Presumably having noticed the rather huge price gulf between its flagship PF9830 LCD TVs and the sets lower down in its flat TV range, Philips has come up with a classic middle man in the 32PF9967D.

To keep the price £1,500 lower than that of the 32PF9830, it uses last year's Pixel Plus 2 processing rather than the new Pixel Plus 2 HD (designed specifically with high-def sources in mind).But, you also actually gain a digital tuner. Weird.

The 32PF9967D is less extravagant aesthetically than the 32PF9830 - but its satiny silver outer frame and matte black inner frame still coexist very pleasantly, with gentle curves rounding things off a treat.

Connectivity is disappointing, though, as a single DVI socket has to triple up as a component video input, DVI/HDMI input and PC input. So if you need to connect more than one of these, you'll have to keep swapping the connections round.

Still, this connectivity is still sufficient to earn the 32PF9967D HD Ready status, and it's backed up by such goodies as three Scarts, a centre channel line input, a subwoofer line out, a CAM slot and a digital audio output (for potential digital terrestrial Dolby Digital broadcasts).

Another key feature is Ambilight, Philips invention that soothes your viewing experience by creating a pool of light (sympathetically coloured to match the picture you're watching) around the TV.

There are stacks of other features with this model, but the only one we've got the space to cover is support for the Freeview eight-day electronic programme guide, with direct timer event selection.

After finding the new Pixel Plus 2 HD rather hit and miss on the 32PF9830,the older Pixel Plus 2 system employed here proves arguably more consistent. Strong standard definition feeds, such as those from the cleaner channels on Sky Digital, look vastly sharper and more detailed than they do on most non-Pixel Plus TVs - and this extra sharpness is achieved without nearly as many secondary processing artefacts (such as edge shimmering around moving objects and, especially, dot crawl).Even weaker SD sources, such as digital tuner broadcasts don't suffer badly from processing nasties.