Philips Unveils New Glowing AmbiLight TVs May 30, 2008

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Philips took TVs in a new direction with its cool, glowing AmbiLight TVs and its even more stunning Aurea TVs. Today, the company is building on its AmbiLight technology with the Full HD (1080p) 9600 family, comprising 32in, 37in, 42in and 47in models.

The 9600 series features the new AmbiLight Spectra technology which, in addition to projecting the light of the screen’s main colours on the back wall, it also adjusts the timing of the LEDs to enhance the motion of on-screen images.

Under the hood, Philips has been busy beefing up the performance. The TVs come with the latest version of the Perfect Pixel HD processing engine which doubles the processing power to 500 million pixels per second. The panels are the fastest yet with a 2ms response time, combined with 100Hz picture processing for less motion blur. The adaptive backlight can adjust itself to your room’s lighting conditions the sets boast a dynamic contrast range of 30,000:1 – almost 4 times higher than the previous generation.

Those worried about looks will be happy to find no speaker grilles mucking up the front. The ‘Invisible Speaker’ is housed behind the frame while the clear shroud allows sound out. They come with a very useful 4 HDMI 1.3a inputs.

The sets are due to launch next month and you can expect to pay that bit extra for the AmbiLight technology. Prices for the 32PFL9603D, 37PFL9603D, 42PFL9603D, and 47PFL9603D are £999, £1,499, £1,799 and £1,999, respectively.-Martin Lynch

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