When we had the downright magnificent opportunity to toy with Philips' latest PMP line here in the States, we immediately noticed that the GoGear Opus stood out among the rest. The crew over at TrustedReviews recently spent some quality time with the 8GB version of that very unit, and while they found the audio quality to be "excellent," they seemed rather disappointed -- if not irked -- by everything else in the package. For starters, the whole solution just felt boring, with critics noting that its biggest problem was a lack of "excitement." Granted, none of this would matter at a rock-bottom price point, but for $100, there's an awful lot of competition. As we found during our short time with the player, these folks also noticed that the user interface was simply "old-fashioned," and that video playback was nothing to write home about. The bottom line? Unless you score some kind of spectacular deal, your PMP dollars are probably best spent elsewhere.

If you're still Skyping in VGA you need to get with the times, brotherman. Two megapixel webcams are where its at, and according to the review at Register Hardware, the £70 ($110) Philips SPC1330NC delivers. It'll interpolate up to eight megapixel stills if you want to play pretend, its f2.0 aperture gives it great low-light performance, and a stereo mic puts it ahead of the competition, like Microsoft's mono-tastic LifeCam Show. Overall the chromed cam earns high marks, only disappointing by not delivering its advertised 90fps max speed until the resolution is dropped to decidedly sub-VGA resolutions. But, unless you plan on kung-fu chatting, chances are you can get by with less.

Philips has always pushed OLED lighting concepts, and it looks like the company's Lumiblade products will be the first to start shipping. The folks at OLED-Info got to play with some pre-production samples, and while they're definitely cool and impossibly slim, there are some notable drawbacks: the rectangular panel has some unfortunate "speckles," and overall they're just not very bright on their own, so you'll need quite a few for an actual lamp. Still, we've no doubt OLED lighting will soon be everywhere, so hit read link for a quick glimpse of the future.

Philips may be dodging the North American sector with its flashiest of products, but it's still showing the Yanks in attendance a little love on the home entertainment front. Today in a meeting in NYC, the outfit revealed US pricing and availability for its entire 2009 family, most of which was quietly introduced in January. Starting things off are the 6000 and 7000 Series of HDTVs, which just so happen to pick right up where the previous models left off in 2008. The 6000 Series will arrive in 32-, 42- and 47-inch flavors for $799, $1,399 and $1,699, respectively, while the 7000 Series goes 42-, 47- and 52-inch for $1,499, $1,799 and $2,299, also respectively.

While checking these very sets out, we noticed that the factory settings left the colors a bit blown out and overly sharp -- though, this practice is far too common in HDTV companies anyway. Nothing like wowing those Best Buy shoppers at first, only to sear their retinas at home, right? All kidding aside, the panels looked superb, and the A-B comparison mode made tweaking the settings a breeze. Hop on past the break for the rest of the details, and give our gallery a glance for a closer look at the whole lot.

If you're planning to be in Milan later this month, and we know a good lot of you are, we suggest stopping by Superstudio Piú in Zona Tortona between April 22 and 27 to check out Philips' OLED Lumiblade exhibit. The company's promising lighting with dozens of different shapes, sizes and colors will be on display. Can't say we'd necessarily call OLED a "magic material," as the press release does multiple times, but with illuminated designs like this, they're putting up a good argument. Now how about bringing some of these fancy designs to the mass market?

[Via OLED-Display]

Many people are giving up many things to get by in this dire recession, things like vacations, new cars, and highly expensive though well deserved plastic surgery procedures to finally deliver the pectoral definition that nature and daily push-ups won't. Sacrifices all, but perhaps none as big as that made by Philips, which is getting rid of an entire dimensional plane and going strictly 2D. Last year the company talked up display after display after display with glasses-free 3D tech, but now they, along with the company's entire 3D Solutions division, are all being scrapped in favor of more immediately profitable endeavors. So, who wants to buy a vibrating jacket?

Make no mistake, wrapping your mind around the build of an OLED panel is mighty tough to do. Without getting you mired in technobabble, let's just say that indium tin oxide (ITO) has generally been a mainstay in every single OLED that was produced commercially. Now, a team of researchers from AGFA-Gevaert, IMEC, Holst Centre and Philips have prototyped a 12- x 12-centimeter flexible OLED lighting panel that swaps out the ITO for highly-conductive transparent resin electrodes. You see, it's been difficult for OLED builders to secure enough electrical conductivity of ITO in a low-temperature process, and this new methodology is perfectly suited for the coating method (which makes it ripe for printing). The resin itself is being dubbed Orgacon, and tests have shown it to have a 6x improvement over ITO in terms of electrical conductivity. Beyond that, the crews are keeping the secrets safe from the poachers of the world, but here's hoping this amounts to more than just jovial celebration in a far off laboratory.

[Via OLED-Display]

Philips announced its GoGear Aria and Opus players for Europe back in February, but they've finally got around to showing off the units Stateside, along with offering prices, a timeframe, and a bit of company. The 2-inch screened Aria lands this month in 8GB and 16GB versions for $80 and $100, respectively; the 2.8-inch QVGA Opus does 8GB at $100, with a 16GB model in the wings; the teensy new ViBE has a 1.5-inch screen and comes in 4GB and 8GB flavors for $50 and $60; and there's a new little thumb DAP called the Mix, which is short on details. All the DAPs have FM radio and mics, and all but the Mix can do video. They also include trial subscriptions to and support for Rhapsody and Audible, along with a little browser widget to download YouTube videos and load them to the player -- a nice touch. Still, the line is pretty lackluster; we played with the players briefly, and while the design is getting better, there's still a lot of wasted space, mundane controls and ancient-seeming software -- we suppose you get what you pay for. We did appreciate Opus' inclusion of FLAC and OGG support, and its build quality really puts the rest of the line to shame.

Philips has definitely done more for sensory immersion than most with its amBX line of... things, but a general shortage of people willing to mount fans or rumbling wrist rests on their keyboards hasn't kept the company from developing what it thinks is next: a vibrating jacket. The unnamed and triangle-patterned coat features 64 little rumblers distributed throughout, all powered by a pair of AA batteries. The intent is to better immerse you into movies by, say, replicating a light touch running up either arm or simulating an actor's beating heartbeat -- "emotional immersion" they call it. We're not so sure this will be any more compelling than the vibrating vests companies have been trying to sell gamers (and the military) for years, but we do know that Philips had better watch out for lawyers from Immersion.

[Via Slashdot]

Philips has been hitting us with some out-there lighting concepts lately, but the company's Master LED light bulb is actually already on sale in Europe and is set to brighten up Stateside lives around July. The 40W-equivalent bulbs should run between $50 and $70, and expected lifetime is set at 45,000 hours -- just slightly more than a CFL's 10,000 or a standard bulb's 750 hours. The Master is certainly a damn sight nicer looking than the other mutant LED bulbs we've seen, but we'll see if consumers are ready to jump on another more-expensive-upfront lighting tech so soon after CFLs have hit the mainstream.

[Via Core77]