Philips 32PW9616 Review

Overall Rating

Sound clarity from internal speakers, brightness and contrast of picture, 5 AV inputs, cabinet design.

Audio: only one digital audio input, no centre channel pre-out, no DTS, wireless surround speakers are hissy and clicky, but OK if they are wired in. Noticeable delay between sound and picture due to digital picture processing, even worse with an external digital audio input (gives poor lip-sync). Video: image ghosting, geometry and convergence of all the sets I've seen (including mine) not as good as the ones given to the magazine reviewers. It's pot luck whether you receive a set with a tolerable picture or not. Philips and the repair agent that my set was sent to were extremely slow and unhelpful when I had a problem. Philips regard a very large range of picture imperfections as "normal for a domestic TV". I thought that their high end TV's like this that won loads of awards would be better than it has turned out in practice.

I bought a 32PW9616 in May 2001. Sometimes I thought the picture was very good, at other times I didn't. A few things bothered me, one was a horizontal ghosting around all images, even from an RGB source and another was the image judder with fast moving things like horizontal text. In December 2001 the TV developed an annoying "ping" sound from the tube. I put up with it for a while but as it only got worse I sent it for repair under warranty. The repair has been a shambles. Although the tube has been replaced, the picture geometry and convergence are now all over the place and I can't stand watching it. Both the repairers and Philips refuse to do anything about it, claiming that the picture "is within normal expectations for this type of set". It took six months to 'repair' the set. I have since discovered that all the Philips sets with 100Hz digital picture processing give this horizontal ghosting and it is related to the sharpness control. Unfortunately you can't turn it off and as it operates in the digital video processor, it can't be altered. My advice is look very closely at the picture of the set you are actually going to buy, particularly at horizontal and vertical straight lines around the edges of the screen, colour convergence in the corners and at the ghosting effect. If it doesn't bother you in the shop then you'll probably learn to live with it. If the set goes wrong though, I don't give much for your chances of a successful repair. Maybe you should look more closely at other manufacturers! I wouldn't recommend any Philips sets to my friends.

Members' Comments onyogee.'s Review

• Maylynda. on 26th Dec 2002

  I agree totally with your review (see my review), what makes it more unbearable is the terrible service and attitude from the repair workshop. We asked for a report, the third time the set had been back to the workshop, and the receptionist said 'and who's going to pay for this paper', for goodness sake they are providing a service, a terrible one at that, and they can't spare a bit of paper. We are going to start kicking up a fuss now, we've been too soft about the whole thing and we are starting to get really angry, it sounds as if you've been there and had no success so i don't really hold out much hope.

• yogee. on 2nd Jan 2003

  Things have moved on a bit since my review of 9th Dec but I'm not out of the woods yet. However, I now know a lot more than I did before.
  I got so angry with Philips and the repairers (a firm known as Endeva and/or TMS, by the way) that I contacted the legal helpline that is thrown in with my house insurance. I also found out the names and contact details of the most senior customer services managers at each company. The result of this was two carefully worded letters to Philips and Endeva, not threatening legal action, but making it abundantly clear that I knew my legal rights and stating what action I required. The biggest problem that I have encountered is that Endeva blame Philips because they are the manufacturer and Philips blame Endeva because they carried out the repair, but I get nowhere. This stalemate has continued for so long now (I still haven't got my TV back since May) I knew that a different tack was required.
  I left a telephone message for a senior Philips account manager at Endeva Head Office (not the site where my TV was being held). He contacted me back and I explained what had happened over the last seven months. This resulted in him having a meeting with senior bods at Philips the next day, and this resulted in an offer from Philips to settle the matter. I had asked for either 1) the picture geometry to be fixed (as this is what annoyed me most), 2) the set to be replaced, or 3) the set to be returned so that I could get it fixed by someone competent. The offer I got from Philips was none of these. Surprisingly enough they offered to reimburse my original purchase price for the set in exchange for me not bothering them again! Whether you think this is a good result or not depends on your attitude. I didn't think it was because it took months to deliver this set in the first place and that would mean I could be without a TV for ages. As it happens one of my other legal redress routes seems to be paying off with a much better result. However I haven't quite got there yet so I can't write any more details in public until it's sorted.
  Something else that might interest you TV hunters out there is that I have been able to arrange an unusual opportunity. I hadn't said this before but I'm an experienced electronics design engineer. After having read the review on this site by Guitarz on the Sony 32FQ80 I thought aha! maybe the Sony is a better bet. I managed to get a professional TV test generator on my Company's test equipment budget and I also managed to sweet talk two shops into letting me test specific TV's on their sales floors. Very interesting, but disappointing too. I based my selection of TV sets on the reviews on this site (particularly the negative ones) also those on dooyoo and those in the magazine reviews. I rejected the Panasonic 32PB50 because the sound is rubbish - it's like listening through a cardboard box. I looked at the Toshiba 32ZD26P, the Philips 32PW9617 and the Sony 32FQ80 using the TV tester, but I also looked at loads of others in various shops just with whatever video they happened to have. The interesting result was that the picture geometry (i.e.how straight horizontal and vertical lines are) and the convergence (i.e. how well the red, greem and blue dots line up to make a white dot) was by far the best on the Sony, although not perfect. The Toshiba was dreadful, in fact it was so bad that I looked at another one in the shop with the same result(does this mean that we cannot trust the reviews in the media and the sets that the reveivers test are tweaked by the manufacturers in advance?) The Philips was average. The geometry was a only a little bit worse than my own set but the convergence was reasonably good. More importantly, the focus at the edges of the screen was much better than the Sony. So what have I decided on, you ask? Surprisingly, it's not the Sony. Having read all those reveiws on this site concerning the focus issue on the left and right sides of the screens on the earlier models I specifically looked for it using the TV tester. Surprise, surprise, reasonably good convergence even to the edges of the screen but terrible focus, the worst of of all the TV's I tested. It looks to me as though Sony probably have better manufacturing quality control than the others, but that the focus issue is probably 'designed in' and there's nothing you can do about it. If you don't have a set top box that produces text near the screen edges, then you will probably not notice this focus problem. Did you note how many people were unhappy with Sony focus on this site?
  Well, I seem to have written rather a lot here today; it shows how strongly I feel about the whole thing.
  If you're looking to make a decision on a new TV purchase, I'm afraid that the bad news is that there does not seem to be the perfect set out there, except for the ones sent to the magazine reviewers. I hope that it won't be too long before I can enlighten you further on my progress and my choice of a replacement.

• Michael Khor. on 28th May 2003

  Recently bought a Philips 29PT9420 PixelPlus. The first unit delivered box unopened to my home was very bad in colour alignment and convergence on the left side of the screen, eg. you can see the red and blue where it is supposed to be white. Subtitle or horizontal line clearly show good colour alignment on the right and the colour begin to separate as it moves to the left. Convergence on the bottom part curve downward on both sides. Top horizontal line was straight. These problems can only be corrected by opening the cover to adjusts the three picture guns.
  .
  
  I am happy that Philips Malaysia offered to take back the first unit instead of repairing it, but now I made sure I check out the next unit at the shop before delivery. The shop I bought from has only one more unit left since the first unit was delivered three weeks earlier, the shop claimed to have sold about 10 units in that period. This was opened and tested. Colour alignments on this unit was SUPERB, almost perfect! Convergence also was better than the first unit, but not the best I have seen. This second unit was also curving downwards at the two bottom sides, but only slightly perceptible to fussy me.
  
  Picture geometry for both units was good ex-factory. This I further tweak via the hidden "service alignment mode" menu.
  
  In conclusion, I agree with the reviewer yogee that it is "luck" with mass-assembled items. Probably the units that were send for pro-reviews are checked and tweaked first and are not the usual qualities one can get direct from the shop.

• Danny002 on 8th Jun 2004

  Television was baught in July last year. December the set developed a blue haze down the left hand side of the screen. Curry's replaced the tube and returned my tele along with complimentary scratching some 4 weeks later. March 2004 the television developed the same fault. I contacted Philips who offered to assist me in some way should the tele break down again, but failed to inform me that the system has now been removed from the shelves and parts are no longer available. Curry's has now returned a cheque for the full amount so look out Toshiba