Philips' pre-CES product blowout

Philips has unveiled a whole mess of new products to whet our appetites for CES, ranging from TVs to home entertainment setups; the Dutch giant even threw in some Skype handsets for good measure. First up is the 42PFL98332D (pictured), Philips' 42-inch FlatTV, which brings Ambilight Full Surround, 1080p and a 4ms response time. For the rest of the pre-release swag, click over to the next page...

The HTS8100 DVD Home Theater System with Sonowave is a one-piece system that combines a tuner, DVD player, HDMI, 1080p upconversion and a subwoofer. The console has a sliding glass door that unveils the disc compartment.

HTS6600 DVD Home Theater System with Sonowave

The ID9371B DECT Cordless Phone/Answering Machine won the Best of Innovations award for its curvaceous design and functionality. Besides acting as a regular phone, this one will copy your SIM card's address book to its internal memory, and will allow you to record 15 minutes worth of your call.


SGC5103BD amBX Premium Starter Kit. Check out the fans -- now that's what we call immersive gaming.

The VOIP3211G is a Skype-friendly handset that allows for POTS and VOIP calls.

VOIP3211G DECT Phone for Skype

VOIP8411B DECT Phone for Skype

PMC8430 Portable Media Center

WACS3500 All-in-one Wireless Music Center with Speakers

WACS5000 Wireless Music Center and Station with Pipe Speakers

[humpty @ Nov 9th 2006 9:54PM]

Thats a gigantic bezel on that LCD.

[Matt @ Nov 9th 2006 9:56PM]

wtf?

[Alcaron @ Nov 9th 2006 10:08PM]

Please please PLEASE bicubic resample your promo images. Seriously about 90% of the images in your posts are BUTCHERED by crappy resizing. Its not that hard to do it right and it makes some product shots look REALLY bad/hard to distinguish when you don't.

[Dan @ Nov 9th 2006 10:27PM]

Alcaron--or maybe they're not resized at all, they're just stuffed into the html page. Right-click and open in a new window to see the full sized image. These guys have more pr0n to dig up, they ain't photoshoppin' nothin'.

[Alcaron @ Nov 9th 2006 10:31PM]

Thats an even better case for proper resizing. The pics wouldn't look like ass, and you would use less bandwidth serving them.

Plus, you don't need photoshop. There are TONES of scripts out there that will sit on your server and process images to fit a certain sizing requirement. Smart ones that will even keep aspect ratios intact, or let you convert them to another format if you so desire.

It's easy, and it makes your images, which is mainly whats on their front page, look a TON better.

[Michael Brewer @ Nov 9th 2006 10:40PM]

If you were using a Mac, they'd be resized perfectly well by the operating system.

[Intrepid @ Nov 9th 2006 11:02PM]

Shutup fanboy. They look fine on my Vista system.

[Alcaron @ Nov 9th 2006 11:20PM]

So, wait, what, the OS intervenes with how your browser displays an image?

Mac OSX actually goes "hey, I detect a webpage! I'm going to make sure all the images resize properly!!!!"...I somehow doubt it, MAYBE if you use Safari or whatever the default browser is but I hardly call that good web design "hey...like, 5% of the internet doesn't see this as a problem, so...why fix it"...yeah...

[Keaton @ Nov 10th 2006 12:30AM]

Oh my f'ing gosh!!!

Bi-cubic re-sampling wouldn't help in this case. Its the HTML/JavaScript to blame. The pictures look fine at full size but they dynamically resize (depending on your screen size) causing the ugliness. Dammit this is the crap you have to deal with when you build any kind of content for the Internet.

And you Mac guy... you can just shut your mouth. I'm sure you have a f'ing huge monitor thats why it looks fine... But I'm sorry 90% of the world still runs at 1024x768 so you can just sit there thinking you are the best with your 30" 2560x1600 monitor... I hate to break it to you buddy, but you are a minority in this world...

And I agree with Alcaron, since when does OSX just up and decide to resize images in a webpage right out of blue. I'm sorry, but that doesn't just happen. I've had enough run-ins with Mac's to know this doesn't happen...

If you don't know what you are talking about Michael, just be quiet. All you Mac users think you are so smart, but personally I think you are just plain dumb... Why the hell would you ever want to isolate yourself in the ever changing computer world? I think its pure insanity... Its a fact that about one percent of computer users use Mac's. One percent! And you one percent are all pretty much 90% incompatible with the rest of the computer world... pure insanity...

Feel free to dis my post all you Mac-Fanboy's. Just dig your grave a little deeper will ya?

http://www.soggycowdesigns.com

[sergeij freud @ Nov 10th 2006 2:18AM]

lol, soggy cow design indeed!
way to go and make windows-users look like complete idiots. why don't you just go back and hide under the rock you've been living under for the past 5 years. i hate to break it to you but we mac-users can resize this window to any size and still have no jaggies in the pics - it's called "having a modern operating system/browser".
but don't worry, as soon as vista comes around you too will enjoy such things, and then you can return back here and post silly things, like how everybody else copied this feature from windows....

[hoberion @ Nov 10th 2006 1:08AM]

"VOIP3211G DECT Phone for Skype"

this phone is for windows live messenger, look at the logo at the bottom of the phone

[Keaton @ Nov 10th 2006 3:16AM]

Please forgive me....

I was just venting....

Its been one of those days....

[Ali @ Nov 11th 2006 10:25AM]

I'm using IE7beta with a 17" monitor @ 1280x1024 and I'm having no probs with the pix. I'm a bit of an amature and don't no what bicubic resampling does but I set my monitor to 1024x768 to try and find out what it was that you were seeing and I still had no probs with the pix .... I'm really intregued to know what it is that you guys are seeing?

[Gil @ Nov 10th 2006 3:34AM]

What the hell are you people talking about? I'm using windows XP with Opera 9.2 and I see no jaggies. I have a 19 LCD but even if I resize the window there are no jaggies.

Most likely it's browser dependant so stop with the Mac vs Windows talk.

[Michiel @ Nov 10th 2006 4:37AM]

"Thats a gigantic bezel on that LCD."

It's for the Ambilight system.

The large white bezel can be removed for those who want to hang their TV on the wall. But if you put it more than 10 cm. away from the wall, you need the bezel to reflect the Ambilight-light

[SKHPFS @ Nov 15th 2006 7:25PM]

THE WHIT BEZEL?!?! CANNOT BE REMOVED AS IT IS PART OF THE CHASIS OF THE TV

[Rsaeire @ Nov 10th 2006 5:04AM]

I find it perfectly fine for the majority of the pics. The 1st pic of the lcd 'perhaps' looks slightly jaggy along the top of the bezel, but that's the only picture I can comment on as the rest are fine and even at a push I wouldn't have noticed the 1st pic unless mentioned!

The VOIP handset as far as I know hoberion is compatible with Windows Live Messenger, not neccessarily just for it. It multi-tasks if you like! hehe

[Juicebeetle @ Nov 10th 2006 5:11AM]

afari Mac: no jaggies
Firefox Mac: no jaggies
IE Mac (5.2.3, a 2001 product): no jaggies
Opera Mac: some jaggies (less than IE XP and Firefox XP, more than the other Mac browsers)


IE XP: jaggies
Firefox XP: jaggies
Opera XP: some jaggies (less than IE XP and Firefox XP, more than the non-Opera Mac browsers)

Macs fix this at the OS level, Opera takes a stab at it at the application level. Now, what's with all the hate and anger? It'll probably look fine on Vista. (It'd better).

[Dave @ Nov 10th 2006 5:49AM]

holy sheeyat... Im a mac guy and I cannot believe how this thread got hijacked into a Mac VS Windows deal. Seriously....WTF? Just for good measure, why dont we also turn it into a PS3 vs Xbox thread too? Oh and by the by, Mac has well over 6% of the pc market and 12% of the laptop market. And PS3 RULEZ and Xbox 360 is for teh SuxXorZ ( or however you talk like that)!!!


PS... thats a joke by the way.

[Wisconsin @ Nov 10th 2006 6:10AM]

Someone made a factual statement (Macs deal with this at the OS level). A little smug, perhaps, but true nonetheless. All of a sudden every Windows fanboy starts crying foul. Having both systems in house (and Irix and Linux), I thought some hard data would inform the uninformed and silence the fudsters.

Ah well...

[Juicebeetle @ Nov 10th 2006 6:19AM]

Wisconsin?! That's a blast from the past.

My screen said 'Juicebeetle' when I posted.

[rakesj @ Nov 10th 2006 12:28PM]

in Europe the 42PFL98332D is the 42pf9831, already on sale from the FIFA football world cup. Look at the cnet.co.uk review:

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/televisions/0,39030218,49278138,00.htm

[SKHPFS @ Nov 15th 2006 7:26PM]

NO IT'S NOT THE 42PF9831 IS NOT 1080, ONLY 768

[Kenny G @ Nov 15th 2006 9:09AM]

Jeeez, Philips launches a couple of (what look like) great products and all everybody can talk about is Mac vs. whatever.

That ID9371B DECT sure looks great, it looks like Philips has got some great designers. Some of the VoIP phones mentioned above are already being mentioned on Philips' VoIP website (http://www.consumer.philips.com/voip/), but unfortunately the ID9371B isn't.

@rakesj:
Thanks for mentioning, that TV received a great rating from CNET!

@ronentzadok:
Yeah, I already read that in about 50 spammy-like blog comments the past few weeks...

[d @ Nov 20th 2006 7:02AM]

My advice would be to never buy any wi-fi or hi-tech products from Philips.
They have a terrible customer service reputation and rarely fix any problems (i.e. via firmware updates).

Check out their forum (www.streamiumcafe.com) for proof.

[Mark Brandon @ Dec 21st 2006 9:38AM]

Stay clear of Philips TVs. They are legendary for their poor quality control. According to Sunland TV, authorized warranty repair site for Philips in the Phoenix east valley metro area. All Philips TVs HD, NTSC, EDTV are to be avoided. They break often, and Philips is in no hurry to supply spare parts. 3-6 month turn arounds for warranty serice are becomming the norm.