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Philips 8008

CONCLUSION – One could be forgiven for thinking that the Philips 55PFL8008S/12 is simply a reskin of last year’s 8007 series, given the many similarities between the two in terms of image quality down to the SD processing quirks. Nevertheless, there’s at least one substantial improvement on the 8008 over its predecessor: out-of-the-box gamma is now satisfyingly rich rather than washed-out, contributing heavily to a more immersive viewing experience.

Prior to the publication of this review, Philips sent word that the RRP (recommended retail price) of the 55PFL8008 has been reduced from £2499 to £1999, which makes the TV even better value for money. Sure, we wished the company had done away with forced edge enhancement however minute; and provided a functional 2:2 cadence detection mode for those of us in PAL land. Also, its Smart TV platform was sluggish and content-sparse (no LoveFilm, ITV Player, 4oD or Demand 5) compared with its peers.

But to penalise the 55PFL8008S for these minor shortcomings is to miss the forest for the trees, because its HD picture quality is comfortably the equal of this year’s best LED TVs, thanks to excellent contrast performance and supremely accurate colours. Add a brilliantly designed remote with integrated QWERTY keyboard and Wiimote-like pointer, impressive audio, as well as Ambilight – a Philips exclusive – to the mix, and this HDTV is a must audition for buyers looking for a strong alternative to the throngs of Samsung and Sony LED LCDs on the market.


PICTURE QUALITY (2D) – The 55PFL8008S/12 delivers a deep shade of blacks by LED LCD standards, thanks to the onboard VA-type panel. Granted it’s no plasma, but with a measured black level of 0.047 cd/m2 (both on a full-field video black and 4×4 ANSI checkerboard pattern) after pegging peak luminance to our usual target of 120 cd/m2 for critical viewing in a dimly-lit environment, Philips’ latest 8000 series comfortably matched the contrast performance of this year’s top-ranked LED TVs like the Samsung F8000 and Sony W9.

Interestingly, the Philips 8008 is one of the rare LED-lit LCD televisions which do not dim their backlight when asked to display a full black screen, as long as you make sure [Dynamic backlight] is switched off. And there’s really no need for any auto-dimming trickery, because once we toned down [Backlight contrast] in keeping with our 120 cd/m2peak white target, the 55PFL8008 exhibited extremely good backlight uniformity for an edge LED TV, with only the mildest hint of brightening along the sides, which is pretty much unavoidable on a 55″ LCD panel especially a VA one.

Like all LCD-based displays we’ve tested without any help from motion-compensated frame interpolation (MCFI) technology, the 55in 8008′s native motion resolution came in at 300 lines as determined by the horizontally scrolling test sequence in Chapter 31 of the FPD Benchmark Software disc. This can be boosted to around 900 lines by engaging BOTH [Clear LCD] and [Perfect Natural Motion] – enabling one without the other will not bring about any improvement in motion resolution.

Whilst [Clear LCD] is an on/off toggle (we saw no reason not to leave it on all the time), [Perfect Natural Motion] comes in three strengths: “Minimum“, “Medium” and “Maximum“. Based on our observations, going up the intensity ladder did not improve motion resolution beyond 900 lines, but only increased the frequency of interpolation artefacts. If you have to engage [Perfect Natural Motion], “Minimum” is sufficient. Unfortunately this lowest setting still introduced unmistakable soap opera effect into 24p material like Blu-ray movies and US dramas, and so we would limit the use of [Perfect Natural Motion] to only video-based content such as sports programmes.

We spun a few of our favourite Blu-ray discs, and was extremely impressed with the HD picture quality on the Philips 55PFL8008, owing to its convincing black-level response, accurate post-calibrated greyscale and colours, not to mention 2.4 gamma which showered every type of content with the sort of velvety, eye-popping richness that’s just not replicable on lesser displays.

Our review sample applied a tiny amount of edge enhancement to even 1:1 pixel-mapped 1920×1080 material even with [Sharpness] set to “0” and [Advanced sharpness] disabled, which is perhaps unsurprising given Philips’ fondness for picture processing. This may give the spurious impression that the 55PFL8008S is more detailed than competing HDTVs, though we are of the opinion that good 1080p source looks detailed enough as it is and doesn’t require additional sharpening. This undefeatable edge enhancement was not present in the [Game] or [Computer] modes which do not seem to have many ill effects – we actually gave serious consideration to calibrating and watching in these modes for their cleaner look, but ultimately decided against it once we found out colour decoding was awry for non-PC content.

Moving onto the increasingly less important domain of standard definition, the Philips 8008 behaved very similarly to its predecessor the 8007, in that it did some things well and some things not so well. SD images were upscaled crisply with full detail capture, though we spotted a smidgen more ringing than flagship HDTVs from rival television manufacturers. Video-based deinterlacing was very good too, with most jagged edges being suppressed effectively in both test patterns and real-world material.

It’s when it came to standard-def PAL film-based content that the 55PFL8008 stumbled – the TV completely failed to detect 2:2 cadence, which means that 576i over-the-air broadcast of movies will be affected by jaggies and resolution loss. Furthermore, the processor would occasionally misapply film motion to video-based content from the inbuilt digital tuner, resulting in visible stutter (most obvious on news channels with scrolling ticker, for exampleBBC News). Fortunately both issues can be circumvented by sending a progressive video signal to the television, i.e. let a competent external device (e.g. Blu-ray/DVD player or set-top box) handle the deinterlacing process.

The Philips 55PFL8008S/12 uses active 3D technology, and ships with two pairs of fairly chunky active-shutter 3D glasses. We had a blast watching various tri-dimensional material on the set: images were bright, colourful, full-res, and largely devoid of crosstalk; there was also less flicker from the shuttering lenses compared to certain active 3D makes (such as Panasonic and Sony). Because of its 60Hz-centric design, panning shots in 3D 24fps (e.g. 3D Blu-ray) and particularly side-by-side 50Hz from Sky 3D betrayed some judder which can be smoothened by engaging [Perfect Natural Motion], though this will introduce unwanted soap opera effect to 3D films.

A review of a Philips HDTV would be incomplete without touching upon Ambilight, the company’s integrated bias lighting solution. The version implemented on the 55PFL8008 is the three-sided Ambilight XL where LED bulbs are arranged along the top and the sides at the back of the panel, casting a comforting glow BEHIND the television, which works very well in reducing eye fatigue and boosting perceived contrast when watching the TV in dark rooms. While it’s possible to set the Ambilight system to dynamically adjust its colour and intensity based on the on-screen content, we suggest that you use the [ISF Warm White] option, and drop [Brightness] to “2” – this brings the Ambilight’s colour close to D65, and luminance to 10% of peak white as recommended by SMPTE. In this configuration, enabling [Ambilight] only added 2 watts on top of the 8008′s usual power consumption, which will surely please green-minded owners out there.


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