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Man, slashdotters can be so fucking annoying sometimes...

1. Another defunct one: Turtle Beach Audiotron
2. Yet Another: KiSS DP-500
3. This one's actually for sale on Amazon: Roku Soundbridge M1000
4. Also for sale: Slim Devices Squeezebox
5. On the high ($2000) end, Denon AVR-4036 Receiver has streaming (among many other things.)
6. And the winner of our "strangest item": sermonaudio.com internet radio. Though I suspect you'd have to hack it to get it to play anything other than their content :)
7. Oh, I guess you don't have to hack it, you can just buy the un-sermonized version as Penguin Radio.
8. D-Link has a DVD player with internet streaming radio called DSM-320RD Medialounge. It's even wireless. There's also a HD version, the DSM-520.
9. Even Philips has a series called Boombox.

I'm sorry my initial example was poor. I just grabbed the first link and didn't look at it much. Nonetheless, there are umpteen fucking examples of streaming internet radio devices. Many of them are available on the shelf, even at places like Circuit Shitty. And I've seen several at Fry's, come to think of it.

There are wired and wireless appliances for the house. Philips have a load like this and you can pick that and this from Dlink up from your local PCWorld. At home I have an Airport Express plugged into my stereo and Airfoil feeding every kind of audio media into it. Even Sky have got into the act with their Skygnome (needs Java, isn't really worth it). The hardware is there, basically.

If you want a descent remote, sure, go with a Logitech Harmoney 890.

If you want a amazing remote, go with a Philips Pronto NG or better yet the ProntoPro NG or way better yet the iPronto.

I have the Pronto NG and for $200, it is a steal, not to mention a killer remote to end all remotes.

If you want a descent remote, sure, go with a Logitech Harmoney 890.

If you want a amazing remote, go with a Philips Pronto NG or better yet the ProntoPro NG or way better yet the iPronto.

I have the Pronto NG and for $200, it is a steal, not to mention a killer remote to end all remotes.

If you want a descent remote, sure, go with a Logitech Harmoney 890.

If you want a amazing remote, go with a Philips Pronto NG or better yet the ProntoPro NG or way better yet the iPronto.

I have the Pronto NG and for $200, it is a steal, not to mention a killer remote to end all remotes.

That sounds a lot like the Ambilight Feature from phillips.

What you have described, (a disc with both audio and computer data), is an Enhanced CD which falls outside the bounds of the Red Book standard.

Enhanced compact discs are a combination of modes on a multisession disc (defined by the Blue Book standard). More information about the various standards is available here.

Associating happy kids with Intellectual Property. This image almost made me vomit.

I no longer like the fact that a small part of every DVD and DVD player sale goes to Sony.

Best not buy any CD's either!

since Phillips owns the CDDA technology, this could be seen by them as a violation of the copyright...

http://www.licensing.philips.com/information/cd/au dio/

sisnce thye arenot marketing these as Blue Book (Enahnced)

Can't you sue for the product not technically being an audio CD in the first place? Maybe I'm mistaken (and if I am I'd like to know) but an audio CD meets certain standards detailed in the Red Book that anything with DRM in fails to meet. So some shop is bound to advertise Sony CDs as audio CD's ergo that retailer can be sued perhaps?

Another discussion on this very topic- includes the potential dip switch settings to get MUZAK equipment to play Red Book CDs.

The previous link led me to suspect Green Book as the format for Muzak. CD-Interactive Spec

CD-I Bridge: A program that reads Green Book Formats

So it looks to me like you have two options- fiddle with the dip switches to find a setting that will allow you to play Red Book CDs, or find a program that allows you to write CD-Interactive Green Book Format discs.

What's wrong with uniform standards?

License fees.

It's really a shame when a standard requires very non-trivial licensing. Shouldn't standards be usable by anybody for anything? But somehow high-paid lawyers got mixed in and now it's a mess. I aplaud the Chinese for trying to avoid it altogether.

I expect the Chinese aren't too happy about some other mandates too.

Check this out: http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/markets/iden tification/articles/success/s65/

there's a few links on Google bit I cannot find any pic...

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=anti+skimm ing+rfid&spell=1

I am asking a Japanese friend to look for me... but I guess as mentioned by kf6auf, probably a bit of foil around your wallet.

Once you take the card out of the wallet... well... make sure you keep it foil wrapped...

time to buy shares in foil companies ;-)

You may also want to check this :
http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/markets/iden tification/articles/success/s65/

Isn't there a large wealth of data about this at http://www.research.philips.com? It dates back at least one year.

Controlled by a dc voltage and presenting a capacitive load, the lens consumes virtually zero power, which for battery powered portable applications gives it a real advantage.

I already e-mailed them to ask them to update. Anyone else who asks might be helpful in this capacity. Here's the link: DVP-642 E-mail support

It's Philips Electronics that own the "CD" trademark, as shown in that oh-so-cutesy flahs animation about "Philips Heritage"

It's Philips Electronics that own the "CD" trademark, as shown in that oh-so-cutesy flahs animation about "Philips Heritage"

I'm looking for a low-cost DAC/ADC chip for SP/DIF, something that takes audio and produces SP/DIF, and vice versa. If it can use fixed modes and doesn't require a uC that would be great.

The Phillips UDA1355H looks like what I want, but Phillips doesn't even list availability information, and DigiKey and Mouser say either nothing or non-stock, which leads me to think that the chip doesn't exist.

Does anybody have anything like this?

I already know about PCM2902 USB DAC project, and while that's useful (similar to the Griffin iMic) it's the opposite of what I want.

A quick check tells me that LCD is not energy efficient compared to TV. A 25" Philips TV (25PT4458/01) uses 61 Watt (1 Watt standby) and a 26" Acer LCD TV (AL2671W) uses 150 Watt (5 Watt standby)!

by Philips uses more conventional technology. You just interleave the pixels of the alternate views.

American scientists and engineers have always been among the leaders in improving, extending, and revising the metric system.

here are some:

Onkyo NetTune

Yamaha MusicCAST

The Onkyo system is easy and basic, with excellent audio quality. The Yamaha adds more flexability and is a tad more stylish. Both systems are quite fault tolerent and well-thought-out from and end user stand point. Of course there are more geeky solutions if ultimate flexibility is what you are looking for.

There's also Streamium from Philips.

Sorry, just knee-jerking from one of my pet peeves here. The name of the company is very likely PHILIPS. Please go ahead and count the number of Ls in there. Yes, there can be only one! Now we continue with our scheduled comments.

So... say I go out and buy a Philips Brand DVD Player. Plays DivX, WMA files, mp3's, VCD. On my PC, I have tons of songs I've bought from Apple's ITMS that I'd like to be able to play on this DVD player. But I can't. So the solution to my problem is to sue Apple because the device I bought can't play Apple's AAC files (Regardless of Apple's licensing Fairplay or not)?

Did I ever say that? No, I didn't.

Let's ask a better question. Is there any legitimate technical reason that this DVD player can't play iTMS songs? No.

Is there a legal reason? YES! Apple refused to license the ability to play iTMS songs unless it fits their greater agenda.

Let's look at another company that licenses its technology. Fraunhofer offers a per decoder/encoder license to anyone willing to pay their fees. You don't have to ask permission to license, just pay them and they are happy. They even have clauses for broadcasting licenses excluding non-profit uses from having to pay.
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html

How about an even more ambiguous technology, ordinary CDs. Every CD bearing the Compact Disc logo has to be licensed from Philips. Now have you EVER seen any optical drive that couldn't read ordinary CDs? Unless it was some kind of magneto-optical drive, or a GameCube, I doubt it.
http://www.licensing.philips.com/licensees/patent/ cd/documents869.html

There is a fundamental difference between these two technologies and Fairplay, however. Both CDs and MP3s are actual technologies and not just some arbitrary code to scramble data so that only people Apple wants to can use it. The point however, is that these companies for the most part are willing to license to any company who wants to use their technology in a product. The fact that countless devices and applications can play CDs and MP3s is proof of that. THIS is what Apple should be doing, not artificially restricting developers based solely on their whims.

To address the rest of your qualms, you may not realize just how confusing DRM is to non technical people, sure it's obvious to us that songs bough from music stores pretty much won't work anywhere that the music store doesn't approve of, but I doubt normal people realize this. Think about it, only very recently have companies started artificially restricting how consumers use the products they buy. Cassette tapes could be played in ANY cassette player, Vinyl could be played on ANY turntable, CDs could be played in ANY CD player and even in things that aren't exclusively a CD player. These technologies were all incompatible between each other for OBVIOUS physical reasons, but where all STANDARDS amongst themselves. There were no special cassettes that would only play in a special player that I was aware of. You may even be aware of the RIAA EQ curve for turntables that cuts high end and boosts bass since when mastering vinyl they reduce the bass to prevent the needle from jumping off the record. This EQ curve was consistent from amplifier to amplifier because there was a STANDARD.

Sure, not knowing what the license agreement says isn't much of an excuse, but who REALLY reads those things? I know for a fact that very very few do. No company advertises "ONLY WORKS WHERE WE TELL YOU IT WORKS" or "NOT COMPATIABLE WITH ANYTHING" people just assume that it will work in obvious places because that is how it has ALWAYS been. This lawsuit is a result of this assumption, hopefully people will start realizing how much of a hassle DRM can be for them and start rejecting it. Unfortunuanly, Apple is legally coverd by that license (and I NEVER said otherwise), HOWEVER I still hope that he wins this case so that companies are forced to stop bullshitting people.

As for de-facto standards, I hardly believe that Real or MS are unbiased enough to comment on such things. You said it yourself, people are flocking to iTunes.

I don't know where you live, but it is not West- or Northern Europe. Yes, customers get pissed off by dead pixels, but because of the production costs of LCD displays, their only option is to pay more for a guaranteed pixel perfect monitor. That is why it is called "pixel policy".
A dealer calling their distributor every time he gets a LCD with pixel faults, will get very very tired, as mostly warranty is handled by the manufacturer directly, not the distributor. If the dealer yells and screams enough, the distributor's only option then is to try to get the money back from the manufacturer. The manufacturer will then of course say "Hey, we have a pixel policy, didn't you read it?".

Check this document (Warning, PDF) from Philips, explaining what pixel faults are, and what the policies are on their current line of products. As you see, only three models have a zero pixel fault policy.

"The companies who have this project on their failed list include Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Intel, and Philips."

Philips? Excuse me? Philips has the Cineos LCoS TV on sale. I had the privilege of seeing a prototype and quite frankly it was an impressive piece of technology. Philips's chip design fundamentally differed from TI's and I believe also Intel's. The unit I saw had a 55 inch screen, was 18 inches deep, and weighed less than 80 pounds. The picture was the clearest and sharpest I had ever seen (studio HDTV feed - slightly better than HDTV broadcast quality, but not by that much). Quite an impressive piece of equipment, but as failures go, I guess it is, well, for lack of a better word, a failure.

Doesn't one of the big TV makers have a production-model TV out based on this technology? Unless I'm mistaken (and I might be) I don't see how this is still an experimental technology

Yes, Philips

I want to second this recommendation. I have the cheaper and now slightly outdated Pronto Neo. I enjoy it a lot and it pretty elegantly solves the problem with most universal remotes: you can create a buttons to match any functionality of your original remotes. You're not limited to some fixed set of buttons.

The screen is a little small and it is B&W (a problem solved by purchasing newer, more expensive models), and the included software is a little quirky, but it definitely fills the need I had, especially since I picked it up used much cheaper than retail from someone that just had to have the latest and greatest.

There's a great user community for it (and other remotes) at http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin/files/rcfiles .cgi?area=neo, too, where you can download button bitmaps and codes and whole system layouts and such.

Lots of information on programmable remotes is available at Remote Central http://www.remotecentral.com/

Like this one from Philips? Even smaller than any camera phone and 2megapixels to boot. The only thing these measures stop are "crimes" of opportunity.

This is really just about adding high density flash to an existing smart card platform. Other then having alot of flash this (16 bit CPU, 4-8K RAM) card is just like most other JavaCards out there (such as in your cell phone or AMEX Blue card). The innovative smart cards these days have 32 bit CPUs such as the P9SC648 from Philips and ST22N256 from ST Micro. The Philips card is alot more powerful then IBM/Sharp's card and still has 512 KB Flash. The ST card has 256 KB Flash and 368 ROM and is shipping now for $4 to $5 in quantity.

Philips has been a world-class R&D company for a long time. Philips Research was established in 1914, and has contributed much, from the invention of the pentode vacuum tube (valve) by Tellegen in 1929 to the audio cassette in the 1960s and their more modern work developing CDs and DVDs.

The fire has been lit under IBM and other corporate research organizations for a long time.

Sorry for airing reruns but its more relevant here. As I have said before:
Re NSF blowing a measly million to put speech recognition in silicon [for which there were many interesting and informative comments posted] I said:
Just a million? Pfft! I went down the tubes with one S.R. startup back in '92 that ate far more of some VC's money than that. Now NSF is not in it to get rich and I hope I am right in assuming that a successful chip design, if a mere $1000000 gets that far, would then be available at no fee to any foundry, or at least US foundry. OK, any foundry that wants to sell S.R. chips to the DOD. This lines up pretty well with IBM's recent give-away of its S.R. code: it is an admission that Speech Recognition is a commodity and nobody knows how to make any money with it so govt must fund further development.
BTW, automated recognition of music [as in "what is this tune I keep humming?"] has been on the drawing board at Philips over in the Netherlands for over a year. Philips isn't saying much. But it appears you have to have a pretty accurate sample to get recognition since they want to arrest your piracy based on this recognition...no S.R. software worth its $1000000 is that fussy about sound quality.

I think we can thank Philips for the CD, not Sony. Check the second paragraph from the bottom.

Just a million? Pfft! I went down the tubes with one S.R. startup back in '92 that ate far more of some VC's money than that. Now NSF is not in it to get rich and I hope I am right in assuming that a successful chip design, if a mere $1000000 gets that far, would then be available at no fee to any foundry, or at least US foundry. OK, any foundry that wants to sell S.R. chips to the DOD:( This lines up pretty well with IBM's recent give-away of its S.R. code: it is an admission that Speech Recognition is a commodity and nobody knows how to make any money with it so govt must fund further development. BTW, automated recognition of music [as in "what is this tune I keep humming?"] has been on the drawing board at Philips over in the Netherlands for over a year. Philips isn't saying much. But it appears you have to have a pretty accurate sample to get recognition since they want to arrest your piracy based on this recognition...no S.R. software worth its $1000000 is that fussy about sound quality.

I think this article would make more sense after native operating system support for Mt. Rainier is available.

..what if you are a PC user? Then you probably don't know what FireWire is. And you haven't had the pleasure of being acquainted with iTunes either. And a simple interface is not that hard to find. I would say, for anyone with a recent cellphone the click-wheel is less intuitive than a 4-button joystick-like thingy that most other players use. Now I haven't seen a smaller player than iPod, but there are some that are not too much bigger (look for HDD120).

So why do PC users want iPods? I have a theory here. I think it must be the white headphones that allow them to mimic the much cooler mac users. In fact, I know a looser who got a pair of white headphones for his CD player just to look like he had an iPod in his pocket.

FYI, that's Philips with one "l". The two-l'ed one is a different beast altogether.

So much for Intel's Commitment to LCOS and the Future of HDTV.

But seriously, what does this mean for LCOS? Manufacturers (e.g., Philips and Fujitsu) are still making and selling LCOS TVs or working on the technology. Does it just mean that they won't get as cheap as fast?

Philips has been making these for ages (link. They are expensive as heck (~$1500) and haven't caught on. However, they do require a Windows PC, so maybe they're targeting the wrong market: one that doesn't like their wallet being flogged to hamburger for basic hardware. So perhaps Apple could pull it off.

I am a biomedical engineer at a USN&WR top 20 hospital, working in the cardiology-related departments. We do have medical devices, including patient monitors, that run in Windows OS's. One is the Witt Biomedical monitors we have in our adult cardiac cath lab. The software was originally written to run on MS-DOS and really only runs on Windows 2000 to provide a GUI for the nurses to point-n-click. It uses Windows file sharing but doesn't even utilize print services. The whole thing should have been rewritten about ten years ago but Witt already has over 25% market share and is trying to compete with the big dogs like GEMS (GE Medical Systems) and Siemens. The old Siemens Cathcor monitors we used to have ran on *nix but the brand spankin' new GEMS Combolab we got for our pediatric cath lab runs on Windows XP for the nursing stations and Windows 2003 for the servers. The Siemens Axiom Artis x-ray angiography systems in our adult cath lab runs a mix of OS's, such as Windows NT (soon to be XP) on the Host-PC, Vertex on the Real Time PC, Neutrino on the Real Time Controller (the truly patient critical part), and Windows CE on touch panels and displays. Siemens will tell you all about their "revolutionary OS" called Syngo that will, to paraphrase, "provide one user interface for all imaging modalities" but it's really just running on top of Windows NT/XP. The intravascular ultrasound machine that we have, a Boston Scientific Galaxy runs on Windows NT. Even the Kodak laser printer we have for printing on x-ray film has a DICOM server running Windows NT. All of this runs on the hospital's open network and has been disconnected for either being actively infected with a virus or for not being patched.

Now a lot of our stuff is not Windows based. Most of it I don't know what OS it does run on (perhaps proprietary information) but I can say it doesn't appear to be Windows. Philips Intellivue MP90 networked patient monitors, Datascope CS 100 intra-aortic ballon pumps, and Worldheart Novacor left ventricular assist sytem (think artifical heart) all have their own software. Some systems that use 3D modeling, like the Endocardial Solutions Ensite 3000 use SGI workstations and software.

Many of the CT and MRI scanners I see, patient monitors we put in, anesthesia carts we employ use non-Windows operating systems, not because Windows is considered unstable or insecure, but because medical IT is so far behind due to the years it takes to get FDA approval on new equipment. Many new systems do use Windows because it's easy to work with and easily networked. For instance, one cool new system (the company and name I don't know) allows an anesthesiologist (who monitors 3-4 CRNA's in as many OR's) to see blood gas waveforms and other vital signs on one of those little clear screens three inches in front of your eye. It uses Wi-Fi to transmit the data to a Windows embedded device in the doctor's fanny pack. It goes without saying that we have incredible signal strength on our wireless network all over the OR area; you wouldn't want a dropped connection there! All of our clinical workstations and every office computer is Windows NT or XP.

I cou

I really don't think that these cards are using RFID. They are probably something like the Philips MIFARE card. The way I understand it, contactless smartcards have a much shorter range than RFID chips (~5 cm) and they can store more data (4KB, 8KB, 16KB).

NFC is very short range wireless (a few centimeters, so it's effectively a touch). More info here, and here. You can consider it an evolution in the user interface of existing wireless systems, like BT or WiFi.

Fellow Slashdotters, please learn this: the fact that something doesn't suit you doesn't mean it's crap. Remember, you are not the customer. There's a market for advanced do-it-all remotes. Just to name an example, Philips made the Pronto which is a touch-screen remote. It cost a few hundred dollars, a friend of mine's dad has one. He also recently spent $5000 or more upgrading his hifi set. Philips decided there's a market for even more up-scale remotes, so they've introduced a Pronto with a color display, for someting like $1200 if my memory serves me right.

This device from Sony does a whole lot of things better than previous offerings on the market (more powerful, more legible screen, tactile feedback LCD display, and hard buttons, to name a few). People spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on home cinema sets. They can afford to spend $700 on one of these.

Aside from being really nice for the intended customers, it has a high geek coolnes factor. Stop complaining, start drooling!

This remote is obviously positioned to compete with Philips' Pronto line of universal remotes, the nicer models of which can do both IR and RF, and Philips also sells an RF-to-IR transcoder to allow use of the Pronto in RF mode even for your IR devices. Being able to use the Pronto all over the house is nice. This Sony remote doesn't seem to support anything but IR. A $700 universal remote should be ashamed to be IR only.

/Mauritz