The Aurea is like nothing else on the market. You may have seen Philips' Ambilight backlighting system before, but this, the firm's latest flagship model, takes things to a new level. As well as emitting light out of its (ahem) backside, Aurea has an illuminated frame shining a kaleidoscope of colours outwards.

These colours change depending on the dominant colours on screen, so if you're watching a football match, the left, right and lower portions of the frame will most likely be glowing green while the top will reflect the colours in the crowd.

And with 126 individual LED lamps in 42 clusters of three, Spectra can actually display multiple colours on every side of the screen. Called Active Frame, this new tech means you're no longer limited to one colour per side.

It's an impressive piece of technology, but it's also going to be the focus of whatever room you put it in. You can tone down the brightness and reaction speed of the Ambilight, but there's no getting around the fact that the Aurea is so over the top that it dominates its surroundings.

The general styling of the television differs from the norm too. With the frame needing to be clean and clear for Ambilight purposes, it's a plain off-white colour with a narrow sliver of silver at its edges. There are no visible buttons on the front, merely a Philips logo and a power indicator underneath.

The controls are found on the right-side panel and the side connections on the left, and none are visible from the front. Well, you wouldn't want anything to spoil your view, would you?

While the light show and styling demand plenty of attention, it's immediately obvious that Philips has put a heck of a lot of work into the performance side of things too.

This set carries all the company's latest picture enhancement technologies under the Perfect Pixel HD Engine umbrella, including 100Hz Clear LCD to sharpen the edges of moving objects, HD Natural Motion to kill background judder during pans and several noise reduction technologies to cut out the unsightly by-products of poorly-compressed source material.

As a result of all this technological jiggery pokery, the picture quality on display is nothing short of stunning, particularly when you hook up a high-definition source.