Philips products.....................
ijumpstart.com
news Bites
<Picture><Picture><Picture>
The TV/PC arrives
We have all been talking for years about the implosion of the PC and the TV. This year at Berlin we saw it starting to happen. The Ponte and DVX8000 from Philips are the start of a new breed.
Philips Ponte
The convergence of the TV and the PC gathers pace with the announcement of the Philips Ponte. It is a cross between a Video CD player and a Windows PC. It will launch before Christmas, initially in Asia and Germany at the equivalent of around Pounds 1000 retail.
Ponte is aimed at the interactive home entertainment market of families with children, giving Internet and PC functionality to your television set. It runs CD-ROMs, CD-Audio and Video CD discs.
We had a good play with Ponte at the IFA in Berlin and we were impressed. The infrared cordless keyboard is neat with a built-in stick mouse controller. There are also mouse and keyboard ports on the back of the box.
Specification
P166 MMX chip
16 Mb RAM (expandable to 256 Mb)
3D graphics accelerator with 2 Mb Video DRAM
3D Surround Sound audio
MPEG-1 full motion video for games and movies
33.6 Mbit/s fax modem or ISDN adapter
16x CD-ROM drive
2.1 Gb hard disk
Floppy disk drive
Windows 95 with Internet Explorer
Serial and parallel ports
VGA and game ports
The Philips DVX8000
Apart from DVD, the product announcement from Philips which caused the biggest stir was the DVX8000 Multimedia Theatre. This is the big brother of the Ponte, aimed initially at early adopters with pockets in the US.
DVX8000 is being termed a 'digital convergence device'. It's an anything machine for the home cinema enthusiast, a home cinema with a powerful multimedia PC thrown in. It combines TV, o, DVD Video and PC functionality with Internet access.
The cost, around $5000, will deter all but the most stout-hearted fans. Nevertheless Philips are putting down a marker that the multimedia home theatre is the place to be. The DVX8000 is designed for the US market but Philips hopes to launch a similar product in Europe by mid-1998.
Specification
P233 MMX chip
32 Mb RAM (expandable to 256 Mb)
3D graphics accelerator with 4 Mb Video DRAM
Dolby Digital (AC-3) 5.1 multichannel audio
Standard PC connectors plus USB
33.6 Mbit/s fax modem or ISDN adapter
DVD-ROM drive
3 Gb hard disk
Floppy disk drive
Windows 95 with Internet Explorer
SVGA (RGB) and S-Video outputs
Multi-scalar video processing technology
Marantz RC2000 Learning Remote Control
hometheater.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IM analysis
<Picture><Picture><Picture>
Olivetti squeezed Windows 95 into a black box and came a cropper, so what chance has Philips got? The signs actually looked good. Think about it. The Ponte is a P166 MMX in a black box with built-in Internet access which also doubles as an entertainment console. The office worker who is familiar with Windows 95 at work will be attracted to the idea. All the familiar software like Microsoft Word is accessible. It's a no-brainer. You get in from work, settle down in front of the television and read your email. You can listen to music, watch a Video CD, do your homework using the latest Encarta, or reference Cinemania on the night's television film. It makes sense. But it is in Asia that devices like the Ponte will really score. The enormous success of VCD in Asia makes a great springboard the Ponte. It allows families to access their hundreds of Video CDs, at the same time offering an immensely powerful educational tool for the children of the burgeoning middle-class. What a pity that Video CD never caught on in the West. But devices like the Ponte should increase demand for the few titles are available. It will certainly increase the demand for home-delivery of training titles which use MPEG-1 video. Soon the world of multimedia will be available on a TV near you. The industry needs to think through all the implications of . We have been living in the belief that interactive media was only available to those who had a PC. Until recently nobody had seriously considered the possibility that the PC would migrate into the TV. |
