Philips are one of those companies that either gets it right, or gets it totally wrong. One example of them getting it a bit on the wrong side would be the Streamium SL400i that I reviewed a few months back, despite which, I was still happy to purchase a Philips HD TV recently, mainly because it matched up to all of my requirements for a new gogglebox.
And so, it's interesting to notice that Philips has now delved into the PMP market, with their Portable Media Center device.
Apparently, this little gizmo can record from a VCR, a DVD or PVR, it has a 30 GB drive (which, oddly, can only store five hours of video?), and links up with PlayForSure providers.
It seems very similar to the Archos range of PMP products, wit the notable exception of being able to synchronize with Windows -- and it's priced at a reasonable $349.99 -- I wonder if they've got it right, or wrong, this time?
1. I have the very similar in style Samsung YH-999 PMC (which I couldn't recommend high enough) and would love to update to this thing of beauty Philips has created. I love the Portable Media Center devices; great screen, easy to sync media with (at least with my MCE computer), and large enough that watching videos is delightful.
I wonder if it will have the ability to play through composite cables for tv viewing and I also can't figure out how they only have 5 hours available? I guess it's just not powerful enough to encode to a suitable file size and plays it almost at a raw level?
Posted at 9:31PM on Jun 25th 2006 by Michael