Normally I would go straight to the Sony section because I simply prefer them, however I have now discovered the joys of the Phillips Cinema 21:9 with a panoramic screen and the 21:9 format that gives the impression of being in an actual cinema – albeit a small one. This is a new style of panoramic screen (the old one was 16:9) that reproduces images in much the same way as a cinema screen and will be on sale in Spain from June of this year for anyone who still has the cash to buy it. I say this because it was the original intention of the world’s tv manufacturers that we should all go out and buy a new tv with the arrival of digital terrestrial broadcasting but with the advent of the credit crunch I reckon that most of us will continue with our old “tubes” until we get a pay rise…

Anyway, back  to the Phillips that I covet…In addition to the new style screen it also gives you something called “Ambilight”; basically this is just a set of lights on the back of the screen which project a light of similar colour to the one on screen (if you’re watching a scene set at sea it gives you blue, countryside gives green and so on) this might sound like a load of useless tech nonsense but it actually makes a difference! It gives the impression of an even larger screen – I’m told that this is something to do with optical perception but I can’t remember the ins and outs of it; all I know is that it impressed me.

The Phillips that I tried was a 56 inch LCD with a screen resolution of 2560 by 1080 (the same person that informed me about optical perception also told me that the human eye can’t actually notice so many pixels – the manufacturers put them there for the tech geeks amongst us), a refresh time of 1ms, contrast of 80000:1 and something called “Perfect Natural Motion”. It also had 5 HDMI ports and was Wifi enabled. I am hoping that pretty soon they are going to enable a NASA rocket launch from the remote control – you never know.

To accompany all this fantastic visual technology Phillips also offers a 7.1 audio system (anyone knowing what that is obviously has too much time on their hands).

Why did I like it so much? Because it’s big and gives an excellent picture.
Why won’t I buy one? Because it costs 4000€ (!!)
Would I buy one if I were loaded? Of course.