Thanks to its glossy black finish, this is a fantastic-looking set. Because it doesn’t have the full four-sided Ambilight of the 42PF9831D (it’s a three-way one instead), Philips has not implemented the large, white background board used on the bigger set. While this can render Ambilight a little less effective — the board on the 9831 acts as a ‘screen’ for the coloured light to shine on — it also keeps the size of the television down. The result is a more compact TV that’s prettier and a lot easier to live with.

Like other high-end Philips TVs, there’s Pixel Plus 3, Digital Natural Motion, Clear LCD and a raft of other minor enhancements going on, plus a three-sided Ambilight. Give it any source, hi-def or standard, and it’ll throw out a superb image, scaling it up, removing digital noise, automatically adjusting contrast and colour levels and using a scanning backlight to ensure smooth, smear-free movement. Despite the resolution, this TV will not accept a 1080p input, but I am generally of the opinion that this isn’t too much of an issue. Many people are under the impression that a 1080i source will give you a poorer image than a 720p source, due to its interlaced nature. However, if you feed a 1080i signal into an LCD TV it will de-interlace it and display it as progressive video. Of course the downside is that a 1080i 60 signal becomes 1080p 30 video, so it’s not quite as good for fast moving footage like sports.

The remote is a nice-looking bit of shiny whiteness, and the controls are all in reasonably logical places

Measuring 2.3 by 2.1 by 7.1 inches and weighing 12.3 ounces, the Philips ShoqBox is too big to carry around like a traditional MP3 player, though setting it on your shoulder might draw a few chuckles. The Source button allows you to pick from your music library, the FM radio, or a line-in source. Lifting the door on the back of the unit reveals USB, line-in, headphone, and external power inputs. The ShoqBox feels sturdy and well built, and the silver buttons are solid and responsive. The white-backlit screen is easy to read and features enough contrast to view in bright, sunny environments. The screen displays info for the current song, the EQ setting, and the name of the next song in the list. To encourage use on the go, Philips includes a travel case in the package.

ShoqBox’s alarm clock wakes you to a buzzer, radio or your own MP3 or WMA tunes that you’ve downloaded to the device. Its rechargeable battery specs at 10 hours, so you need to back up battery power with the supplied AC charger when you travel. The sleep timer sets to intervals of 15, 30 and 60 minutes.

Various equalizer settings tailor sound to genres including rock, hip-hop, jazz, dance and funk. The differences among the modes are subtle; you’re likely to stick just with one or turn them off altogether. The Dynamic Bass Boost button, on the other hand, beefs up the overall output, pumping up the sound to levels that defy the size of the mini music maker.

It won’t take you long to get past the annoyance that you can only store four hours of MP3 tracks on the system, but its still one that we think Philips should have thought about.

As with virtually every other MP3 player, tracks are accessed via an on screen menu that gives you the chance to select music via the usual array of artist, album, genre etc and Philips has played it safe here. There are no crazy innovative options here.

As for playback controls, the ShoqBox offers what you’d expect from a basic MP3 player. In MP3 mode, you have menu options for shuffle/repeat, a sleep timer, an alarm clock, basic system settings, and EQ. While a song is playing, you can press the left navigation button to view your music library by playlist, artist, album, and so on. You can establish key shortcuts to toggle through EQ settings, shuffle/repeat modes, or additional song information. The ShoqBox uses Musicmatch Jukebox, included on the installation disc, to transfer songs, which means it syncs easily with playlists created in the app. The player handles DRM-protected WMA files purchased from Musicmatch and Napster without a hitch. Unfortunately, the device stores only 256MB worth of tracks (about 64 MP3s), and there is no expansion slot. The ShoqBox would be much more attractive with 1GB of storage.