Philips makes watching TV easier on the eye

The revolutionary Ambilight™ technology was found to reduce eye strain and create a much more relaxed viewing environment.

Ambilight enhances the TV viewing environment by projecting background lighting from the rear of the TV set onto the wall behind the set. The result is a perfect blending of the TV into the living room decor, with an improvement in the perceived picture quality in terms of contrast, colours and detail. Ambilight works by analyzing the incoming TV signals in real time and producing background lighting that matches the images displayed on the screen.

"Consumers in the Middle East have already discovered the pleasure of watching Ambilight-enhanced TV, as sales of the Pixel Plus 2 Ambilight TVs with the technology have sold exceptionally well in the two months since its launch," said Khalid Tuer, Philips Regional General Manager, Middle East and Africa.

"Ambilight is the result of Philips insight into how people watch television at home and reinforces our commitment to using technology to enrich and improve the entertainment experience. These findings reinforce what our designers understood when developing the technology - that that lighting around the TV set contributes to a more relaxed viewing experience and a better perceived picture quality in terms of contrast, depth and colour vividness," Tuer added.

The research was conducted by Dr. S.H.A. Begemann and Ir. A.C. Westerlaken of the university's Lighting Science, Engineering and Design department in the Faculty of Building, Architecture and Planning. The researchers developed test procedures designed to scientifically validate the claims made by Philips about its Ambilight technology. Using 87 test subjects (two-thirds of them male), viewing experiments were conducted in a test room with 'neutral' living room conditions and a representative viewing distance.

The results showed that under typical home cinema viewing conditions (darkened room), Ambilight reduced eye strain in 60-70% of the test subjects, depending on the Ambilight setting and the nature of the program material being viewed. In particular, Ambilight was found to provide a content-related improvement in the overall viewing experience.

The reduced level of eye strain is explained by the fact that Ambilight creates a more favourable relationship between the picture, the immediate surroundings at the side of the set and the overall wall luminance. The Society of Television and Motion Picture Engineers also recommends backlighting displays for maximum TV performance. The study showed that using the 'warm white' Ambilight preset, the viewing experience closely approaches the ideal ratio of 10:3:1, which represents much lower contrasts in luminance than those encountered under typical viewing conditions.

Ambilight is available in two new Philips Pixel Plus 2 LCD-based FlatTV™ sets: the 32-inch (81 cm) 32PF9966 and the 42-inch (107 cm) 42PF9986, as well as two exclusively designed plasma sets, the 42-inch 42PF9966 and the 50-inch (127 cm) 50PF9966.