Digital Trends

Philips 34PW9818 March 16th, 2003 | by Doug Maclean

Introduction

Television technology has come a long way in my lifetime.  From the black and white console sets many of us grew up with to the high tech beauties available today.  Among the latest entries to these super TVs is the Phillips 34PW9818.  This set is a wonder of technology making almost every aspect of television viewing as easy as possible.  First of all the set is widescreen; rather than the usual 4:3 aspect ratio we are all familiar with the set has a 16:9 aspect closer to the screens in a theater.  There is also a Phillips feature Pixel Plus where the number of pixels is increased from a typical 380,000 for a set this size to over 2.1 million.  This translates to a brighter, sharper picture from not only high definition video sources but just about any television program.  With a 34 inch screen and a built in 60 watt sound system this set will be the corner stone of any home theater set up.  A lot of thought went into the user interface and remote control which adds ease to beauty.

Connections

There are more available input/output jacks than most home theaters will require.  The AV1 and AV2 input jacks are the typical composite video type.  AV2 also offers S-Video to replace the yellow composite jack for improved picture quality.  The AV3 jacks provide both component and RGB video for 1080i accessories.  This permits the set to be used as a monitor for projectors, computers and high definition sources.  The AV4 set provides component video (Pb, Pr, Py) signals for the best possible video reproduction.  There are also side inputs with component video and S-Video jacks as well as a headset jack.  This makes connection to a video camera easy without ruining the appearance of the front panel.  With every video jack mentioned there are the typical red and white stereo audio jacks.  This allows you to connect DVD players, TiVo, and VCRs to the set.  The manual not only shows clear pictures of all the jacks but also pictures of how to use the remote control for the setup menus.