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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brett @ Sep 2nd 2007 10:26AM
Boo Yaahh!!!
That pretty much sums it up, Tony! When I first saw a Philips Ambilight TV on demo at Best Buy, I had the same knee-jerk reaction of "please, what a crock!" but then I spent a couple months installing home theater systems and learning about proper viewing environment setup, and I learned the indispensible advice of providing some kind of backlight on the wall behind the display. The fact is that a television screen in a typical viewing environment occupies only 10 to 20% of your field of view, and many people don't realize just how taxing it is on their eyes to stare at so (relatively) small a space for two or three hours at a time. Simply putting a modest backlight behind the screen improves the viewing experience remarkably.
So coming back to the ambilight demo at Best Buy some three months later, it began to make sense that this is a profound value-add in a high def display. Especially when you consider that the lighting changes gradually and smoothly to match the dominant color on the screen at that moment. And, if you're feeling especially trendy, you can run the ambilight as a fixed color with the TV off and have a $2,500 wall sconce, LOL!
I own a 42" ambilight Philips, and I'll never buy another TV without it!