The 42PFL9703D is a 1920x1080 Full HD television with 100Hz technology. The Philips Natural Motion engine was the first 100Hz television introduced on the LCD television market and when it comes to reducing judder during panning, no other manufacturer comes close. Unfortunately, with fast moving images it suffers from halo artefacts and tends to make images look a little soft. Thankfully the 100Hz options can be turned off if the problems are too jarring for the viewer.

We have always loved the Philips set up wizard as it’s a great leaping off point to getting the most out of your TV. It’s perfect for those that don’t have calibration know-how, but it doesn’t deliver the best that the TV is capable of. After running through the set up, we still needed to make minor adjustments to contrast and sharpness.

Once calibrated, the images it delivers are top notch. The black levels are quite impressive and the contrast is excellent. We tested 1080p with a few Blu-ray films and found no massive problems to speak of. Even with 100Hz turned off, judder wasn’t a major problem at all and the images had a high level of detail and clarity. One of the Blu-ray films we tested was “Ultraviolet”. As painful as it is to sit through this movie more than once, we like to use it for the massive amounts of colour that it employs. The 42PFL9703D delivered exceptional colour with no overbearing hues and on the whole, is one of the better units on the market in this regard. In addition to Blu-ray films, we also tested HD gaming. Motion was handled really well (even with the 100Hz mode switched on) while avoiding any pixelation or response time issues.

Switching over to 576i/p content we found that the interpolation was handled reasonably, but did tend to create a little image noise. It wasn’t a massive problem and DVDs still looked great but it could have been better.