Philips crowed long and loud about its supremacy in LCD TV last Thursday with a special event that also took in the whole company’s entire 2008 product range. The undoubted highlight was the new 9000 series of LCDs, which promise performance even better than that of the Aurea, Philips' current flagship.

Even more intriguing is what Philips has planned for the future, and how it sees TVs developing over the next few years. We caught up with Philips' TV marketing directors Danny Tack and Marc Hamsen to find out what's on the cards.

What’s wrong with Aurea?

The first point on the agenda was Philips’ controversial Aurea - a high-end TV that’s been praised for its performance, but also criticised - not least by us - for focusing on style rather than substance. This is a point that Philips partly concedes, but the company is also keen to stress that Aurea has some real meat on its supermodel bones.

“The way we positioned Aurea originally was that it was more of a luxury, more of an icon. You only have to step outside this hotel to see a luxury sports car out there - the Maserati. They don’t talk about the performance in that car. It’s an assumed performance. It’s a luxury product; it’s an icon. It’s got every goodie inside, but it really is positioned in that [luxury] area,” Hamsen says.

“The key for us is this endless battle, this endless discussion about numbers. It’s very interesting for us in the industry, but for a large amount of consumers, they’re saying ‘what does it bring to me, and where do we end up?’

“We have to accurately reflect that with the 9000 series. We’re going after that performance customer. Aurea is aimed at a different type of customer, who might not be as technology focused, but wants that reassurance that they’ve just bought all the bells and whistles. And with the 5000 and 7000 series we’re offering a similar level of performance, but not at such a high level of cost.”

Aurea R&D

Hamsen points out that the most contentious part of the Aurea - the Ambilight Spectra and Active Frame light emitting bezel - is the result of a great deal of research at Philips. Danny Tack weighs in with this point:

“The evidence from the Munich survey [Philips conducted last year] was very strong. The people who took part in the survey had all kinds of sensors on their heads, on their arms, on their hearts, brains and around their eyes even,” Tack says.

“At that same moment we could measure eye strain was a lot less with Ambilight on, the heart rate variance was normal - it was more peaceful for you - and yet the skin response was higher. So your immersion level was higher, you were more relaxed, and your eyes were working less. It was win-win. In fact, it was win-win-win. Three things at the same time.”

The Active Frame bezel

One of the most notable things about the Aurea is the Active Frame - an extra wide bezel around the display. It contains a complicated array of LED lights, fed by their own dedicated processor, which responds to the action on screen and changes the colour accordingly. This super-bezel seems to oppose the efforts of rival TV makers - Toshiba, for example - who are trying to make the bezel as slim and inconspicuous as possible. Marc Hamsen justified it to TechRadar this way: