You’d have to wonder why anybody who runs a 3D TV website would go out and choose to buy a 3D TV that isn’t the best around wouldn’t you? To put it simply, Philips image processing is the best I’ve ever seen, by a long way, plus with the addition of ambilight this makes the PFL7666T a far superior television to the LG LW650. It produces the best HD 2D television picture of ANY television (yes that includes £3000+ Samsungs and Panasonic plasmas) that I’ve ever had the pleasure to view. I am yet to find a better television for watching Blurays. But at its heart it is using the same Passive 3D display as the LG and when viewing 3D content, whilst no worse than the best 3D picture I’ve ever seen it is also no better. When things are a tie like that I think you have to give credit to the original so I still rate the LG 650 as the best 3D picture I’ve seen. Does that make sense? Good, now on to the good things about the Philips 42 PFL7666t/12

PFL7666 Good Points

1. Image Processing Options/ Picture Quality – There are plenty of them and they make a real difference to the picture quality. As a previous Philips owner I’m a massive fan of their motion smoothing technology, it produces the least judder of any of the motion processing technologies out there. It may take some playing with but the rewards are huge, just ask if you want to know the full set of settings I’m usings for day to day TV.

2. Ambilight – Just a gimmick? Not really, in a suitably dark room it makes a difference. Combined with the image quality (have I mentioned how good the picture is on this TV?) the set produces an experience that leaves AV fans with a smile on their face.

3. Looks – It looks a stunner, the brushed metal finish looks so much better than the plastic black look that has been so popular over recent years.

4. Easy 3D – Philips name for Passive 3D, it’s the same basic tech that LG use in their Cinema 3D TVs and the resultant 3D is stunningly clear, coloured and flicker free. Passive 3D will win the war against Active 3D for the simple reason that with a bad source the passive sets (including this one) do a MUCH better job of producing something that is watchable. Where active sets stutter, get crosstalky and give you a headache passive sets just get on with it. The 3D the 42PFL7666/12 produces is just as good as our favourite LG LW650.

PFL7666 Bad Points

1. Sound Quality – It seems to be a problem with all of these ultra thin modern sets. Are they all incapable of producing decent sound? I’ve connected mine up to a Panasonic 3D Surround Sound Bluray player which solves the problem 100%.

2. Game Mode – Straight out of the box the game mode of this television is shocking. The picture is so bad I thought it must be a joke. Why have so much awesome image processing power then leave people with that rubbish? The good news is this is a TV with huge picture options and it’s not difficult to find settings that make your Xbox/Paystation experience a whole lot more enjoyable.

3. Only 2 Sets off 3D Glasses – This is some of that infamous Philips tightness! Come on now, these things must cost about 10p to produce, if LG can include 6 pairs Philips should be able to do better than 2.

Would I Buy A Philips 42PFL7666t (Again)?

Yes I would. It does everything you’d exepct of a modern LED TV. You have the standard Freeview HD tuner, enough connections to satisfy 99.9% of AV nuts, built in wireless for streaming TV services and a whole lot more. The picture quality is unrivaled and it uses what I think is the best 3D TV technology around (all be it a little later and more expensive than LG). Because I’m using it as a second TV in a conservatory the 42 inch is fine, however if it was to be a main TV I think the 47 would be better and the price is next to no difference. That being said the only thing that would stop my buying a Philips PFL7666 TV again is the fact they are so hard to get hold off, they seem to sell out as fast as Philips can make them! Just try getting hold of one in the USA.

Find The Best Price For A Philips PFL7666T TV In The UK

Passive 3D TV – Top 3 Tips

1. Distance Matters – With an Active 3D TV it doesn’t matter how close you get to the set, in fact with some the 3D seems to get better the closer you get but this isn’t true for Passive 3D. If a manufacturer has a minimum distance to sit away from the set then do yourself a favour and stick to it. The problem is that the interlacing causes the pixel grid to become visible if you sit too close, totally spoiling the image quality never mind the 3D effect. For example with my 42″ passive 3D TV anything closer than about 2 metres spoils the picture.

2. Height Matters – Thinking of wall mounting your Passive 3D TV? Great but please keep in mind that the 3D effect is only visible in quite a narrow range of view (compared to active 3D TVs). The biggest problem is with vertical alignment and if you mount your TV too high you’ll find that you lose the 3D effect. From experience I wouldn’t want to go more than 8 inches above or below eye level in an ideal world.

3. Light STILL Matters – One of the great advantages that passive 3D has over active 3D is that you can still watch 3D television in daylight! This is great becuase with Active you need to shut out as many light sources as possible or you’re in for a world of hurt. But don’t let this make you believe that light doesn’t matter. I’m yet to see a single Passive 3D TV that doesn’t have a highly reflective screen, it’s just something synonomous with modern TVs in general. You’ll still get the best from your passive 3D TV if you can keep the lighting low and consistent.

Gears of War 3 In 3D

Lets have a look at some of the pro’s and con’s:-

Good Points

- They give you a 3D depth slider so that you can adjust the level of 3D to your particluar 3D TV, why all 3D games don’t have this is beyond me. It means the level of cross-talk you want to put up with is up to you.

- The depth is “real”. The 3rd person nature of the Gears of War games lends itself to 3D far better than first person shooters like Call of Duty games of Halo CE Anniversary. Th 3D effect even on the lowest setting is very much there and in your face.

- The frame rate holds up remarkably well, there are no problems with aiming wih the 3D mode activated and yo’re just as likely to headshot somebody with a long shot as you are in normal 2D mode.

- The best HUD I’ve seen in a 3D game to date. Sometimes when games switch to 3D any static display items look massively out of place as well as very cross-talky. This doesn’t happen in Gears of War 3 and the ammo counters and health indicator doesn’t detract from the 3D one bit.

Bad Points

- The first thing you’ll notice is that the resolution and graphics detail takes a massive hit. The graphics go from being real looking to almost cartoony in nature. If you’ve ever played Resident Evil on the Wii then you’ll know what to expect.

- Camera shake can make you feel sick. The Gears of War gameplay is suited to runnng around ducking and diving out of cover. The camera shake when running is particularly noticable in 3D mode and is enough for even the strongest stomach to start to turn. It might have been wise for the pogrammers to turn down that effect when in 3D.

- One that affects every X-Box 360 3D game, achievements. You’re fully involved in your 3D game when all of a sudden you’re greeted by a massive, blury, horribly out of place acheivement icon taking up half your screen and making you think your eyes have gone funny.

Would I Play Gears of War 3 in 3D or 2D?

I guess it depends on how long you’re planning on playing it. For an hours blast through the single player campaign then the 3D mode does add to the gameplay and experience. For much longer than that I think you may struggle with the camera shake and the same with the more frantic action of online play. For the final word, I’ve now completed the single player campaign in full in both 2D and 3D and I can honestly say I enjoyed playing it in 3D better.

I’m not sure if she would have got used to these changes over time but I don’t think so. Tight shots make up a lot of TV programs(especially in the age of HD) and to suddenly lose them all does make a big difference. The liklihood is that production quality will get better over time and the 3D we see will improve to include closer shots without cross-talk but until then I don’t think we’ll be seeing large numbers of normal TV programs shown in 3D, best to stick to nature documentaries and live sports (in which it excels) for now.

The BBC do deserve a massive pat on the back though, as a demonstration in producing clear 3D it was superb, even more importantly it should highlight to other broadcasters that there’s no need to lump all there 3D content under the Sky 3D banner, ANY channel is capable of showing 3D content.

To be honest it had been extremely close all the way along until the last month but I would say that for certainly the first 6 weeks Active 3D had the edge. However this hasn’t lasted and the final result shows passive 3D with 49% of the votes (149), active 3D with 35% (106) and people who couldn’t see any difference accounting for the other 16% (48).

Why Do People Prefer Passive 3D?

I’m going to offer up a guess here and say that I think LG’s latest range of passive Cinema 3D TVs may have something to do with it. In terms of family friendly easy of use, not to mention coming with so many glasses these sets have been a god send to the family wanting 3D TV for their home. Obviously you can’t sniff at their 3D performance either, they are my current favourite 3D TV in terms of the 3D delivered to the viewer.

I also believe that lately people have started to turn away from Active 3D and not just because of the quality of passive. Samsung and LG have been hit hard this year with complaints about active 3D glasses. The most common complaints have been about syncing issues (where the glasses dip out of 3D for a moment) and jumping brightness levels. I still own an LG PX990 and of the 4 sets of 3D glasses I have 1 is prone to the syncing problem if not 100% fully charged. These glasses are still massively expensive (even at under £60) so it’s no wonder people are unhappy, especially if they are buying muliple pairs.

So there you have it, Passive 3D wins the day in our survey. What do you think though, do you agree that passive 3D is better? Do you have an opinion on why I think passive came out on top?

At this point I’d have liked to have been able to take you through some of the stand out 3D bits in Thor, “wow that bit at xx minutes was great”, “you’ve got to see the flames at blah blah blah etc”…but I can’t. I can’t because I gave up after 30 minutes, twice! My first attempt to watch Thor in 3D was a total disaster, I thought my glasses were broken the cross-talk was that bad. After 5 minutes I’d had enough and pulled out another pair, double checked their charge level (fine), made sure there were no obstructions between the glasses and the infrared on my LG PX990 (both those things can make a difference). I was straight in front of the TV at an ideal distance but the picture was still unwatchable. So I chucked in Step Up 3D just to make sure there wasn’t a problem with my setup, there wasn’t. It’s post processed crap of the highest level, it had my head spinning and before the film had even got going I’d given up.

On Sunday I dragged the 3D Blu-ray around to a friend’s house to try it on his passive LW650. It made no difference. In post processing they appear to have separated the left and right eyes to such a degree that you’re just not going to get a good effect. There are several bits that are just about watchable but the majority of the film is either totally flat or so blurred with cross-talk it makes your head hurt.

The real shame in all this is that I did get around to watching the film in 2D and it’s a really good modern action flick. Much like the latest Transformers film anybody forced to only see this in 3D is going to think it’s a bad film, which it’s not. It didn’t need the 3D, it wrecked it, please please please take note Hollywood Producers. Either do 3D properly and film in 3D from the get go or forget about it. I always thought Clash of the Titans in 3D was as bad as it was going to get but it looks like I was wrong, it’s getting worse not better!

So Thor in short, one of the best comic book to movie tie-ins I’ve seen in a long time but 3D that makes Pirahna 3D appear watchable. Don’t say you haven’t been warned. You can pick up the Triple Disc Version of Thor (including 3D, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital Copy) from Amazon.

There are actually some well documented technical limitations to do with the X-Box’s resolution that “could” in theory impact 3D in games but as an end user you’ll not notice, I certainly didn’t when I tried a marathon 4 hour session of Call Of Duty – Black Ops in 3D. Programmers are clever like that, they are hitting limitations (be it hardware or software) all the time and work around them. This is why gaming development is responsible for most of the advances in software development as a whole. I don’t want to go into the game too much, it deserves a 3D performance review of its own and I’ll get around to it shortly, but as somebody only interested in playing the game it looks just as good and runs just as smooth as the PS3 equivalent. The only thing to look out for is to make sure your Xbox has a HDMI output, I know some of the older models don’t.

Why Aren’t We Seeing More 3D Games For The Xbox 360?

Money money money!!! Microsoft don’t make 3D TV’s so have no interest in driving forward sales of new 3D technology. Gamer reception to 3D has been luke warm at best (just look at 3DS sales figures) and whilst some developers have seen no harm in giving it a go on Xbox alongside PS3 releases I don’t think you’ll be seeing any Xbox exclusives in 3D any time soon…in fact Forza 4 has recently been released without it.

What I think could change this situation in the future is the Kinect motion sensing system. Microsoft’s big idea behind Kinect was player immersion and the next dimension in that is freeing images from the screen. 3D and Kinect would be a marriage made in heaven. Will we see more 3D games for the Xbox? I’d say almost certainly. Will they be worth playing? Now that’s a whole different question!

What do you think, the Xbox is capable but will we see more 3D games?

I suppose that I need to explain myself. It’s not about the movie itself, it’s your 100% typical American teen underdog wins craptastic rubbish. Even the hotness of the main female lead can’t rescue the story from that only a 15 year old girl could truely enjoy. It’s a shame then that it features some of the most outstanding 3D I’ve seen to date.

You know it’s going to be good when right from the beginning we are treated to trees that jump from the screen and a crowd walking towards the screen scene that is simply better than any other attempt I’ve seen at doing that. You know how most appear blury and the effect is lost as parts of people leave the screen peremiter? Not with this one!

Step Up 3D is full of stand out 3D moments, just of the top of my head you have the, bubbles, balloons, smoke and confetti scenes. Even the nighclub dancing shots have been filmed with 3D in mind from the beginning. You’ll see kicks and hands thrust towards the screen and without a single bad moment they all succeed. Honestly it’s great 3D. I’m even embarassed to say that it’s become my defacto “show-off” 3D film for when people want to see what home active 3D can do. It took me 8 months to watch this after I’d got it for my daughter for Christmas but all I can say to 3D fans is give it a go, you don’t have to like the story but it will at least show you how good 3D can be.

I’m off to go and bust some moves, or as the lead in Step Up 3D does, stand around at the back bobbing and waving my hands in a gangster stylee.

The move by Nintendo to slash the price of it’s 3D gaming 3DS console by as much as a third in the UK is obviously a worrying one. Nintendo have traditionally always sought to make a profit on hardware as well as software and licensing. The new price point for the 3DS will see the hardware being sold at a loss, a first for Nintendo. Whilst this type of hardware loss leading has been normal for Microsoft and Sony with their home consoles it’s all new ground for a company that has prided itself on maintining a market share based on quality. Games for the 3DS have been slow to appear and even the landmark Zelda title hasn’t managed to boost sales as much as Nintendo would hope. Is it a dislike of 3D or simply down to increased competition from the huge array of handheld devices capable of gaming now on the market?

The second bit of bad news came as EA boss John Riccitiello questioned the demand and returns in 3D gaming. EA are reporting poor returns on the investments they have made in console and PC 3D gaming to date. Whether this is down to a lack of demand or simply the fact that the price point for 3D displays is still beyond the masses only time will tell. At the point where it’s a flat choice between having a 3D TV or a normal 2D TV for a similar price I guess we’ll see what the real demand for 3D gaming is. Until then EA have quite clearly put the view across that it’s not their job to drive demand for 3D TVs, a fair point, well made.

Back in the 1980′s I had every Transformers toy going, Transformers and He-Man were my thing! When it came to the cartoons Transformers came out on top for me so when in recent years the whole franchise was updated to fit the big screen there was no way I was going to miss it. The first Transformers movie I really enjoyed, hell I even enjoyed the second one that seemed to piss off just about every critic on the planet. It says a lot then that I didn’t enjoy Transformers 3 Dark of the Moon. As a film it’s just too chaotic, nothing seems to tie in and the directors choice to change shot so often does the action sequences no favours either. If you got dizzy watching either of the first 2 Transformers movies then your head is going to explode with this one and the added 3D. It’s also far too long for what is supposed to be an none stop thrill a minute action ride. Two and half hours is too much. There is also the not so small issue that they have decided to turn the volume all the way up to 11 for it. I love surround sound as much as the next 30′something man but do they really need to blast your ears out? Transformers 3 is far too loud!

OK so it’s not a great film, what has all this got to do with the 3D? Quite a lot actually. The 3D utilised in Transformers 3 is very good, easily as good as the very best 3D films to come out so far. Some of the high rise shots in the final action sequences are nothing short of stunning. There is very little over doing of the 3D effect so crosstalk is not visible except for a couple of tiny instances. However, the choppy shot changing and ear bleeding sound distract you from the 3D so much that it just ends up adding to a sick inudcing assault on your senses that you can’t wait to finish. If they would have toned it down just a bit it would have made the whole experience so much more enjoyable and we would have had another land mark 3D film. Will I buy Transformers 3 when it is released on Bluray? Probably, I’d suggest it might be the better way of enjoying this films great 3D, where you can turn down the other distractions and enjoy it for what it is. As a cinema 3D experience it reminded me far more of a torturous fairground ride than a put your feet up and enjoy movie.