TechCrunch » Philips

Philips Predicts LEDs Will Take 50 Percent Of Lighting Market By 2015

Lora Kolodny — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 20:13:58 +0000

Today, Philips announced that their Philips Ambient LED 12.5 watt light bulb — which gives off as much light as incandescent 60 watt bulbs, using less energy — attained Energy Star qualifications. It’s the first LED light bulb of this type to gain approval in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sponsored program. Energy Star sanctioned products are usually eligible for utility rebate programs that can lower the cost of a product for consumers, while allowing a company to keep their margins strong.

According to Philips, its bulb lasts 25 times longer and uses 80 percent less energy than the 60 watt incandescent bulb it was designed to replace. A company press statement reported that in order to obtain the Energy Star label, its LED bulb had to demonstrate a minimum light output of 800 lumens, a color temperature of 2700K (for soft white light), color rendering index (CRI) of 80 and a minimum three-year warranty; it actually offers 806 lumens, 2700K, a CRI of 80 and a six-year warranty. The bulbs are currently selling at Home Depot for $39.97.

A Philips company representative told TechCrunch the bulbs are also recyclable. The lighting corporation wasn’t issuing predictions about how much the Energy Star qualification would drive sales of its Ambient 12.5 watt bulbs. More macroscopically, however, Philips predicts LEDs will take 50 percent of the residential lighting market by 2015.

Other companies are sure to follow in Philips’ footsteps, from large and medium-sized businesses like Cree (NASDAQ: CREE) and the Lighting Science Group Corporation (OTCB: LSCG) to younger startups like Bridgelux.

The Durham, N.C.-based Cree now has a demonstration 60 watt incandescent replacement LED bulb — the TrueWhite Light — that the company claims is the industry’s brightest and most efficient, and meets Energy Star performance criteria. A company spokesperson said Tuesday that Cree submitted it to an independent testing facility, with testing on track to be completed by the fall. (Energy Star doesn’t test bulbs for certification.)

Meanwhile, LSCG has an Energy Star approved line, called DEFINITY. Bulbs in this line, the company announced today, have been installed in Yankee Candle Stores throughout New England. LSCG claims these are approximately 80% more efficient than the halogen bulbs that they replace, are “dimmable,” contain no mercury, and are completely recyclable. Yankee Candle received rebates from National Grid and Western Mass Electric Company through the Mass Save program, and other electric utility companies throughout New England.

LED Mania: Bridgelux Adds $21 Million Funding, Digital Lumens Goes Global

Lora Kolodny — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:38:15 +0000

Despite conservatives’ misgivings about Whitehouse moves to retire old, incandescent light bulb technology (and its energy inefficiency) the market for light emitting diodes and efficient lighting systems continues to gather steam.

In the latest spate of milestones: LED-chip-makers Bridgelux scored a $21 million investment; and Digital Lumens attained certifications that will help it export its energy-efficient lighting systems to Mexico and Canada.

Last week, President Obama proposed the Better Buildings Initiative, to improve energy efficiency in commercial buildings, making them 20 percent more energy-efficient over the next decade, across the country. The program will “catalyze private sector investment through a series of incentives to upgrade offices, stores, schools and other municipal buildings, universities, hospitals, and other commercial buildings across the U.S.” according to a Whitehouse press statement.

Last year (2010) commercial buildings domestically consumed about 20 percent of all energy in the U.S. economy. In 2009, according to the most recently available U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates, commercial and residential lighting used about 13.6% of total U.S. electricity consumption.

Meanwhile Home Depot and other retailers have begun to sell LED light bulbs made by everyone from Cree to Philips (image above), that can be used in the same kinds of lamps and fixtures as incandescents, and that sometimes prove more energy-efficient than the “pig tail” variety, Energy Star certified CFL bulbs.

Bridgelux, in Livermore, Calif., makes light emitting diode chips and arrays, domestically. Its latest $21 million convertible note investment was made public in an SEC filing today.

The company’s venture investors have included: VantagePoint, DCM, El Dorado Ventures, VentureTech Alliance, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, and Harris & Harris Group, along with undisclosed investors. Prior to the recent round, the company raised $113.5 million as Emma Ritch reported for Cleantech Group in January. Bridgelux did not respond immediately to requests for details on where it plans to spend its new-found capital.

Digital Lumens (DL) in Boston, revealed today that its Intelligent Light Engines — smart fixtures for light emitting diodes — attained new safety certifications allowing the hardware to be sold widely in Mexico and Canada.

Its hardware now carries the Mexican and Canadian equivalents of Underwriters Laboratory or UL Listings in the United States — NOM (Normas Oficiales Mexicanas) and ULC (Underwriters Laboratory Canada) marks. To attain these, a product has to meet the independent labs’ safety and performance criteria.

According to Digital Lumens’ website, the fixtures form “a wireless mesh network that collects detailed energy consumption and building occupancy details,” and help building managers and engineers control and reduce their lighting related energy costs and consumption.

Since the company spun out of Groom Energy in 2008, Digital Lumens has attained venture-funding from Black Coral Capital, Flybridge Partners and Stata. It has also drawn top clean tech talent from A123 Systems and ColorKinetics.

Looking at the market for efficient lighting, overall Groom Energy and Greentech Media Research predicted that:

“The LED enterprise lighting market should grow through 2011 by 30 percent, surpassing $1 billion in annual revenue by 2014…The 2010 U.S. market for commercial and industrial LED lighting was about $330 million.”

Philips Lights Up OLEDs Without A Power Adapter

Contributor — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:30:50 +0000

Previously, if you wanted to use an OLED display, you had to use a power adapter. The problem was that OLEDs required low voltage to light up, instead of the standard (in Europe) 230v system. Now, scientists at Philips have announced that they have been able to design an OLED system that doesn’t require a step down transformer in order to work. This means that a device that uses an OLED lighting system won’t require the additional hardware components to change the voltage from whatever comes out of the wall to the low voltage previously needed.

Of course, this development in lighting technology will take a while to come to market, but the future does look bright indeed.

Technology IP Holding Company Intertrust Acquires Seeqpod Assets

Robin Wauters — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:32:52 +0000

Intertrust Technologies Corporation, a company that develops and and licenses technologies and intellectual property for digital rights management (DRM), has moved to acquire the assets of media search service Seeqpod.

Intertrust, which holds over 150 patents and has offices in Silicon Valley, London and Beijing, announced this morning that it has purchased all software and patents developed by Seeqpod via Chapter 7 Bankruptcy proceeding. Intertrust – former by Sony and Philips in partnership with Stephens Bank – has however not acquired the domain names used by the company.

This is all in line with what we were told earlier this month by Seeqpod founder and former CEO Kasian Franks, who coincidentally mentioned that Seeqpod was never actually acquired by social charity company Bloson while pitching his new startup, Mimvi, to us.

Going back to the non-hoax acquisition of Seeqpod’s assets, here’s what Intertrust says they’ll be used for:

“Intertrust plans to use SeeqPod’s breakthrough technology in distributed search systems in a variety of applications and services for Internet television, targeted advertising, recommendation systems, electronic music distribution and healthcare information services.”

The search algorithms in Seeqpod’s technology portfolio were originally developed for searching medical research databases at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories.

The technologies have broad applicability for identifying hidden patterns in data that are distributed across the Internet, including indexing and finding playable search results for audio, video, podcasts and text.

The SeeqPod music search service that initially used these technologies shut down in 2009 in the midst of copyright litigation.

Intertrust also invests in third-party services ventures such as SyncTV and the music distribution service Beyond Oblivion. The company says both portfolio companies stand to benefit from the acquired Seeqpod technologies.

Songbird Lands Deal With Philips, To Come Bundled With Millions Of Portable MP3 Players

Jason Kincaid — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:38:09 +0000

Don’t count Songbird out yet. The open source media player that’s increasingly positioning itself as an alternative to Apple’s iTunes has forged a deal with global electronics maker Philips. Under the agreement, which will be announced later today at CES, Songbird’s software will come bundled with the Philips line of GoGear portable music players, available worldwide. We first reported a partnership between Philips and Songbird back in September, but details were vague at that point.

Songbird will be releasing a Philips-branded version of its software with a few key differences, most important of which will be the application’s native support for each GoGear device. While Songbird offers support for some portable music devices (they recently upgraded their support last week), the experience for users isn’t always as seamless as they typically get from the ubiquitous iPod/iTunes combo. The Philips-branded version of Songbird will be custom tailored for the GoGear devices, which means it will recognize exactly which device you plug in and which features that device supports (the same way iTunes knows if you plug in a Nano vs an iPhone). The application can be used for song purchases and playlist management, as well as firmware updates.

The Songbird software will come as a self-extracting install with some devices (you plug the device into your computer and it will install onto your Windows machine automatically). For other products it will ship on a disk, or users will be directed to download the software from a website. The Philips-branded software is only available on Windows for now, but Macintosh support is in the works. The Philips devices should still be usable using the standard Songbird application on the Mac, but you won’t be able to install firmware updates.

This is a big win for Songbird. The company had a very rough 2009, which included the departure of the company’s founding CEO Rob Lord and a struggle to raise new funding to remain afloat (though it eventually did complete a round at a significantly lowered valuation). Songbird’s core product, which offers song management alongside a deeper integration with web services than iTunes does, remains the same, but it’s now targeting a broader audience than it was before.

The partnership with Philips is Songbird’s first major step in this area. And we’ll likely see more deals like this as Songbird tries to to appeal to electronics manufacturers as a content manager that isn’t owned by Apple.

Songbird isn’t alone in this space though — another impressive product looking to offer an alternative to iTunes is doubleTwist.

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Pioneers of the Inevitable

Philips UK

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Report: Sharp and Philips agree on LCD TV deal

Serkan Toto — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:02:46 +0000

The consolidation process in the TV business continues and now even becomes international. Just last month, Sharp inked a “historical” joint venture deal with former rival Sony, agreeing to supply LED backlights to Sony for their LCD TVs (which happened this month).

And now Japan’s biggest business publication, the Nikkei, has learned that Sharp now plans to deliver LCD TV panels to Dutch electronics giant Philips. Starting as early as next year, the panels will be shipped from Sharp’s plant in Sakai, Osaka, to Philips factories in South America and Poland.

The Sakai plant began operating just in October this year. Sharp’s factory in Poland will first turn the panels into semi-finished products and then deliver them to Philips’ plant in the same country. In South America, Sharp panels will be shipped to Philips factories in Brazil.

According to the Nikkei, Sharp aims at optimizing use of their new plant through the cooperation, while Philips tries to cut production costs for their TVs and wants to reach break even in that segment next year.

Research company Display Search says Sharp is currently the world’s fifth biggest LCD maker, while Philips is the number six.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Old and busted: e-ink; New hotness: e-skin

Scott Merrill — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:00:52 +0000

E-ink is cool, sure, but it’s still largely a black-and-white technology. Philips Research has moved into the color realm with what they’re calling e-skin. “The first applications using the technology could be e-skins for small devices such as MP3 players or cell phones. However, the technology is highly scalable,” says Kars-Michiel Lenssen, Principal Scientist at Philips Research. The vision from Philips is an e-skin on your portable device that can be changed to match your outfit or your mood with the press of a button.

Philips’ technology allows different colors of ink to be built into one layer with each color controlled separately. This means the layer can be transparent, the same color as any one of the inks or even a mixture of multiple colors. Moreover, the saturation of each individual color can be controlled accurately – so any shade can be produced.

Read the full press release: Philips electronic skin technology enables new chameleon-like ambience designs

CrunchGear Video Review: Four headsets enter, one leaves

John Biggs — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:30:09 +0000

For those of you about to rock, I encourage you to pick out a nice pair of headphones. I tested four models at around $100. They are:

Ultrasone Zino – $99
Philips Tapster – Price TBA
Shure SE102MPA – $119
Klipsh S4i – $99

Which one did I love the most? While they were all special in their own way, there were two that really stood out in the round-up… but I won’t ruin the surprise! Watch the video to find out.

Video: Why think when you can watch this fun Philips Lumiblade demonstration?

Nicholas Deleon — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:30:20 +0000

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/1875256036?isVid=1&publisherID=1875254528

There’s not too many gadgets out there that I’d spend money on. There’s the Zune HD, which, while totally unreadable in direct sunlight, is still otherwise a fine portable media player. So that’s one. Another one would be that Philips Wake-up Light (though that will have to wait till next month; stupid Zune HD was expensive!) I bring this up only, and I do mean only, to segue into a brief discussion of this here video of the Philips Lumiblade OLED, um, thing. Get it, Philips, lights, OLED, etc. Very high-concept.

As the crazy video shows, the OLEDs turn on and off based on your position in front of them. Neat, exactly,

It was recently demoed at some London design fair, along with a bunch of other Lumiblade items, like those pebble-looking things.

Yeah, not too much going on here, just a fun video to start your Monday. At ease.

In which we see a young lady holding the Philips Sensual Massager at IFA

John Biggs — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 01:36:10 +0000

The thing that got the biggest titters at IFA were Philips improved “sensual massagers,” the his and hers HF8400. Interestingly, Philips is straight up saying this is a sex toy and it was on display next to a bed in the Philips booth. Good on them. I haven’t tried it but this young lady sincerely enjoyed modeling it.

The male massager is specially shaped to stimulate and please him. Notice how the curves of the male massager are shaped for his most intimate contours, enhancing erotic pleasure. The cupped area feels particularly good on the male intimate area, as well as many other spots of the body.

The female massager is specially shaped to stimulate and please her. It is also designed to encourage physical contact and intimacy between you and your partner while using it by allowing your hand to caress your partner’s body at all times. The tip is the area of the massager that vibrates, allowing you to stimulate her erogenous zones, as well as many other body areas.

That's a mighty generic-looking Android phone you got there, Philips

Devin Coldewey — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:50:41 +0000

It may be that we’re entering an era of lozenge-shaped phones with little to distinguish them from one another, but that doesn’t mean phone makers shouldn’t even try. Honestly, if your phone looks and acts like every other phone and its specs are for the most part the same, why did you put it out?

Philips’ V808 is their first Android-based smartphone, so I guess you can’t blame them for sticking to the basics. 3.2-megapixel camera, 320×480 touchscreen, the usual business. There aren’t any photos of the phone when it’s on, but the article seems to say there’s some widget functionality, though they could just be talking about the normal Android stuff.

[via Cloned in China and Engadget]

What movies would you want to ‘feel’ while wearing this Philips jacket?

Nicholas Deleon — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:20:06 +0000

Oh the things engineers do when they’re bored and forced to look busy. Philips will debut, at a conference in Salt Lake City (of all places), a jacket with built-in vibration motors. The point is to study how people physically react to watching movies. Suggested first movie: Caligula.

Now, the jacket isn’t a wearable Rumble Pak or anything—you’re not supposed to “feel” what it’s like to be beaten up like that guy at the end of There Will Be Blood, but rather to “feel” to emotions of that character. So, when said characters was being threatened by Daniel Day Lewis, you’d “feel” his anxiety, if that makes any sense at all. I don’t know, I’ve met a bunch of the Philips guys, and they’re a strange lot.

And, for the lolz, here’s a dumb list of movies where this jacket would be useful:

• Gladiator (the part when Maximus stabs Commodius… I’d love to know what proper, fully justified revenge feels like)

• Troy (the first fight… who wouldn’t want to stab your king’s HUGE enemy in the neck after dodging a giant spear? hmm… that sounds a little off…)

• The French Connection (the car chase, duh… I’ve always wanted to be in a high-speed car chase)

• The Reader (*that* scene… that’s pretty much every teenage boy’s dream scenario, lol)

• Apollo 13 (“oh boy we’re doomed”)

• Frost/Nixon (when Frost gets Nixon’s drunk dial… I love feeling awkward!)

• Back to the Future (the part when Biff discovers the sports record book… the feeling that “holy smokes I’m going to be rich”)

• I am Legend (because I WOULD LOVE to be the last man on Earth, that would bring me such great joy, except for the zombies)

Any other movies where you’d like to “feel” what the on-screen actors are feeling?

Video Review: Philips Prestigo SRT 9320 fancy-pants touchscreen remote control

Nicholas Deleon — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:00:05 +0000

There’s an episode of Seinfeld (“The Slicer”) where George and Jerry discuss the merits of skin care and the skin care industry. Neither of them think very highly of either—at one point, George tells Jerry that all you need to do to take care of your skin is “wash it, dry it, move on!” That’s how I’ve always felt about remote controls: there’s no need to complicate the celebrated procession of turning on and off the TV and DirecTV receiver, of opening and closing the DVD or Blu-ray player; there’s sure as hell no need to shell out hundreds of dollars merely to lower the volume of your sound system with a shinier piece of plastic than the one that came in the box. So I’ve always believed, at least; and to an extent, still do. But you know what, gosh darn it, after using the Philips Prestigo SRT 9320, I’ve come this close to reconsidering my anti-fancy remote position. (I know for a fact that, broadly speaking, I have a problem with “luxury,” wether it be fancy remotes or fancy restaurants; it’s the peasant in me.) If I had never heard of the remote my life wouldn’t be all that different; but, I don’t know, as a piece of consumer electronics, as example of what can be engineered, well done to the crazy Dutchies at Philips.

The control center of the remote is its 2.5-inch touchscreen. (OHMYGODIPHONERIPOFF.) From here, you can control any one of 20 different components in your entertainment system: TVs, set-top boxes, DVRs, surround sound systems, etc. Twenty different items! Owing to the touchscreen, there aren’t too many physical buttons on the face of the remote. There’s channel up/down, volume up/down, a generic power button, and home, among others. (See photos.) Home, as you might have cleverly guessed, is where you begin your Pretigo journey.

After charging the remote—no cheap-o double-A batteries here!—for, oh, let’s say an hour or so, you’re going to want to press that there home button. That’s where you’ll set up all the different devices in your system. There’s a whopping three components in my setup: a TV, DirecTV DVR and Blu-ray player. (What riches!) Holding the home button for three seconds brings you to the device setup panel. Adding and programming devices, I’m happy to report, is dead simple. First, you turn on your device manually so the remote can, you know, interact with it. Then you merely select what kind of device you’re trying to program (TV, DVR, etc.) from the remote’s GUI, input the brand name (for me, Samsung) using the touchscreen, and then the remote confirms your brand name (Samsung). After you’ve selected your brand of device, the remote cycles through models till it actually controls your device. You’ll know the remote has found a match, has been properly programmed, after your device turns off. “Oh, look, my TV turned off!” Bam, it’s programmed. So, theoretically, you could program your entire home entertainment system in just a few minutes; I did. And, from what I understand, programming this type of remote is what usually drives people insane: “Why the heck won’t it work?!” Well, I lose my mind at the drop of a hat these days, and had no such issues programming the remote. Had I had any problems, I may well have thrown the remote into the Hudson River. So if that’s not an endorsement!

You can also easily program macros on the remote, such as “turn system on.” Here, for example, your TV, DVR, external speakers or whatever it is you use to watch 24 on Monday nights come on with the push of a button. Well, the push of the touchscreen. This is handy if you don’t want to move device by device in the menu, turning each component on individually.

I don’t know, what else, what else… You can set up your favorite channels on the remote, and there’s built-in, highly legible logos to help distinguish the channels from each other. Say you have four channels you constantly watch, like I do. (Fox News, MSNBC, Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV, for the record.) As soon as you turn on the remote there they are, ready to be touched. That there’s a built-in logo for Fox Soccer Channel is pretty amazing, considering how few people even know the channel exists. You can also add your own custom logos using the included USB connection and the Internets, if one of your favorites happen to be so obscure that it’s not already present. What could be more obscure than FSC, though, I wonder?

As far as complaints go, well, you can’t program the remote from your PC; all programming must be done from the remote itself. That may be an issue for some of you, but believe me when I say it takes only a few seconds to get your Blu-ray player (or whatever) up and running with the remote, the GUI is that clean and whole process is that painless. The fact that the number buttons aren’t physical buttons may also upset some of you, but, like it or not, this is the iPhone generation; physical buttons are no longer fashionable. Do you lose functionality by not having physical buttons? I’m inclined to say no, especially since you can so easily program your favorite channels so that they’re only one touchscreen tap away. Besides, we’re all using digital cable/DirecTV/Dish Network now, it’s not like your randomly entering numbers to go from channel to channel. That’s why we have a channel guide! “Oh, look, TLC is showing ‘Annoying Wife and Emotionally Crushed Husband’ again, let’s watch!” Let’s watch, indeed, America!

Like I said before, I was never a “remote control guy”—turn TV on, change channel, move on—and I don’t know that this remote has caused me any sort of “OH MY GOD THIS IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN MISSING” feeling; I’m a simple man of simple means with even simpler pleasures. (Which makes it sorta ironic that I write about cool tech stuff every day—life is quixotic!) But it is a good remote, so if you’re even remotely (oh, pun!) into fancy remote controls then you shouldn’t have any problems with this. Besides, all the people I know/knew who were “into” fancy, multi-device remote controls were well monied and tend/ed to collect these things like a regular bloke would collect stamps.

So yeah, the remote is currently shipping and has an MSRP of $249. I see that not even Amazon has it yet, so a bit of patience may be required before you can walk into Best Buy to buy one.

All in all, not bad at all. And, again, regular readers know that I’m Mr. Jaded (with a Masters of Arts in Cynicism), so that’s high praise from me.

And apologies for the video, which, at some points, really stinks; I don’t know why there’s a border around the video either! That didn’t happen last time! I also don’t have a tripod or any real “talent” to speak of, so it’s amazing that that came out the way it did.

[PSGallery=33ee36eh010]

Cheaper discs? Panasonic, Philips, Sony plan joint Blu-ray licence

Serkan Toto — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:21:09 +0000

Panasonic, Philips and Sony today announced they joint forces to consolidate the Blu-ray licensing business. The aim is to offer a single license that not only covers patents for Blu-rays but also DVDs and CDs. If things go well, we as consumers could get cheaper movies, music or games in the process.

The companies are saying that the new licensing system will be launched in the middle of this year and be handled by an independent US-based entity that serves as a single point-of contact for licensees. Licensed companies are saving time and money, which may help expand the Blu-ray business.

Apparently, royalty rates for Blu-ray products are 40% lower than the current combined rates for individual Blu-ray, DVD and CD products.

More details in the joint press release:
February 25, 2009 – Panasonic, Philips and Sony are currently working with other Blu-ray DiscTM patent holders to establish a one-stop-shop license for Blu-ray DiscTM products. This license, which covers essential patents for Blu-ray DiscTM, DVD and CD, will be introduced in the middle of this year. The license program will be offered by a new independent licensing company that will be based in the United States with branch offices in Asia, Europe and Latin America. The CEO of the new license company will be Mr. Gerald Rosenthal, former head of IP at IBM and more recently CEO of Open Invention Network.

“By establishing a new licensing entity that offers a single license for Blu-ray DiscTM products at attractive rates, I am confident that it will foster the growth of the Blu-ray DiscTM market and serve the interest of all companies participating in this market, be it as licensee or licensor.” said Mr. Rosenthal.

The three founding companies believe that the introduction of this simplified one-stop shop product license will stimulate the growth of the market for Blu-ray DiscTM products.
Any holder of essential patents for Blu-ray DiscTM, DVD and CD patents is invited to join this licensing entity as a licensor and also as shareholder.

The fees for the new product licenses are US$9.50 for a Blu-ray DiscTM player and US$14.00 for a Blu-ray DiscTM recorder. The per disc license fees for Blu-ray DiscTM will be US$0.11 for a read only disc, US$0.12 for a recordable disc and US$0.15 for a rewritable disc. As a result of the efficiencies obtained with the combined license offering, the royalty rates for Blu-ray DiscTM products are expected to be at least 40% lower than the current cumulative royalty rates for individual Blu-ray DiscTM, DVD and CD format licenses.

The Blu-ray DiscTM product licensing program aims to create a level playing field in the market for Blu-ray DiscTM products by introducing special measures to encourage companies selling Blu-ray DiscTM products to comply with their license obligations. The program also includes measures to easily identify unlicensed products in the market and a system to address those who may not have obtained proper licenses for Blu-ray DiscTM products.

In this one-stop-shop product license, the new license company will be a single point of contact for licensees, greatly reducing the burden on licensed companies that would otherwise have to report to multiple patent pools.

Tiny bubbles make me feel fine

Scott Merrill — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:22:41 +0000

Philips is working on some fancy new drug deliver technologies that utilize microbubbles in a new way. Traditionally, microbubbles are used to enhance the resolution of ultrasound images, but Philips’ research will provide a one-two punch for imaging and targeted drug delivery.

From the SonoDrug press release:

The drug delivery technology being developed in the SonoDrugs project will utilize drug-loaded particles, typically between 100 nm and 2000 nm in diameter that are designed to carry drugs to the site of disease via the bloodstream. It is known that at these very small diameters the particles are easily transported by normal blood flow through the finest capillaries in the vascular system and can therefore penetrate deep into diseased tissues. The drug payload will be inside the particles or attached to the shell.

Arrival of the particles at the disease site is detected using the real-time medical imaging techniques Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) or ultrasound. The drug is then locally released from the particles by subjecting them to focused ultrasound pulses. For this purpose, the SonoDrugs project will aim to develop two different types of particle.

I quote xkcd when I say “Science. It works, bitches!”

Via Medgadget

Sprint axing 8,000 employees, Philips 6,000

Matt Burns — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:45:42 +0000

Talk about a case of the Mondays. Sprint and Philips are the latest to announce layoffs with Sprint cutting 8,000 and Philips 6,000 employees. You know the drone. It’s cause we can’t borrow against our overinflated home’s equity to buy these companies latest crap anymore. We’re too busy dumping all of our cash into organic foodstuff now. The Sprint layoffs are expected to be completed by March 31st and Philips’ are on top of the recently announced 3,000 cuts. Alright, back to work before you get cut reading this in your cube. Unless you wanna collect unemployment, in which case, onto the next post, buddy boy.

Review: Philips DC910 Docking Entertainment System

Contributor — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:20:00 +0000

Short Version: The Philips DC910 is great-sounding system for playing music from your iPod, a USB thumb drive, an SD card, FM radio, or up to two external sources — all for under $150.

Overview and Features:

Compatible with iPod touch, iPod classic, iPod nano 3rd Generation, iPod 5th Generation, iPod mini, iPod with color display, iPod nano 1st Generation, iPod nano 2nd Generation – iPhones will work, but you’ll deal with a bit of interference from the phone’s radio, especially when there’s no music playing to drown it out.
Place your iPod touch in portrait or landscape orientation
Play and charge your iPod
USB thumb drive and SD/MMC card slots for MP3/WMA music playback
Auxiliary input
FM digital tuning with presets
3-inch wOOx subwoofer, two 1.5-inch tweeters – 30 watts RMS total power
Alarm clock function for iPod, USB, or radio
Wall-mountable
Available online for under $150

Pros:

Wow. Dougie likee. This is a great all-around music system, like the kind you’d put on your wedding registry or buy as a housewarming gift. It’s not too big, yet it gets very loud, it can be wall-mounted, and it handles iPods, thumbdrives, SD cards, and there are two — count ‘em — two auxiliary inputs for plugging in whatever isn’t on your iPod or various flash memory cards and drives. The iPod mount can be swiveled horizontally for some hot Cover Flow action — a nice touch.

Sound quality is surprising. It’s kind of like seeing a smaller person excel athletically. Think of the DC910 as the Dustin Pedroia of music systems – the guy’s like 5’7” and he’s arguably one of the best players in baseball, especially when it comes to hitting. When you first see him, though, he’s relatively unassuming. Same thing with this music system. I opened it, put it on my desk, and thought, “Okay. Here’s another iPod dock.” Once I turned it on, though, I was pleasantly surprised. You could throw a medium-sized party in your house and the DC910 would get plenty loud.

Cons:

Nothing major, just some minor quibbles. First, the power brick is just that: a brick. It’s larger than most laptop adapters. You’ll have to find somewhere to hide it, especially if you’re thinking of wall-mounting this system. Thankfully, Philips provides plenty of cord length so you should have a few options when you’re wrangling everything.

Second, the remote is a little iffy. It works fine, but if feels kind of cheap and the buttons are pretty squishy. It’s not very intuitive at first but it’s not bad once you start using it regularly. The range isn’t all that great, either. It’ll work across small rooms but I had trouble between my kitchen and the adjacent living room.

Finally, the LCD display is useful for simple track information and the clock and whatnot but the system doesn’t ready ID3 info from files playing off of SD cards or thumb drives. You’re presented with a simple folder + track number interface – so song or artist information. I remember that kind of stuff being an issue like ten years ago when hardware players were first starting to emerge. It seems to just be a given nowadays.

Conclusion:

All in all, the pros far outweigh the cons, making the Philips DC910 music system a great choice for any home. Philips is currently selling it directly at $116.88 but, unfortunately, it’s out of stock at the moment. You can find it at most other online stores for well under $150, though. Amazon, for instance, has it for as low as $80 – likely in order to make room for the $180 DC912.

Philips Docking Entertainment System – DC910 [Philips.com]

Review: Philips Streamium NP1100 network music player

Contributor — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:30:00 +0000

Quick Version: In a world chock full of streaming music devices, the Philips Streamium NP1100 blends into the crowd as a straightforward, easy-to-use network device.

Overview and Features:

Wired and/or wireless network music playback
Internet radio
Rhapsody online music service
Connects to stereo/home theater or headphones
Uses Windows Media Player 11 and/or UPnP to stream music
MSRP of $179.99

Pros:

The Streamium NP1100 from Philips is a relatively unassuming network music player. You plug it in, turn it on, and it finds the music on your UPnP-enabled computers. It also connects to Rhapsody’s online music service and features internet radio stations from all over the world. Lest you think that “unassuming” sounds negative, when it comes to devices that are meant to play music, sometimes the simpler, the better.

Sound quality is excellent. I tested the NP1100 hooked up to the home stereo, computer speakers, cheap headphones, $100 headphones, and $400 noise-cancelling headphones and the music, whether streaming from my computer, an internet radio station, or Rhapsody, sounded great. If I had an awesome home stereo system, the likes of which you’d see in fancy houses with things like “fireplaces” and “recessed lighting,” the NP1100 would sit handsomely next to the other high-priced audio components and push out high-quality music for me to listen to while I read the evening paper over a snifter of brandy-flavored beer from the gas station.

Rhapsody users, especially, would do well by this device. You can stream all of your personally downloaded Rhapsody tracks as well as search for and play music directly from Rhapsody’s enormous library. You’d literally have an almost unlimited music collection at the ready without having to download a bunch of files.

Cons:

The interface is a little “blah,” which is unfortunate because the device itself looks nice, with a sleek black finish and handsome translucent edges. It’s kind of like buying a nice, shiny new flat panel TV and then hooking up an old VCR to it and watching movies from the 80s that you taped off of network TV. It just seems out of place.

Also, while the NP1100 worked really well over a wired connection, when hooked up wirelessly there was just enough lag and buffering to sometimes make navigating with the included remote kind of a pain. I’d end up trying to skip backwards to earlier tracks on an album only to restart playing the same track over and over again until I could finally double-press the back button quickly enough to get to the previous track.

Finally, an MSRP of $179 seems a bit expensive, especially given the sheer number of competing devices on the market. The NP1100 can be found for less online, though.

Recommendation:

If you like music, want it to sound good, and don’t want a bunch of extra fluff, the Streamium NP1100 is easy enough to set up and use that serious music lovers – especially Rhapsody subscribers – might find the device to be a good fit. The design of the hardware itself is sleek, although it’s evened out by a boring, dated UI. In a world full of music streamers, the Streamium NP1100 falls somewhere in the middle.

Network Music Player – NP1100 [Philips.com]

CrunchDeals: Costco offering 2-for-1 LCD HDTVs as low as $1200

Peter Ha — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:33:20 +0000

Holy cow, people. Costco is currently offering three two-for-one bundles on Philips and Sharp LCD HDTVs. You can snag a 19-inch and 42-inch combo for $1200 on up to $1800 for a 52- and 32-inch LCD HDTV. That’s pure madness! What are you waiting for?

Costco

Philips throws in the towel on the US home theater market

Matt Burns — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:30:40 +0000

Philips is ready to turn the the nuke codes over to Funai as the company tries to reorganize in this pirate-infested world. Earlier in the year, the company turned over the rights to televisions and now is doing the same with DVD, Blu-ray, and home theater products. From here on out, the Philips name will still be present but Funai will be the brains behind the operation with the rights to develop, manufacture, and market the brand here in the States. As the prices of these products fall, so follows the profit margin which is presisly why Philips is leaving the ring.