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Homing Signals

Philips wants you to use the Home button to find your way around, but the channel guide has no numbers. This is fine, you get the channel names, but they’re not listed alphabetically so you need to know where you’re going. Once you know it all, it’s simple but I suspect that the learning curve will defeat many along the way.

Philips 32PFL9705 Ambilight TV

Ambilight aside, the picture is impressive

The home screen is at least welcoming, with a grid of icons showing your options, including browsing the content of a USB stick, streaming content from a PC (not Mac) and more. And you can add your devices like a games console and digital receiver, which appear with cool graphics. The Home screen is economical and effective, but navigating the TV guide, the channel list and so on are more challenging than they should be.

Philips 32PFL9705 Ambilight TV

Ambilight projects background colours that match the image on-screen

Philips 32PFL9705 Ambilight TV

It's now possible to tweak the Ambilighting to accommodate coloured walls

There are plenty more features to check out, including a range of subscription channels, some mildly diverting games, mostly puzzles, and even web browsing. Now, as you know, Internet access is pretty common these days, but not on a TV. The Philips browser will let you go pretty much anywhere. Note, though, that you’ll need to enter web addresses and other text using the keypad on the remote, which takes time.

Philips 32PFL9705 Ambilight TV

Cloud based data management

How much????

I got my 47" Ambilight for £800 a few months ago - hunt around and you'll get a bargain.

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1300 quid?!?!?

It had better supply sexual favours as well for that kind of money and I don't mean off the internet!

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It all looks very nice

But how can they justify the £1300 price tag, for a 32" TV? That's about 4x the going rate for a 32" 1080p LED as far as I can tell. Unless I'm missing something here, you're paying a grand for a 'mood lighting' feature that you'll probably get bored of and turn off pretty quickly?

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