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As always with a high-end Philips TV, there are two sides to this part of the 46PFL9706's story. On the one hand, the design of its on-screen menus and especially its remote control is really very good.
The menus are clear and mostly straightforward to navigate, despite having to handle a vast amount of features and adjustments, and the remote control does a mostly sublime job of helping you do everything from getting around the menus, to typing text into the web browser and surfing channels from remarkably few buttons.
The button layout is inspired too, aside from the positioning of the 'Back/return' button directly under the 'Navigate down' button. It's all too easy to hit 'Back' when you meant to hit 'Down'.
While the actual interface for the Philips 46PFL9706 might be remarkably straightforward for such a sophisticated TV, though, getting the best from the TV is made trickier than some people might like by the amount of effort you need to put into tinkering with the set's myriad processing options.
Because different source types seem to benefit from different settings, and for all its processing brainpower, the Philips 46PFL9706 isn't as clever as it ideally would be at figuring out for itself the best settings to use with different types of source material.
Instructions
The Philips 46PFL9706 ships with its instructions manual built into its on-screen menus, under a 'Help' icon. This is fair enough in some ways, although tracking down specific features (such as the two player gaming option) through these menus is much harder than it would be with a paper manual.
A system like that found on Samsung's TVs, where you're told what a feature does when you select it on the menus, would have helped, too.
There are additionally a couple of issues surrounding the TV's design that require a little extra care. First, attaching the stand to the TV is a really very fiddly process, actually made rather scary by the amount of warnings that Philips gives you about how much you need to take care of the screen on account of the delicacy of the Moth Eye filter.
The other issue is also to do with the Moth Eye filter, as it turns out that if you manage to get your fingers on it, is causes a startling amount of mess. So much so that at first you might think you've actually broken the screen.
With this in mind, Philips is shipping a special cleaning fluid and cloth with every 46PFL9706; and you certainly shouldn't try to clean a finger mark with anything else!
