2021-10-18, 15:55
I'm a huge fan of Ambilight from Philips. Now at my 4th Philips TV. I simply love ambilight so much and find it so game-changer that I don't care about any other issues the TV might have.
BUT I would have loved so much if I could get latest Philips TV and just have everything working...not the case.
So, here's like a short summary of a review, to what you can expect with latest philips series.
Starting with known common limitations from previous series:
- Network.
You get into network issues once you want to stream High bitrate (>80mbps movies, including variable bit rate that would jump to higher values), because the TV ethernet is only 100mbps (no tv known for gigabit eth port).
Still the case for latest TV series. They come up with Ethernet 10/100.
Wi-Fi setup depends on your router and position.
What's better this year? Latest series from Philips, running Android 10, support USB3 to Ethernet Gigabit adapters. I got up to 800mbps on Anality speed test.
- Pass Through
You might think that having eARC would allow having lossless multichannel pass through. (Dolby TrueHD). NOT the case. Philips firmware does not allow internal applications to pass through TrueHD. You are still limited to transcoded Dolby Digital (lossy format), even though you are using eARC.
According to other threads in Kodi, this limitations probably comes due to the fact that IEC adapter is not available for Kodi to use.
Hence...this is why I still need my cheap Android BOX and can't rely on TV for Kodi. I need those lossless TrueHD streams for my audio system, otherwise I invested for nothing in audio..
- Dolby Vision DOES NOT WORK in this combination: MKV container + P5 Dolby Vision format + Kodi stable.
There is another thread about this with a Kodi 19.0 alternative version supplied there, in which it works.
It works in Plex latest stable.
Hopefully Kodi is going to fix this in stable asap. (there's some excuses about extra needs for MKV..but I've seen it work in the alternative version so it should be in stable too)
Less commonly known:
- the CPU in older versions of Philips struggled with playing HDR 60FPS. On youtube high bitrate 4k streams at 60FPS with HDR it had a lot of frame drops, visible.
This from the latest series seem to do way better. In the famous Costa Rica 4K HDR everything looks butter smooth now.
Same in the panning shots of Gemini Man that was frame-dropping a lot in older Philips series.
Everything else remains as it was in previous series (my 2019 version did everything else perfectly).
I had no issues with networking on Wi-Fi on old versions by having a decent router + Kodi network stream cache enabled (advancedsettings.xml)
SO, given that eARC does NOT HELP AT ALL, and I still don't get Dolby TrueHD from Kodi on TV to my 7.0 sound system, I still CAN NOT use Kodi on this pretty expensive Philips OLED856. My Android TV Box is not a Dolby Vision license payer so even though TV has a decent hardware, I still need to consider Nvidia Shield.
Still very annoying: Nvidia Shield does not know HDR 10+ and nor having Youtube HDR working at all hence > No official branded solution to get full support for all audio/video standards available.
BUT I would have loved so much if I could get latest Philips TV and just have everything working...not the case.
So, here's like a short summary of a review, to what you can expect with latest philips series.
Starting with known common limitations from previous series:
- Network.
You get into network issues once you want to stream High bitrate (>80mbps movies, including variable bit rate that would jump to higher values), because the TV ethernet is only 100mbps (no tv known for gigabit eth port).
Still the case for latest TV series. They come up with Ethernet 10/100.
Wi-Fi setup depends on your router and position.
What's better this year? Latest series from Philips, running Android 10, support USB3 to Ethernet Gigabit adapters. I got up to 800mbps on Anality speed test.
- Pass Through
You might think that having eARC would allow having lossless multichannel pass through. (Dolby TrueHD). NOT the case. Philips firmware does not allow internal applications to pass through TrueHD. You are still limited to transcoded Dolby Digital (lossy format), even though you are using eARC.
According to other threads in Kodi, this limitations probably comes due to the fact that IEC adapter is not available for Kodi to use.
Hence...this is why I still need my cheap Android BOX and can't rely on TV for Kodi. I need those lossless TrueHD streams for my audio system, otherwise I invested for nothing in audio..
- Dolby Vision DOES NOT WORK in this combination: MKV container + P5 Dolby Vision format + Kodi stable.
There is another thread about this with a Kodi 19.0 alternative version supplied there, in which it works.
It works in Plex latest stable.
Hopefully Kodi is going to fix this in stable asap. (there's some excuses about extra needs for MKV..but I've seen it work in the alternative version so it should be in stable too)
Less commonly known:
- the CPU in older versions of Philips struggled with playing HDR 60FPS. On youtube high bitrate 4k streams at 60FPS with HDR it had a lot of frame drops, visible.
This from the latest series seem to do way better. In the famous Costa Rica 4K HDR everything looks butter smooth now.
Same in the panning shots of Gemini Man that was frame-dropping a lot in older Philips series.
Everything else remains as it was in previous series (my 2019 version did everything else perfectly).
I had no issues with networking on Wi-Fi on old versions by having a decent router + Kodi network stream cache enabled (advancedsettings.xml)
SO, given that eARC does NOT HELP AT ALL, and I still don't get Dolby TrueHD from Kodi on TV to my 7.0 sound system, I still CAN NOT use Kodi on this pretty expensive Philips OLED856. My Android TV Box is not a Dolby Vision license payer so even though TV has a decent hardware, I still need to consider Nvidia Shield.
Still very annoying: Nvidia Shield does not know HDR 10+ and nor having Youtube HDR working at all hence > No official branded solution to get full support for all audio/video standards available.
