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Philips big things at this CES 2006 were one very risky, I name the Blu-ray inception due this year, and the other an improvement for your living room ambiance, and a maybe also a depressing experience for your eye specialist: The Ambilight evolution which is associated with a new range of TVs.

What’s Ambilight? Well my mother used the same principle decades ago when she put a lamp behind the TV; she claimed that it was less exhausting for the eyes –remember the black and white (or, better grey on grey) TV then? There wasn’t even an ad programme so you could get outside the room and give your eyes some break.

Ambilight takes advantage of the same principle, only in a much more constructed, sophisticated way: Philips last generation of Ambilight TVs emit ambient light all around the display. Philips claims, like my mother did, that it reduces eyestrain; she was positively sticking to that. Philips people with whom one can, contrarily to my "Discussion: Impossible" mother, confer would add more: it provides a clearer, better colour, and enhances contrasts, details on the image etc.

Nice teeth, and good ambiance...

But there’s more, according to the Eindhoven giant -that’s not my mother's birth place, it is Philips historical city in the Netherlands- it draws you more than ever into what is played on your TV, a story which many therapists would accept, in increasing the auto-hypnosis phenomenon, this mysterious factor by which one is literally inside the action that one is watching -and listening, hence the fantastic improvement provided by Home Video sound systems. So that Ambilight is much more today than when it was started; it is more and more about psycho-physic and ergonomics than a mere comfy DIY eye patch. And it definitely brings a moving sensation, originally based on... light.

Philips has come with two sets, the "Ambilight Surround" and "Ambilight Full": the former delivers the dynamic lighting on three sides of the screen, the latter on four. The Surround version equips two sets, the 50-inches Plasma 50PF9731 and one 42-inches LCD TV. The 42-inches 42PF9831D, due in July, comes with the Full version.

Visit Philips website here