Philips Cinema 21:9 LCD TV

From the makers of the ubercool Ambilight series, which deservedly won accolades for design, comes a totally new concept of an LCD TV. Philips have released their 21:9 aspect ratio TV, with a reasonable level of aplomb and panache. Rightfully so, as they are accredited for coming up with the idea first. We received a fresh new piece for demo, thus let’s waste no time in checking out this new form factor for the good old LCD TV.

Design and features
First things first, this model has a new generation of LCD panels manufactured, with the aspect ratio being 21:9, or 2.39:1. This makes the screen much more wider, resembling the cinema screen more acutely. That’s the idea, to cater to cinema enthusiasts. Actually cinema buff or ‘hardcore videophile’ would be a more appropriate term for the consumer of this TV, as it would do nothing for any 4:3 broadcast TV source.

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The bezel is simple here, a gloss black flat surfaced affair, with a slim groove on the outer and inner edges. The screen itself is mildly reflective. The bottom panel has two speakers neatly juxtaposed, arching in towards the center. The Philips logo humbly resides here. The fun is in the side panels, as this too is an Ambilight model. We have a strip made of a tiny bulb sewn across the entire side panels. The back panel is bare except for a i/o window on the left edge.

The connections are plenty, with 5 HDMI 1.3 inputs to start off with. Then we have component, VGA, SCART, Composite, Analog RCA audio in and out, SPDIF Audio out, headphone out and last but surely not least a USB input. This USB can play a wider range of file formats than the others. Besides normal DivX encoded AVIs, we have WMV9 and H.264 encoded video too. The panel is 56 inches in diameter, while the brightness of the panel is a healthy 500 cd/m2. Dynamic contrast is stated as 80,000:1. And yes, the panel resolution is higher than Full HD 1920 x 1080p, it’s actually 2560 x 1080p, thus we have more vertical lines, more pixels. The response time is rated as 1 ms.

This TV seems to have it all when it comes down to it: the Perfect Pixel HD Engine takes care of a number of video processing load, like 3:2 pulldown, 3D comb filter, 1080p 24/25/30 Hz processing, 1080p 50/60 Hz processing, 200 Hz interpolation, and Scanning backlight. This model can also connect to the net, not only via Ethernet, but also Wi-Fi. (Wi-Fi 802.11g) Thus one can watch YouTube, Metacafe on the screen. Besides, this built in wireless connectivity can also be used to connect to a home network.

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Performance
The deal is this: Blu-ray and DVD movies are actually more often than not rendered in an aspect ratio of around 2.35:1. Thus we see black lines at the top and bottom when playing this content on a regular 16:9 TV. In this Cinema 21:9 model, this will scale up perfectly without any black lines, nor any stretching. BUT, any 16:9 content, like some animated flicks, and of course games, will be stretched out to fit, or will display with black lines on the side. That’s not cool.

Anyway, we turned on the TV and dived into its deep menu. It’s rather user friendly and screen