Our helpline is always busy and we give time to our readers to answer their questions. We had a very specific query come in regarding Philips TVs, specifically the flagship OLED+959 . This is Gordon’s query about his home cinema set up:
“I'm looking at replacing our current Philips TV's with the latest flagship OLED+959 reviewed by John Archer.
“My question: If I feel the need for more bass sound and want to add a wireless subwoofer, how simple is this process? Is it a Bluetooth connection that's common to all subwoofers, or will I have to buy a specific Bowers & Wilkins compatible model?
The second TV needs to be larger and connected to a surround sound amplified speaker system so the integral speakers will be redundant & switched off.
I was hoping the OLED+959 would be available in 77" size screen, but I note Richer Sounds advertise the largest screen as 77OLED909.
My second question: What's the difference between code numbers 909 & 959?
And here’s John Archer's reply.
Sounds like you have an impressive home entertainment upgrade process underway! I can definitely understand the appeal of Philips TVs to such a project, especially the premium models with their powerful built-in audio and unusually bright, vibrant pictures.
Getting to the specifics of your questions, adding subwoofers to TVs unless a TV has a specific route for doing so (like some current Panasonic and some now old Sony models) is typically quite difficult. If you can use cables, you can use a TV’s optical output to feed audio into a digital to analogue converter and then output the sound via stereo line out to any powered subwoofer. Taking care, of course, to set the subwoofer’s crossover point so that it only works on the sort of low frequencies you want it too while the TV takes care of the rest.
Things become even trickier when it comes to adding wireless subwoofers to TVs. Typically wireless subwoofers if they’re available as an option are designed to work with soundbars, not TVs - and, usually, with only one brand of soundbar. This is partly because the crossover process is more complicated, and partly because, honestly, external subwoofers don’t typically work very well with TV sound systems, as they tend to overwhelm the relatively puny sound being delivered by TV speakers.
The excellent sound systems in Philips TVs that use Bowers & Wilkins speakers, though, is a rare circumstance where adding an external subwoofer can actually work quite well. So it’s great to find that there is a potential way to add a wireless subwoofer to the Philips TVs you mention, thanks to Philips being the first TV brand in the world to support DTS Play-Fi technology.
This is designed to allow Play-Fi devices to be connected with each other more or less at will, so you should be able to add the Play-Fi-capable Philips Fidelio FW1 subwoofer wirelessly to any of the Philips TV models you are considering. The Play-Fi technology would even see the subwoofer automatically taking over bass duties, without you having to get involved in lots of manual crossover configuration. You should be able to add the subwoofer to the TV using the Philips Sound app or the TV’s Play-Fi menu.
In theory any Play-Fi capable subwoofer could be added to a Play-Fi capable TV. But in reality there are precious few Play-Fi subs out there, and most of the ones that exist are still only sold as part of specific fuller (usually soundbar) packages. So you would probably be limited to the FW1 in your particular circumstance, if you want to play it safe. The FW1 is currently available from Richer Sounds and Amazon Marketplace for £549.
I need to add to all the above, though, that when double checking on the Play-Fi situation with my Philips contacts, they said that they would prefer to point to using the FW1 with the TV using a physical connection rather than people going through the ‘pain’ (their words) of the wireless FW1 Play-Fi approach! But the wireless approach SHOULD work, in theory. I have seen people stating that they have attached the FW1 wirelessly to other older Philips TVs without issue. And I think you would have grounds for returning the subwoofer if it did not given the claims made for Play-Fi.
In the end, though, all of this may likely prove redundant in any case, as I suspect you won’t feel the need to add an external subwoofer to the OLED+959’s excellent sound system. I’d certainly at least suggest living with the OLED+959 for a few days before considering trying the FW1 subwoofer.
Regarding your second, bigger TV, yes, as Philips mentioned in its reply yesterday, the +959 is only available in 65-inch due to a number of design specificities. As Philips also said, though, the OLED909s that are available in the 77-inch size you want still crucially use the same ultra bright MLA OLED panels that the +959s do. The only difference where picture quality is concerned is that the OLED909 only uses a single chip picture processor, where the +959s use a twin chip.
This twin chip approach provides small advantages to picture quality, especially when it comes to dynamic tone mapping of HDR sources to the screen’s capabilities, the way the screen can adapt pictures to room conditions, and how well HD sources are upscaled to 4K. But I would not say that these differences should be enough to divert you from sticking with your 77-inch ambition and getting the 77OLED909 instead. The OLED909 still does a great job of exploiting the MLA panel, and the difference between a 65-inch TV and a 77-inch TV is the difference between 'watching TV' and ‘home cinema’ so far as I’m concerned.
Also, as you state that you won’t actually be using the TV’s built in sound in this second room set up, then you really don’t need to be paying for the extreme speaker system built into the +959s.
