Philips advances its ambilight flat TVs range for 2007

Since its introduction in 2004, Ambilight has been redefining the viewing experience and reducing eyes strain for more than a million homes around the world. The Ambilight technology enhances the TV viewing environment and adds a new dimension to the viewing experience by projecting background lighting from the rear of the FlatTV unit onto the wall, through analyzing the incoming TV signals in real time and producing background lighting that matches the onscreen images.

The result is not just a more vivid and immersive viewing experience with enhanced contrast and colors, but also a perfect blending of the FlatTV into the living room décor.

New LED illumination for improved color saturation

Evolving into 2007, the new range of Philips Ambilight FlatTVs now features LED illumination for its Ambilight backlight technology to generate more saturated colors and allow for a more compact set design.

Ambilight 2 Channel is the cornerstone of the 2007 range. The 2 channel processing offers left and right independent color channels for a better adaptation and consistency with the color content and contrast of the onscreen image.

Designed to suit individual viewing preferences, the Ambilight operation can be adjusted accordingly to three preset modes - "Relaxed", "Moderate" and "Dynamic".

"In addition to adding total immersion to the viewing experience, the new lineup of Philips Ambilight FlatTVs is also more energy efficient than the previous range, made possible by the innovative LED light source," said Khalid Tuer, Regional General Manager Consumer Electronics Philips Middle East.

"By being Full HD (1080p), the 2007 range is also future-proof, which means consumers can experience the future of HD content in 1080p resolution today through a variety of sources such as gaming consoles, Blue-ray Disc players and media center PCs, as well as enjoy the full benefits of HDTV content from broadcasters for many years to come."

Perfect Pixel HD Engine to deliver razor sharp images that are cleaner, smoother and more natural looking

Perfect Pixel HD Engine is the next generation of Philips' picture-improvement technologies, dedicated to provide best possible picture quality on LCD TVs. This Engine makes pictures displayed on the LCD screen sharper, more natural, with vivid color and smoother natural motion fully capable of meeting the demands of the coming generation of HDTV content.

Perfect Pixel HD Engine brings together a suite of Philips picture quality improvement technologies: 100Hz ClearLCD, HD Natural Motion, Horizontal & Vertical Luminance Transient Improvement (LTI) and Color Booster. The result is an unrivalled level of High Definition picture quality.

100Hz ClearLCD addresses a common limitation found in many ordinary LCD TVs - motion artifacts in fast-moving pictures. By changing the physical response of the liquid crystals using Overdrive Control technology, ClearLCD cuts the response time to just three milliseconds. Response time is further improved by doubling the refresh rate to 100 hertz, producing fast, streak-free action without the blurring previously experienced on LCD TVs. 100Hz ClearLCD tackles also the 'hold' problem - a perceived blurring caused by the human eye as each frame is 'held' by continuous backlighting, then moved in steps with each new frame.

Advanced Perfect Pixel HD Engine picture processing

Video processing determines the quality of an image in a high definition TV set more than anything else. As a general rule, having sufficient processing power and processing accuracy is much more important than just increasing the number of pixels. In fact, if the processing isn't good enough, increasing the number of pixels will magnify problems - and the perceived picture quality will be diminished.

Philips' Perfect Pixel HD Engine provides more advanced video-signal processing than any other system on the market. It employs 14-bit color processing and combines it with advanced sharpness and resolution-enhancement techniques.

One of the most sophisticated aspects of Perfect Pixel HD Engine is Philips' proprietary Horizontal & Vertical LTI process. This sub-pixel application increases the number of lines and pixels per line to match the resolution of the display panel. Perfect Pixel HD Engine also goes a step further by changing the luminance value of each individual pixel: each pixel of the incoming picture is enhanced to match the surrounding pixels, resulting in a much sharper and more natural picture.

The vivid colors with natural skin tones that characterize Perfect Pixel HD Engine are produced by Philips' new Color Booster. This increases the saturation of colors, making them even more vibrant. The saturation increase is calculated per pixel, and is stronger with pixels having low saturation. This eliminates 'over-saturating' and unwanted skin-tone or white-tone shifts. Color Booster with 14-bit processing generates a color palette of 4 trillion colors.

As with previous image-processing, Perfect Pixel HD Engine is supported by Philips' Active Control, a dynamic process which continuously measures and corrects incoming signals to give the best and most consistent picture quality. Sharpness, noise, contrast, color and ambient light of incoming signals are all measured. To measure ambient light levels, Perfect Pixel HD uses a system called Auto Ambient Light Adaptation. Once the level is established, the contrast, dynamic contrast and color settings are adjusted automatically. The improvements give viewers the best possible image under all viewing conditions.

The result of all the elements embodied in Philips Perfect Pixel HD Engine is a Full HD 1080p display, which is capable of delivering an unsurpassed resolution of 6.2 million pixels. It brings unrivalled HD picture quality with sharp and fluid motion for the perfect movie experience and sporting programs.

Availability

The new range of Philips Ambilight FlatTVs featuring LED illumination and Perfect Pixel HD Engine come in screen sizes of 42" & 47", namely 42PFL9532 & 47PFL9532. The products will be available starting Nov'07 at all leading consumer electronics outlets.