-mill audio to accompany its pictures, the 32AV615 fails to outgun any of its rivals in this test in terms of pure performance. But what really matters as far as we are concerned is that the 32AV615 surpasses everything we’ve seen at anything like this price.

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