Smart Home Blog

Philips introduced its widescreen Cinema 21:9 LCD TV. That the first cinema-proportioned 56″ TV incorporates Ambilight technology. Since there is a lot of movies with 16:9 ratio it’d be interesting to know how Cinema 21:9 will handle them. According to producer it shouldn’t be a problem. It will accurately match “on-screen content to extend the picture beyond the confines of the screen”.

Philips promised to start selling Cinema 21:9 in Europe that Spring. The price and detailed spec are not available at that moment.

[via Engadget]

The new Philips Prestigo (SRU9600) remote control blends control, comfort and convenience together. It has built-in LCD touchscreen which displays the buttons you need to operate the currently selected device only. Simple and general commands, such as volume and channel up/down, can also be activated by hard keys on the unit as well.

The remote can control up to 8 different devices from 20 categories. The set-up wizard and the remote’s learning capabilities (to learn IR codes from other remote just point to it!) make process of configuration easy and intuitive.

The SRU9600 is available at all leading electronic stores and retailing at $239.

[via eHomeUpgrade and HardwareZone]

Philips has annouced a new and innovative 23cm (usually the photo frames are 18 cm only) PhotoFrame for digital photos. The new digital frame has a high performance LCD screen which allows to display photos with increased levels of sharpness, brightness and contrast courtesy of its high-density display.

The PhotoFrame is available in two design options – Modern or Classic. Both can be easily mounted on the walls. The PhotoFrame comes with the internal memory which is enough to store up to 150 photos. Additionally, it contains two memory card readers that support all major memory cards. It is possible to use two different memory cards at the same time.

The PhotoFrame includes a PhotoEffect Wizard which allows to make adjustments to images, such as rotation, cropping, zoom in and out as well as effects such as black and white or sepia colour changes, and the overlaying of fun frames.

[via Fareastgizmos]

Once I already wrote about LITTLE LLUON – compact Media Center PC based on AMD Turion and nVidia. Here is a similar one from Philips – LX1000. Featuring a 1.8GHz AMD Turion 64, 1GB of RAM, a 120GB drive, integrated analog/digital TV tuner, WiFi, a dual-layer DVD burner, and NVIDIA GeForce 6600 graphics in a 195 x 58 x 212mm form factor, it can be a competitor of Mac Mini (in spite of its price), especially for Linux users.

However, the price of LX1000 is not so pleasant for a purse – £999 (about $1500).

[via Engadget]

Philips drops a cordless VoIP841 phone. As usual, the phone is accompanied by a remote DECT base station that plugs into both the broadband connection and the traditional phone line. So, it handles both Skype and ordinary calls in one phone. The VoIP841 has a color screen and stylish design. But, unlike many others Skype-phones, the VoIP841 doesn’t need a PC. It needs just an Internet connection. It’s possible becuase the phone uses Linux as its embedded OS.
The phone will be available this Autumn. The price is not listed yet.

[via Engadget and LinuxDevices]