Review Many people enjoying Blu-ray movies do so using a Sony PlayStation 3, while the rest of us will opt for a dedicated Blu-ray player. For the latter, philips is touting its BDP3000 as a budget player and, while certainly not the cheapest, it does offer 1080p playback, the optimal Blu-ray format.
philips‘ BDP3000: the shiny black fascia affords the minimum of buttons and distracting lights.
Presented in a 6cm-high box with a tastefully unfussy, shiny black fascia, the philips BDP3000 is a straight replacement for a DVD player. That is, it plays all your DVD Region 2 discs as well as high definition Blu-ray Region B titles, along with DivX movies saved to CD and DVD media, including home-recorded discs.
Additionally, the device has been designed to play media on CDaudio discs, MP3 and WMA CDs, and just about any disc that contains JPG images. Apart from a simple status window, the front of the unit is as featureless as you can get, providing just four buttons: Power, Eject, Play and Pause. It uses a tray-loading mechanism that is quiet and feels strong enough to resist clumsy treatment. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Think of a widescreen TV. The widest one you’ve seen, you know, one with big, garish speakers stuck on the side. Well, whatever it is, it’ll be nowhere near as wide as this new, premium-priced LCD TV from philips.
Current widescreens have an aspect ratio of 16:9, so when viewing a movie on them, there are black bars along the top and bottom of the screen. Why? Because movies aren’t actually produced in the 16:9 format. Most DVDs have movie aspect ratios of 2.35:1, or 21.15:9. Even this isn’t the full picture, which is 2.39:1 (or 21.51:9) and viewable from the latest Blu-ray discs. It’s this measurement which is matched perfectly by the philipscinema 21:9 56PFL9954H TV. Purists please note, it’s the product name, not the shape of this 2560 x 1080 screen, that has been approximated to 21:9, for simplicity. Read the rest of this entry »
Review When we reviewed the diminutive philips GoGear Spark MP3 player back in March, we were quietly impressed. Now that philips has introduced the larger Opus, it’s time to see if the Spark was just a flash in the pan.
philips has clearly followed the old axiom of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ because the Opus has similar design traits to its previous PMPs. Still, if the Opus looks a little old fashioned, it remains smart and solid in its gloss black and brushed aluminium case. At 107x11x57mm and weighing 95g, it’s very similar to Samsung’s P3, although that has a 3in touch screen, while the Opus sports a non-touch 2.8in 320×240 affair. Read the rest of this entry »
Review With every tuppenny-ha’penny laptop and netbook coming with a built-in web cam, and laptops taking an ever larger chunk of the computer market, it’s probably fair to say business ain’t want it used to be when it comes to flogging external webcams. So has philips‘ new SPC1330NC Webcam Pro got what it takes to make it a worthwhile purchase for those whose PCs have a fitted Camera?
It’s not often we start reviews with the box, but in this case we are going to because it makes some bold claims including that the SPC1330NC delivers HD quality, 90f/s, 2Mp video and 8Mp resolution still images.
A glance at the spec sheet reveals that the SPC1330NC also comes with an 8x digital zoom autofocus f-2.0 wide angle lens with a 70 degree viewing angle, twin Stereo microphones and a couple of trick bits of software, namely, Pixel Plus 2 – for “natural-looking, razor sharp pictures” – and Digital Natural Motion, that removes picture judder. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Logitech’s Squeezebox Boom has been a firm favourite here at Vulture Central and, for the best part of a year, it has had the market to itself. Now philips is looking to crash the party with the new Streamium NP2900, another device designed to play music stored on your computer over an 802.11b/g wireless network, without the need for a separate hi-fi.
philips‘ Streamium NP2900 – a stylish arrival at the networked music party
The first thing that struck us when we unpacked the NP2900 was how much smaller than the Boom it is. At 346x69x99mm and weighing under 1.5kg it takes up quite a bit less space, while the styling is a rather more in keeping with the usual home audio aesthetic. Don’t get us wrong, we like the way the Boom looks, but it’s a bit too brutal for some tastes. The NP2900′s svelte looks are helped by the absence of controls other than very small power, volume and mute buttons on the top of the device. Read the rest of this entry »
