Philips 42PFL6556 LED LCD TV Review

Manufacturers often offer attractive bundles and special offers in order to lure customers and get a leg up on the competition. Philips is one such company, bundling a 3D Blu-ray player, a 42-inch LED television and a wireless keyboard in one attractive package. After the Blu-ray player, today we look at another component of the bundle - the Philips 42PFL6556 42-inch LED LCD television. Read on to find out if this television can manage to make a mark in the feverishly competitive LED LCD TV market.

Touch sensitive controls

Design and Build Quality
The 42PFL6556 has a glossy black bezel that is curved at all the corners. Slim is the way to survive in the cut throat LED LCD television space, and Philips has done just that with this model. Though this is not the slimmest TV we’ve seen, the bezel measures just about an inch on the sides and top, and a little over an inch at the bottom. The Philips logo is located at the bottom of the bezel, and below it is the TV’s control panel, which is unique since its buttons are touch-sensitive. Not only does this design approach reduce clutter around the bezel, but it also makes the TV look more stylish. The controls available here include volume and channel controls, the home menu, and the power on/off controls.

The connectivity ports are located at the rear, and like most televisions, they are positioned towards the left side of the TV. This way, you don’t have to reach too far back to access them. The connectors aren’t outward-facing, but rather face towards the side and down. This way, the TV can be mounted flush against the wall, with no wires coming in the way. The connections at the back include three HDMI ports, two USB ports, and single composite, component and VGA connectors.

Remote control is really light weight

The remote control is similar in design to that of the Philips Blu-ray player, but it is longer. Though it has more buttons, they are well spaced out. The base is not very large, but it supports the TV without any difficulty and keeps it stable. There is no wobble whatsoever when it’s place on the stand. Overall, the design and build quality of the 42PFL6556 is really good.

Features
The headlining feature of this TV is its full HD 1080p video playback support. With 1080p becoming the norm these days, and various Blu-ray titles being released at this resolution, full HD is the way to go. The TV also gives you the option to get rid of the black vertical bands that appear at the top and bottom of the screen in some movies, but it also crops out a bit of the picture on either side in the bargain.

Other highlighted features of this TV include its Pixel Plus HD image processing technology, HD Natural Motion and dynamic contrast of 8,000,000:1. This is basically marketing jargon to try and make the product stand out. When it actually comes down to it, the reproduction of colors is good, and the images appear natural. Most televisions use technology that raises the motion rate, thus making the scene look faster than it’s supposed to be. That is not the case with the 42PFL6556.

Interface is simple and easy to navigate through

The interface is pretty simple and user-friendly. It has a few widgets on the screen that lay out various options and settings. These are pretty standard, such as TV, USB, Scenes, etc. The minimalistic design allows one to easily navigate between the options. It also has two USB ports, which support NTFS drives for media playback. Most televisions with media playback feature only support FAT32 drives, but with the ability to play via NTFS hard drives, one can simply connect their high capacity external drives and play back videos effortlessly.

The TV supports most video formats, including MKV, MT2S, AVI, MP4, and M4A. The interface in the folder options has a pan-style layout. The folder is to the right, while its contents line up on the left. Another interesting part of this layout is that at the extreme left, there is a preview pane that displays the thumbnail of the content.