Pixel-perfect viewing

A survey once found that one of the things couples fight about is who gets to control the TV remote. Another survey, on TechTV, asked: What is the one household appliance that people sleep with? The answer: The TV remote. Even chefs, I would think, wouldn’t sleep with their food processors!

This tells us just how much we spend an inordinate amount of time watching TV, planning to watch TV or scheming how to get hold of the remote control first.

Thus Philips Consumer Electronics is continuously improving this thing we call – rather unfairly, I think – the idiot box.

Two months ago, Philips launched in Manila the Pixel Plus TV, another technological breakthrough for the company that invented the Plasma TV and co-invented the CD player. Simply put, the new technology means this line of TVs has more pixels (five times more than competitors’), thus better picture quality.

When Michael Chang, a marketing consultant for TV based in Singapore, demonstrated the difference between a Philips Pixel Plus TV and three other top-end products of competing brands, we clearly saw the difference: With Philips, you get sharper image and details.

First there were images of a lady walking on the beach: the sky was clearer, the sea had more color, you could even see the grains of sand. Then the camera moved closer, now you could see the crystal-clear droplets of water on her skin. Then it moved on to another picture: A close-up of woman. With the Philips TV, you could see that she needed a brand new mascara as the one on her eyes was sticking at the ends of her eyelashes. Then the camera panned to her skin. That’s when the ladies at the press conference groaned. Please, give us soft filters, the kind that Sybil Shepherd used on Moonlighting like open pores and blemishes did not exist in her world.

Chang laughed at the protests. All that research and innovations and all we could think about were pores!

"Pixel Plus comes on the heels of the company’s series of innovations," he explained. "We removed the flicker from the picture way back, then we continued with the natural motion series, starting in 1995, then we enhanced it further to the digital natural motion, which helps reproduce moving images. Today, it’s Pixel Plus."

Okay, let’s get a little technical here for people who watch TechTV all day: "The TV incorporates advanced picture processing software that more than doubles the horizontal resolution of the standard 720-by-525 NTSC resolution to a world record-breaking 2048-pixel horizontal and 1050-line vertical resolution. This extra detail improves the distinction between foreground and background, thereby increasing the perceived picture depth as well as giving a clear difference for both still and moving images."

Pixel Plus also features Active Control. This means "it continuously measures the incoming signals and external viewing conditions and automatically adjusts important variables accordingly to give you the best picture quality possible. These variables include noise reduction, sharpness, contrast, color, ambient light adaptation and even picture format."

When you’re watching Eat Bulaga, the "perception of depth" may not be that important, but when you’re watching a DVD movie – like maybe Kurosawa’s Dreams or Gosford Park where the sound is so important because of the darn British accent and Robert Altman’s style of letting all the actors talk at once – you want the best possible equipment.

Independent reviewers have heaped praises on the Pixel Plus after road-testing the product, calling it as leading the "battle against mediocrity," allowing them to "see clearly for the first time," and delivering "more picture for one’s money." Mostly European based, they even review remote controls for TVs.

Philips Consumer Electronics-Philippines general manager Angelo Valenton said that "Philips is the number two player in the upmarket category in the Philippines, which covers real flat TV, projection TV and Plasma TV. What we want to do is to look at certain segments of the market and serve those segments as best as we can."

The market has been responding positively, it seems. Though it caters to the A, B and upper C markets, Philips, Valenton says, has captured the more discriminating viewers regardless of their economic bracket – "People who put a premium on their home entertainment and are willing to go out of their way to enjoy themselves at home."

Speaking of home entertainment, Valenton says the DVD format is here to stay – unlike the short-run VCD and the shorter-run laser disc format. In the Philippines, it’s the biggest growing market for the company thanks to the price of DVD players coming down, which he says now costs "less than a third of what it was five years ago when it was over P30,000."

"The market for DVD last year nearly tripled to the detriment of the VCD format," he says. "We saw way back then that people would upgrade when the two biggest issues would be resolved: The cost of the player and the software availability." The latter cannot be overstated as evidenced when Philips was the first to come out with a CD-based game console called CDI (CD interactive) back when everybody was playing with Sega and SuperNintendo. Perhaps the format was then too ahead of its time.

Today, the right elements are in for a DVD revolution. "There will always be improvements technology-wise," he added. "But there’s an effort that whenever there is some new innovation in the disc format technology, we want our DVD players to be future-proof and still be able to work . Of course, standard wars are again bound to happen."

When we asked Valenton how come other brands also now have Plasma TV, he explained that Philips manufactures and supplies not only consumer products, but industrial components and parts as well such as chips and semi-conductors. "Among our customers are indeed our competition. We started with Plasma technology a few years ago and it’s now available to our competition as well. That’s how dynamic technology is."

Valenton said that great technology is being developed by Philips every day. MP3 players, home theater in a box, audio sports equipment, DVD players, etc.

"At every level, Philips has something for customers, from the entry level of P20,000 for home theater in a box and real flat TV for P12,000 to P400,000 TVs."

"Maybe in five years people like me will be able to afford a real good one," I said.

"In five years it will be so obsolete," he said.

That’s technology for you. It becomes better even before you get used to it.