Photos: Philips Ultimate Dream TV and more from CES
A TV designed with women in mind, a Swarovski USB memory stick and, er, a Blu-ray player. It could only be time for the Philips CES press conference!
It's all about women, or at least that's what Philips tells us. The new head of the cloggy company has just finished telling the press how it's preparing to unleash a raft of products aimed at nabbing the female dollar. The push is being led by the products in the Design Collection, which feature 'holistic and iconic designs', apparently.
The flagship product is the Ultimate Dream TV (52PFL7603D), which features a stunning innovation known as curved edges. The head chap spent a few minutes praising the designers for this brilliant wheeze, before another chap came up to mention the real story -- invisible speakers.
They use two dual-excursion passive radiator drivers (speakers to you and me) mounted behind the TV rather than at the side. The sound wraps around the set and emerges from a small gap in the curvy bezel and, apparently, is rather good.
Picture-wise, it can display 1080p, as you might expect from a high-end model, and features the usual Clear LCD technology that makes other Philips TVs look so lovely. The panel has an amazing 2ms response time, so there should be virtually no stuttering of the kind you can see on LCD TVs.
What else did Philips anounce? Click on...
2008 is going to be the year we see Blu-ray players with all the features we were promised when the specification was first announced. Panasonic has one on the way, as does Philips, the BDP7200. It's compliant with the latest version of the Blu-ray standard, profile 1.1. It supports interactive features through BD Java and is available in the States in April for $349 (£175). Next!
Finally, in a blatant attempt to capture some of the Valentine's day market, there are some more products with Swarovski crystals welded on to them. In addition to some frankly foul headphones, there's this USB key. The USB Lock Out Jet Hematite has 1GB of memory, looks like this and will cost around $100 (£50). Er, that's it on those, folks. -Jason Jenkins