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Philips offers consumers its Blu-ray Disc player for ultimate HD home entertainment (12/10/2006)

CEDIA US Expo 2006

Philips, a pioneer in high definition technology, delivers the ultimate HD experience to consumers with the introduction of its Blu-ray Disc player (BDP9000). Shown today at the 2006 Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association (CEDIA) Expo, the Blu-ray Disc player pairs stylish design with unbeatable sound and picture quality.

Philips' Blu-ray Disc player is loaded with features that provide the most stunning pictures available, including an HDMI output that supports the latest 1080p resolution and a component video output that provides brilliant imagery. Rich surround sound is heightened with multichannel HD audio decoding and digital audio optical outputs. Fully backward compatible, the player not only plays consumers' existing DVDs, but it also enhances the picture quality, upscaling it to 1080i.

"Blu-ray represents a surge forward in the home entertainment viewing experience," said Scott Levitan, senior vice president of marketing and sales, Philips Consumer Electronics, North America. "With the overwhelming support of studios and manufacturers, consumers can be sure that the HD future lies with Blu-ray."

HDTV sets will outsell analog sets by nearly 90 percent in 2006, according to research from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). As consumers migrate to these HDTV sets, they see that a standard DVD doesn't offer the HD content they expect. Philips' Blu-ray Disc player delivers on the HD promise with pristine 1080p picture quality and booming surround sound.

As a leader in the consumer electronics industry, Philips is one of the companies responsible for the development of the Blu-ray Disc Format. As a Board member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, Philips is highly involved in the development of the Blu-ray Disc standard, just as the company led the revolution of the CD and DVD formats.

Blu-ray Disc has the technological advantage to be the industry leader with the support of more than 170 companies including virtually all of the major CE manufacturers and PC manufacturers, seven of the eight major Hollywood studios who are responsible for nearly all of the current DVD sales, leading games developers (for PS3 platform) and music labels.

Blu-ray solutions are the answer to an evolution in HD entertainment and digital archiving, providing massive amounts of storage. A current, single-sided standard DVD can hold roughly 4.7 GB of information Ð about the size of an average quality two-hour movie with a few added features. An HD movie, which boasts a much clearer image, requires a disc with five times more storage. Philips' single-layer 25GB1 Blu-ray Disc makes massive storage a reality by holding more than six hours of HD video, 12 hours of standard definition content or 36 CDs on a single disc. That is more than five times the storage capacity of a single-sided standard DVD.

The capacity of a Blu-ray Disc enables the playback of full-length feature movies using MPEG2 encoding Ð the native compression technique for HDTV broadcasts Ð or even more capacity with advanced codes such as AVC and Windows Media (r) Video HD (VC-1). It is the only recording format providing 25 GB of storage on a single-layer disc and 50 GB on a dual-layer disc.

The BDP9000 Blu-ray Disc player, available in third quarter, will have a suggested retail price of $999.

Philips is now shipping 25 GB, single-layer recordable (BD-R) and single-layer recordable and erasable (BD-RE) Blu-ray Discs.

www.philips.com