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I mean come on. we've heard this line befor: "sure it'll run on an X, but you wont get the FULL experience". Yadda, yadda, yadda. And of course the fact that certain brand names are being thrown around means nothing, right? OPEN YA EYES, BOY!

I definitely agree...I love the 8-function version....only $25 and it has Tivo and ReplayTV buttons. Plus it is incredibly light and thin. The only flaw is that the buttons are not backlit or glow-in-the-dark (which should be a minimum requirement for all remotes).

I used to geek out on my Philips NeoPronto, their $200 "low end" progammable remote, until my toddler introduced it to the floor. It was more fun to program than it was to use, though...you don't really care about having 20-step macros and custom logo bitmaps for all your favorite channels when you keep hitting the wrong fsckin' numbers on the touch screen.

When I was looking into these DVD players that could handle DivX/etc. earlier this year, I noticed these networked Gateway models and looked into them.

Aparrently, they cannot actually play DivX/XviD/etc. The way they actually work is to require "streaming server software" on a Windows machine. What this "server" actually does is convert any AVI types the computer can play into mediocre-quality MPEG-1/2 streams to send to the DVD player (which is why there is a particular OS and minimum processor speed required). This will often result in lower resolutions than the original video clip, and always lower quality (due to recompression).

If you're looking for a real solution for a DivX / XviD / etc. set-top player, I suggest you look into a modded XBox (with XBMC or similar), a Lite-On LVD-2010, or the inexpensive Philips DVP642 (if you don't need networking).

--The Rizz

"Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!" --W. C. Fields

I was just reading Philips' Research page on PolyLED technology. It's very informative for a layperson, though written before color OLED was shipping - I think in 2002. It has a nice graphic of some typical polymer molecules used: "poly(p-phenylenevinylene), and poly(fluorene". Apparently they're small molecules based on benzene-type rings (IANA organic-chemist). It also has a diagram of the device and descriptions of how it works, talking about electrons and holes and such.

It also talks about using dyes to modify output color, and mentions that efficiency (as of the time of writing) is about 4%, which is not high. Improvements have no doubt occurred since then.

Could you please write the electronics firm "Philips" the right way? And not confuse it with the screwdriver type inventor called "Phillips" ?

Thanks.

The perfect display technology is coming from Philips R&D.

It's based on electrowetting. Basically, one of the three colours of an RGB pixel is made up of a film of oil. The oil normally spreads/clings all over the tiny surface to form a solid color. The surface under the oil is made of a special material that attracts water ONLY if it's under electrical current.

Now, if you want to remove the oil to reveal the color of the surface under it, you electrify the surface below the oil, the water above the oil will worm it's way towards the surface because it's attracted and it will push away the oil to the side very quickly. Voila, you just changed the color of the (sub)pixel.

It gets better. The display tech isn't based on RGB like I wrote above, that was just an easy way to explain it. It's based on the CMYK color model just like printed paper/magazines are.

RGB is additive, it adds colour from the display from 3 different subpixels to give the appearance of white light when they are on full blast.

CMYK is subtractive, it subtracts colours from white light and that's how this display tech works. You bathe the display in white light and the oil of the subpixels either cover the whole surface of the pixel and subtract all light to show a black pixel, or they "get out of the way" and show the white surface under the oil to show a white pixel.

Click the first link ("A reflective display based on electrowetting")on the page I linked above. Look under the text: "Main display properties" where it shows a closeup of 2 pixels. Stand far away from your monitor and squint your eyes. The top pixel will appear black and the bottom pixel will appear white. Just like printed paper (use a magnifying glass on a magazine).

Why is this better than RGB? well, it means that the display will behave like a magazine, the more sunlight, the better (as with a magazine). If you want to view the display in the dark, you just bounce an internal white-light source from the top of the display using a "front scattering film" that is stuck on top of the screen and acts like a million little mirrors, bouncing the white light directly onto the pixels and back into your eye. The GameBoy Advance SP has a scattering film like that. Either use the film or just shine a light onto it (the bulb in your room).

What it all boils down to is this:
- The display is faster than TFT/LCD. You'll be able to watch video and play fast moving games without the blurring of LCD.
- The display is durable. OLED and Plasma will be junk in just a short time. Especially the blue OLED subpixels.
- It uses very little power. It's much less than CRT and will probably beat LCD as well.
- You can use it outside, the more light, the better. It will enable a display that is: "at least two times brighter than what is possible with any other technology".
- It's flat screen tech. It'll be about the same thickness as LCD and it'll be easier to make into a big screen as LCD. Plasma screens are super heavy and need their own cooling fan.

It'll be the perfect display, buy CRT for colour correctness and FPS games, buy LCD for laptops or if you don't do prepress/fast games. SKIP OLED! and wait for Electrowetting displays which will combine all the good stuff from the other techs and have none of the disadvantages. It's basically "done" as far as I can see, it'll just need tweaking, unlike OLED which needs some kind of breakthrough to achieve durability. The only thing I'm not sure of is the number of different colors it can display inbetween black and white, will it be 24 bits or less?

Because Sony is NOT going to change their mind -- nor should they, because as you list their failures, I could make an equally large list of successes. Things like the Trinitron tube, the Walkman, the compact disc . . .

I'm with ya until the bold part. Sony didn't invent the CD, James Russell did, and it was popularized by Philips.

Otherwise, your good points are well made.

Philips has a nice informative press release of their display, together with pictures and even video (slashdot mumbles the url, go check it out on the press release).

Philips made a 13" PolyLED TV prototype that they hope to expand to 30" eventually. They use a 4-head, 256-nozzle inkjet printer to "print" the display.

Cool :)

Philips has a nice informative press release of their display, together with pictures and even video (slashdot mumbles the url, go check it out on the press release).

Philips made a 13" PolyLED TV prototype that they hope to expand to 30" eventually. They use a 4-head, 256-nozzle inkjet printer to "print" the display.

Cool :)

High end TVs do temporal interpolation for which you need at least one frame before and one after the one you are processing, so you can't avoid the delay. Have a look at this Philips datasheet for such a processor. Btw, it has the equivalent processing power of a 10 GHz Pentium CPU.

I have a Philips Expanium 431, which is an MP3-CD player that plays 8cm CDs. The player itself is about 9cm diameter and about two centimetres thick.

The downsides to the smaller CDs are less space (200MB) and reduced battery life (but it came with rechargables that you can charge in the unit). The upsides should be obvious :-) I see it as a comprimise between the solid state players (which are more portable, more expensive per megabyte, and need a computer to change the playlist) and the iPods, which are just more expensive (cheapest iPod was over NZ$600 last time I looked. This cost me NZ$200 (around US$120-130, I guess)).

And I go jogging with it and it has never skipped :-)

...here. Looks like it will be going for 300 euros.

What blatant marketing BS! But this link works better.

That version had just a passive lens viewfinder; this new version has an electronic microdisplay that lets you see previously recorded videos or pictures. That ought to rise the price quite a bit.

There are some nice pictures and such in a Philip press release at:
http://www.press.ce.philips.com/press/2004-2-23-Ce bit2004-568.html

Philips already makes one.

"The Electronic Paper Display is reflective and can be easily read in bright sunlight or dimly lit environments while being able to be seen at virtually any angle - just like paper."
by far, thats my biggest complaint with handhelds (palms, etc). The screens are so hard to read in the daylight. Infact, the black and white palms seem easier to read in the day light than the color screens.
Also, phillips rollable display Amazing!

see them pictures

Also, press release from Philips and press release from Sony with even better pictures.

• Directron
• emusic
• Openlinx
• Philips

I guess you where sleeping your way through the optics lectures: These lenses could definitely work. If you look at the picture
you see that there are two fluids: brown one on top and a blue one on the bottom. If you remember Snell's law (ray bends towards the normal in the denser medium), you can conclude from the picture that the 'brown' fluid has a higher refractive index than the 'blue' fluid. The left picture thus resembles a hollow/concave/negative lens and the right picture resembles a convex/positive lens. Of these the positive (on the right) can be used to form a real image (one you can capture on a CCD or a retina), whereas the negative only forms a virtual image.

A colleague of mine did his internship at the group that invented these and my boss still works part-time at Philips.

The lenses in the diagrams at this link do not work: link

The first lens has a positive magnification, and the second a negative magnification. The light rays drawn on the diagrams are reversed.

Others should be able to confirm this.

A picture's worth a thousand words: clicky

Beneath the woman's neck on the screen you'll find a couple of massive reflections from the ceiling interfering with the picture.

Being a "promotional" picture, the actual experience with this screen is probably worse than that illustrated.

Seems like an idea that, like and internet refrigerator before it, exists purely because it can. Which is why this is pretty cool.

Here it is from the philips site - with a massive jpg too.

Seems like an idea that, like and internet refrigerator before it, exists purely because it can. Which is why this is pretty cool.

Here it is from the philips site - with a massive jpg too.

Pet peeve alert: it's Philips. Really. Count the number of 'L's in there, please.

A picture says more than a thousand words ;)

thumbs and highres pictures here

As far as I understand it, they exist always under threat. Again, I might be mistaken, but I really think mpeg2 is patented.

Ah, yes, yes it is patented.

Yup. Should have checked before as they're pretty clear on that point. They seem to think their soundcards are magic and can't possibly work with that Linux thingy.

O.K, no specs I can understand. No OSS drivers I can understand. Not even a closed driver? Come on, even Aureal managed to maintain a binary driver for their 88x0 Vortex chips before Creative bought them up. Why can't Philips?

Yesterday I bought a DVD player that can play MPEG-4 and DivX. That very high-tech for me. It's a Philips DVD-737.

I was just in the shops today getting some CD-R's and I noticed that some were labeled AUDIO CD-R, while others were labeled DATA CD-R.

The only difference was the price.

DATA CD-R worked out about $0.80 per CD-R
AUDIO CD-R worked out about $1.30 per CD-R

I wonder how many people will get the audio cd-r's thinking that somehow the data cd-r's will not play audio?

Too bad it is the American companies that are the ones pushing DRM down everyone's throat...

• Sony is an American company?
• Mitsumi is American?
• Philips is American?

I 've been trying to find and buy the pvr250 for about two months (I live in Greece). My plans were simple:install the card and make a mythTV video recorder using my pc. But it seems that the local representative of Haupage here was not interested in selling any units so after a dozen phone calls to various stores (they kept telling me that there weren't any units available) I decided to just drop it, and went and bought a
philips dvdr70. It may be more expensive than the pvr250/350 but:

1)The price is roughly the same with the sum of the prices of a decent dvdr (~200Euros) for the pc and the haupage (~200Euros).
2)If I was going to use the pc as a pvr, I would probably have to buy a small UPS too. Dunno about other countries but here in Greece, leaving the pc open always is a recipe for disaster. Add about ~120Euros minimum for that too.
3)I believe a standalove product is more usable than a pc based pvr. In the later case I would be the only one in my family really able to use it.
4)The standalone writer is really plug and play. Hell, it even learned the channels from my tv, so I did not have to do anything besides plugging it to the outlet and the tv set.

Of course the pvr based solution probably offers more capabilities so someone may have no choice than to use it.

The Harmony Remote is cute but it's infrared only. I'd rather not be stuck with that line of sight requirement when the TV is in the front of the room, the A/V system is in the closet and the dimmer switch is behind me by the door. With that arrangement and my current IR remote, I look like I'm practicing my gun kata.

The strength of these Smart Displays is that they can have the capability to be a detachable monitor: when docked, they can act just like a normal DVI display, with full video speed, acceleration, etc etc, but when you want to get up, you just pick it up and it automatically goes into "remote" mode. Bring it back and put it in the dock, and *poof* you're back in normal monitor mode.

The problem is most manufacturers haven't implemented that capability. I'm pretty sure that Viewsonic hasn't, but others (such as the Philips DesXcape) have.

Not that I've seen it in action, so who knows how well it actually works.

"Here are photographs of ... a women's bra ... Larger pictures are available here."

Notice the last entry in sports bras. Those engineers have a partially clothed women in the room and their looking at their wires and scope!

I for one welcome our new underwear masters.

Just in time to compete with the new Rio, iRiver, and Philips hard drive players.

...ever. You'll have to endure some flash, but it's well worth it. The Phillips iPronto is more than just a remote control, it's a giant penis extension too. Think tablet PC dedicated to controlling everything and anything that is half willing. I have one of the original Pronto's and it reduced fifteen remote controls to one; easily one of the best purchases I've ever made. Here's a techtv review. And if you lick it, you can taste your own laziness reflected back at you.

http://ntstream2.ddns.ehv.campus.philips.com/efi/8 6090/electro_wetting/philips.wmv

Still have a little way to go!

No *cheap* sonographs, but if you want small ...

There's a PowerPoint presentation that contains some embedded video of this technology at Philips. Follow the link on the right hand side of the page.

Here, also a link to the official Press Release.

Here, also a link to the official Press Release.

If it doesn't meet the Philips spec for a CD, then it can't be called a CD. Has anyone actually seen this disc yet? I sincerely hope it doesn't carry the CD logo, since that would be a breach of the license

The Design group @ Phillips have been thinking about wearable electronics for a long time. Check out their webpage for it: http://www.design.philips.com/what_we_do/research_ projects/wearable_electronics.asp.

They published a super-cool book called New Nomads a few years back where they propose some interesting ideas. The book is reeeeeeally hard to find, [you have to order it directly from 010 Publishing from the Netherlands], but the ideas in it, as well as how it is made is way interesting... It even has a soft, thick, deep purple color... Those crazy designers!

In general though, Phillips Design do great stuff with ubicomp, wearable comp, and other cool futuristic ideas, trying to put those things in a social perspective [lots of S&TS and HCI stuff here].

The Design group @ Phillips have been thinking about wearable electronics for a long time. Check out their webpage for it: http://www.design.philips.com/what_we_do/research_ projects/wearable_electronics.asp.

They published a super-cool book called New Nomads a few years back where they propose some interesting ideas. The book is reeeeeeally hard to find, [you have to order it directly from 010 Publishing from the Netherlands], but the ideas in it, as well as how it is made is way interesting... It even has a soft, thick, deep purple color... Those crazy designers!

In general though, Phillips Design do great stuff with ubicomp, wearable comp, and other cool futuristic ideas, trying to put those things in a social perspective [lots of S&TS and HCI stuff here].

I work in the field of micromechanics/nanotechnology and at a meeting with some guys from Philips I heard that nanotechnology is so overhyped that even the suits were aware of it being overhyped. And I seriously think it is overhyped; there are so many promises done by many 'specialists' that we don't even begin to know how to start to make true, like the nanobots that repair you body from the inside, and the machine that makes tomatos out of thin air... Micromechanics turned out to be a big disappointment to many people I know who work/worked in this field (in that only a tiny fraction of the promises that people did ten years ago have come true), but the way things are going now nanotechnology could be worse. And that is a pity because it certainly, like micromechanis, has the potential for use in many interesting areas, just not as spectacular as is promised by many people.

ok, so maybe the robot is pretty cool - but the rest...

...has been working to replace the remote controls lying around the home with one device, such as a cellphone or a personal digital assistant. Eventually, he said, appliances could be equipped with technology to receive the commands.
your mean the philips pronto and X10?

...is working on a glove that could translate sign language into digitized letters...
you mean this?

Those included a rebuilt task bar that could sort onscreen files, and a program that acted like a magnifying glass for Web sites. A program called Fabric would allow a user to drag windows to the side of the computer screen, where they would turn into small icons.
what? an onscreen magnifying glass?
and dockable applications? er OSX?

Subject says it all.