PVR Wire

Philips little Media Center, nifty, but costly

Martin Conaghan — 2006-09-01T18:00:00+00:00

Filed under: News, Microsoft, Philips, Media Center Edition, Home Networking

Earlier this year, I purchased a 26" Philips LCD HD TV, and promptly regretted the laboured choice when the Tv packed in on me and had to be returned to the manufacturer.

You would think I'd have learned from my experience with the Streamium last year, so it's no surprise that I'm a tad skeptical with news of a Philips LX1000 Media Centre PC.

Sure, it's small, perfectly-formed, and packs a bit of a punch, boasting an AMD Turion 64 ML-34 1.8gHz processor, 1GB of DDR RAM, a 120GB hard drive, Wi-Fi, a DVD rewriter and an nVIDIA GeForce 6600 graphics card, but I'd like to see some detailed reviews before I pass any judgement on it.

Even though it's just 19cm x 5cm x 21cm deep and comes with Windows Media Centre Edition and a hybrid TV tuner, I reckon the £999 asking price will have to drop before I even consider buying Philips again.

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Philips portable media center

Martin Conaghan — 2006-06-23T16:35:00+00:00

Filed under: DVD, Microsoft, Philips, Mobile

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?

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BT Vision coming "by the end of this year"

Martin Conaghan — 2006-05-18T15:10:00+00:00

Filed under: News, Philips, BT

In yet another article propounding a television revolution here in the U.K., BT looks headed for the blame game over the delayed release of its BT Vision product (originally codenamed BT Nevis).

The product, which aims to combine a Philips-built Freeview box with a PVR and a video-on-demand service delivered over an ADSL-enabled telephone line, was being touted for a summer 2006 release, which has now been put back to Q4, and, in all likelihood will probably not hit the shelves in time for Christmas.

Sure, it sounds great on paper, but rivals are starting to suggest that BT and Microsoft (the software partner on the project) are struggling to get Vision to work reliably ahead of a public release.

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Philips Electronics announces Media Center PC

Martin Conaghan — 2006-03-21T15:28:00+00:00

Filed under: News, Microsoft, Philips, Media Center Edition

Philips Electronics has entered Media Center PC market with the MPC9350i, which boasts twin (analog) TV tuners, a hard disk-based PVR, wireless Internet access, a 3GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB of memory and an impressive 250 GB hard drive.

It also features a DVD burning which supports dual-layer DVD /-R, single-layer DVD /-R/RW and CD-R/RW, plus an eight-in-one memory card reader, four USB 2.0 inputs, two six-pin and one four-pin Firewire ports.

Add to the mix an 802.11b/g Wi-Fi adaptor along with Ethernet networks, SCART, RCA, DVI, S-video and a bunch of other audio and video ports, and you're looking at a fairly impressive Media Center set-up.

The unit is expected to launch in the U.K. first, retailing for around £1000.

Via Gizmodo.

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Philips Streamium SL400i reviewed

Martin Conaghan — 2006-01-30T15:45:00+00:00

Filed under: Philips, Reviews, Home Networking

Whilst not strictly a PVR, the Philips Streamium SL400i does include some PVR-style features, but it's probably best described as a media extender.

I was given an SL400i to review recently, and found myself reasonably impressed by the potential for the technology around the home, especially if you're a regular user of audio and video content straight from your PC or Mac, like me.

Straight out of the box, the setup was fairly simple: connect the unit to your TV via SCART, and plug in the wireless adapter to your PC, then install the software. No problems there, and I was up and running in a matter of minutes.

The Phillips Media Manager software performs a scan of your hard drive, ignoring or including folders as you see fit, in order to catalog the various A/V files you have on your machine. The Philips Wireless USB 11g Adapter software then makes the connection from your PC to the unit and streams content wirelessly via a simple remote-controlled interface on your TV. It can even connect to the Internet if you bridge the connection from the wireless adapter to your main web router.

However, that's pretty much where it all ended for me.

I spent a few minutes browsing around my media files and was quickly impressed by the speed and quality of the output, but I quickly discovered that files with DRM or incompatible codecs (XVid) wouldn't display.

Then, the wireless adapter software decided it couldn't be bothered establishing a network connection for me. So, I tried again; nothing.

I uninstalled all the software and ran through the entire process all over again; bingo -- I was back up and running again. But not for long. After I switched off the Streamium unit and powered it back up again, the connection was gone, and no matter how hard I tried or how many times I uninstalled and reinstalled the software, it just wouldn't work.

I even went on to Streamium Cafe, a well-known Phillips Streamium messageboard forum, but I was roundly ignored. Someone eventually suggested that "nobody uses this setup... most people have a 'real' WLAN router running."

Which, frankly, is a bit ridiculous and hard to believe; that no-one on the forum who owns an SL400i uses the wireless adapter which is shipped with the unit.

Potentially, on paper, this is a fantastic product and a brilliant innovation. In reality, for me, at least, it was a waste of time.

At £180, you would think there would be a more comprehensive troubleshooting guide with a product like this (an update helper card provided with the manual and supposedly aimed at users with Windows XP Service Pack 2 was factually incorrect), but I couldn't find a single help document which covered wireless networking for Windows XP on the Philips website, or on any messageboard forum.

Save yourself the bother and buy a £40 video sender.

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Three new DVD/HDD recorders from Philips

Martin Conaghan — 2005-10-27T12:55:58+00:00

Filed under: News, Philips

Philips has announced three new DVD/HDD recorders: the DVDR7300H, the DVDR3300H and the DVDR3305.

The DVDR3305 is the entry-level DVD recorder, supporting most DVD formats including dual layer DVD+R and can record up to six hours on a single-sided DVD+R/RW or DVD-R/RW, while the DVDR3300H has an 80 GB hard drive (130 hours) with a six-hour buffer and includes iLink.

The DVDR7300H is the top-level model, featuring a 250 GB hard drive (400 hours), with a six-hour recording buffer live pause and time-shift functions, iLink and Guide Plus+. It's also HDMI compatible and can upscale to 1080i.

Via: iRecordTV.

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BT announces IPTV service

Martin Conaghan — 2005-10-26T16:16:50+00:00

Filed under: News, Philips

As reported here on PVR Wire back in August, the U.K.'s biggest telecommunications organization, BT, has finally announced plans for an IP-based television service for late 2006.

Codenamed 'Nevis', the service teams BT with Philips and Microsoft to offer a video-on-demand set-top box system that can store 80 hours of recorded content, and adds all 30 of the digital terrestrial channels on the Freeview service to the mix.

The hurried press release seems designed to combat the recent offer from BSkyB for the U.K. ISP EasyNet; BT controls most of the telecom infrastructure in the U.K., but BSkyB has stacks of television content (including the very lucrative rights to English Premiership soccer -- for the time being), and it now has the means to distribute it over the Internet.

BT now has a massive battle on their hands to try and establish themselves in an already-saturated market, and then combat the omnipresent BSkyB and the growing threat of Sky+.

More: ADSL Guide

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