Philips 42PF9631D

Philips 42PF9631D

42PF9631D Review, by Laura Blackwell July 19, 2006

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• Latest User Reviews 3 reviews
• Reviewed by: dooman72

  Duration of ownership: 2 Weeks

  Overall: NEVER buy Philips televisions. Trust me. They are good for life of warranty, but the second warranty expires, you will be left with an oversized paperweight. Do not believe me? Punch in any Philips model television in the last 5 years and you will get message boards galore on how disappointing Philips products and customer services are. I myself have/had Philips 34PW9817 CRT TV. Just as consumer warranty running out, it is now shutting off erratically on own. BUYER BEWARE of PHILIPS. Also, now I read all reviews of LCD's and PLASMA TV's with suspicious eye. May be great out of box, but for a couple grand, you will never know if product will stand test of time - talking a few years at least. And the last thing you want to deal with is television repair people, trust me. I will never buy Philips again.

• Reviewed by: edmoore1

  Duration of ownership: 3 Months

  Strengths: NONE

  Weaknesses: See my review

  Overall: I purchased a Philips plasma tv aug 18, 2005 model number 42pf9630/37 . The tv lost its picture may 4th 2006. As it was under warrantee, Philips took the unit, and decided to replace the unit Oct 4, 2006.  Philips authorized repair service had the unit for a total 5 months!  I  Finally received a replacement tv October 4, 2006, model number 42pf9631d/37. My replacement( THIS MODEL) now is defective, malfunctions  and has a problem with the picture. THERE IS A BRIGHT BLUE LINE THAT RUNS FROM TOP TO BOTTOM ON LEFT SIDE OF SCREEN, WITH ADDITIONAL BLOW OUT ON CENTER OF SCREEN. This started January 2, 2007. I had one  tech rep come to attempt to fix tv, and the problem remains.  Philips called and notified me that there is nothing they can due, and any repair cost will be at my own expense. THEY INFORMED ME THAT the replacement unit will have the same warranty coverage as the original television. MEANING 1 year from the purchase date, which is August 8, 2005, WHICH ESSENTIALLY MEANS THERE IS NO COVERAGE FOR THIS REPLACEMENT AS I RECEIVED IT OCTOBER 4, 2006. Additionally, they do NOT give there direct number at "Philips entitlement" so you can not call them directly back. I  at my wits end and extremely dissatisfied with Philips.

• Reviewed by: jeni0611

  Duration of ownership: 2 Months

  Strengths: Ambint Light looks fancy but useless

  Weaknesses: AWARE OVERHEAT ISSUE - the problem should be caught in MTBF life test in engineering stage before the Phillips put the TV on the market.

  Overall: We just bought the TV in Nov of 2006, and watch 2~3 hours everyday afterwork. Now we cannot turn on the TV anymore after 2 months video board already burnt out. When we call technical support, they knew the problem immediately. Obviously it is a very common problem. If we read more users review before we bought we should have known it's a big mistake to invest this junk TV

• Reviewed by: Mwilcox3317

  Strengths: Ambilight, Great Picture

  Weaknesses: Only 764 pixels vertically, compared to 1080 on some others.

  Overall: I bought this TV and it is wonderful. Picture is great, was very easy to set up and the ambilight looks fantastic. Philips has created an amazing TV. I would highly recommend.

• Reviewed by: edmoore1

  Strengths: NONE

  Weaknesses: Defective product, worse warrantee!

  Overall: I purchased a Philips plasma tv aug 18, 2005 model number 42pf9630/37 . The tv lost its picture may 4th 2006. As it was under warrantee, Philips took the unit, and decided to replace the unit Oct 4, 2006. Philips authorized repair service had the unit for a total 5 months!  I  Finally received a replacement tv October 4, 2006, model number 42pf9631d/37.My replacement( THIS MODEL) now is defective, malfunctions  and has a problem with the picture. THERE IS A BRIGHT BLUE LINE THAT RUNS FROM TOP TO BOTTOM ON LEFT SIDE OF SCREEN, WITH ADDITIONAL BLOW OUT ON CENTER OF SCREEN. This started January 2, 2007.I had one  tech rep come to attempt to fix tv, and the problem remains. Philips called and notified me that there is nothing they can due, and any repair cost will be at my own expense. THEY INFORMED ME THAT the replacement unit will have the same warranty coverage as the original television. MEANING 1 year from the purchase date, which is August 8, 2005, WHICH ESSENTIALLY MEANS THERE IS NO COVERAGE FOR THIS REPLACEMENT AS I RECEIVED IT OCTOBER 4, 2006.Additionally, they do NOT give there direct number at "Philips entitlement" so you can not call them directly back.I  at my wits end and extremely dissatisfied with Philips.UPDATE!Replacement TV sent DOES NOT WORK! DEFECTIVE AGAIN!??Phillips finally replaced my tv after 5 months. TV worked fine for 3 months than in January the replacement tv broke.Harsh bright blue/white blowout randomly appears on left side of screen, top to bottom. Y board was replaced and the issue has not been resolved and has gotten worse. Turns out after several visits from authorized Philips repair, that plasma display need to be replaced. As of today April 17, the part is still not in and the TV still malfunctions.??AVOID PHILIPS PLASMA AT ANY COST!

• Reviewed by: tpfisher

  Strengths: VERY , VERY SHARP PICTURE AND VIBRANT COLORS. EASY TO SETUP AND OPERATE, EASY TO UPDATE WITH USB CONNECTION ON SIDE.

  Overall: I LOVE THIS TV AND HAVE RECOMMENDED IT TO EVERYONE LOOKING. JUST WISH I COULD AFFORD THE 50" MODEL THE SET HAS PIP AS WELL AND COLORS ARE VERY VERY SHARP. ALL FAST ACTION SPORTS ARE SHARP .

• Reviewed by: lape42

  Strengths: Easy set up. affordable price and ambient light

  Weaknesses: sound is not great but certainly acceptable

  Overall: We purchased this for Christmas and it has been great. It was a little heavier than we thought almost 100 pounds.The ambient light is a great addition. This makes it easier on your eyes and adds to the overall video experience

• Reviewed by: rickyriver

  Strengths: Best HD and SD picture quality. Ambilight is great. Plenty of connectivities and features. Great looking case.

  Weaknesses: No SD slot. USB slot does not work with my memory card reader. Remote not programmable.

  Overall: I took many trips to CircuitCity and Bestbuy trying to find the TV with the best picture quality. I chose plasma over LCD simply because of its lower price and better black level. 42in plasma has the best value for the money. A year ago it cost almost 3 thousand dollars, now it only costs half. -- As far as my eyes can tell, Samsung, Panasonic and Philips have the best picture quality. (Pioneer was excluded because it is much more expensive than the others) I don't like Panasonic's silver case. I like Philips' wide black bezel, and plus it has ambilight and QAM tuner that Samsung does not have. It was also cheaper than Samsung. So I chose Philips. -- I am very happy with the picture quality. The HD picture is awesome. Even the SD picture is very good. It looks a little blurry, but within one second I can notice the picture get sharpen up. I am not sure if it is because the signal is not stable yet in the first second, or the TV processes the picture to make it sharp. I don't have many chances to see SD picture in the stores, but I remember it did not look as good as I get from my Philips. Many times, I was wondering am I watching the HD? -- The ambilight is a great feature. It eases my eyes. I don't get distracted by it when it is on. But when I turn it off, the TV looks boring and my eyes don't feel as relaxed. But you can see the ambilight only at night and when you turn off all the bright lights in your house. If you always have lights on when watching TV, the ambilight will make no difference to you. -- Another feature I really like is it automatically re-size the picture to fill up the screen. -- PIP can be split screen or picture in picture. You can use PIP for a digital source and a analog source only. People do complain the sharp yellow edge may cause burn in. I don't care because I won't be using PIP too often or for too long. -- I can't comment on the sound because I use my receiver and surround sound system. -- Switching channels and sources is smooth and quick. Power up the TV takes a few seconds, but it is definitely not too long. -- Burn-in should not be an issue. All the TV logos are now on and off, and they are all semi-transparent which means its color is changing with the picture. -- There are some things I don't like about the TV, but they are not show stopper, so they don't bother me much: -- It only has a RF input for Antenna or Cable, but not both. Since the TV has a built-in QAM tuner which can pick up all the unscrambled cable channels, why don't they have one more RF input for me to take advantages of that. I can pick up over 200 digital channels from my cable, but all of the HD channels are encrypted. My HD antenna can pick up more than 10 digital channels and 5 of them have HD. With one RF input, I cannot get them all. So I have to use the RF input for the antenna, because I have to get the HD which is the whole point I buy an HDTV. I route my cable to VCR and to TV via composite. I can still pick up the 90 analog channels. It is not too bad. I don't watch those channels much anyway, except for the ESPN. But the QAM tuner is wasted. The only inconvenience here is I have to use the TV remote to switch antenna channels and use the VCR remote to switch the cable channels. I like the TV remote a lot. I wish I can control everything through it. The remote can control other Philips products like VCR or DVD player, but it does not look like it can be programmed to control products from other manufactures, at least the manual has no instructions for doing so. -- The USB slot does not work for me so far. I don't have a flash drive, but I have a 6 in 1 memory card reader. I plug in my SD card or CF card in the reader and plug the reader to the TV. The TV can detect the memory card, and sometimes can detect the pictures on the card, and once I was able to select and see one picture, but then the memory card disappears from the screen. I was bumped out to the main menu or the TV channel it is playing. After a while, it detects the memory card again and then the same things happen. I had no luck using my memory card reader to upgrade firmware as well. The TV just cannot detect the upgrade file in my SD card. It also does not recognize my Canon SD630 camera which is one of the most popular camera on the market. So I am not sure what devices it actually supports.-- I also wish it has optical audio input and output. It only has one RCA digital audio input and output. It is enough for now, and in the future I will be buying stuffs with HDMI, so I am fine with it. My receiver only have RCA audio input for CD and DVD. So I have to route my TV audio to the CD input on my receiver. When we watch TV from the antenna, I need to choose CD on my receiver to get the surround sound, which is very confusing to my wife.