I've recently bought a Philips 32PFL7603 for gaming in my bedroom (720p), at first i was quite pleased with it, until i discovered the huge amounts of input lag, i felt extremely dissapointed with it.

It's partially my own fault, i knew about the input lag phenomenon, but i didn't really keep it into account as i figured LCD panels would be decent after all these years of LCD panels.

I contacted Philips Holland about this, after reading numerous threads here on the forums regarding the PFL9632/9732 which seemed to have the same issues, and ask if it was possible to get some type of replacement (there seems to be a model that has the exact same type of specs, the 32PFL7623, but does not have these issues, so i thought why not give it a go), but obviously they are trying to get it 'fixed' first.

As i'm very reluctant to letting the repairguy open up the tv (and perhaps cause even more irrelevant issues), i wanted to ask a few questions about it here.

The Philips authorised-repair store that contacted me after my initial contact with Philips, claimed someone would contact me soon to set a date, and that they had received parts from philips to be replaced within the TV.

I'm not a technology guru when it comes to things like these, and from what i could gather on the phone, the part that arrived was a SSB board that was going to get replaced.

Now, the question is, will this replacement board make *any* difference whatsoever? Do these boards contain the chipset (i'm asking as the new PX5100 might be on that one? which does not have the issue) or is that SSB completely unrelated to what is causing the issue? (the lcd panel itself perhaps?)

You may want to post this in the Flat Panel LCD forum...

thought about doing that, but that forum seems to be more about general information regarding certain models?
a technical question as this seemed to be more appropriate here, correct me if i'm wrong though :)

I think you are out of luck. Some digital TVs have a game mode which reduces the time lag required to receive, scale if required, and then display the output on the screen.
Since your TV has a native resolution of 1366x768 it will have lag due to the time rescale the input if sending it any other resolution if it does not have a game mode option.
If it also supports VGA input you might try sending it 1360 or 1366x768 over VGA to prevent the scaling time lag.

that is not the issue though, as the more expensive Cineos models that were fabricated in the same year have the same issues (the 9632 and 9732 to be exact) both of which are full hd.
there were huge threads about those models as they had the same amount of input lag, and were advertised as full hd, when they were in fact doing progressive -> interlaced -> progressive, which made them get huge amounts of complaints as people started to realise it was not true full hd.
this makes me believe it's not something related to the panel itself, but moreso with the processing hardware.

that brings me back to my original question though, would changing the ssb (which is the 'heart' of the unit from what i gather) be able to resolve this issue, and perhaps even add a gamemode to the unit?
i have zero knowledge when it comes to those small service boards, and have no clue what type of stuff the ssb is actually doing inside the unit.

on the other hand it seems a bit silly if any model could just use an ssb of a highend model and magicly become a topend tv, which is why i'm so confused about the whole thing.

Well it was the same issue they were scaling the content which is what took the time.
If they were traking 1080i input and treating it as 940p and then upscaling it to 1080p then that is what took the time.
IMHO there is no solution to your problem of trying to use the TV as a gaming display.

what is doing the scaling though, there must be some piece of hardware doing it? the chipset i figure, which is located where, the mainboard, the small service board?

if that gets replaced with a newer revision, shouldn't that solve the issue? or will that newer revision not fit into the chassis?