____________________[PRO] computers from Philips, again and again

[congeries]

"On Saturday, Philips (!) plans to unveil [on IFA] its first home-entertainment personal computer, the Philips ShowLine, which will have a 250-gigabyte hard drive, processors by Intel and will run on Microsoft's XP Media Center operating system."

не прошло и 10 лет, как филипс решил вернуться в компьютерный бизнес.

 

Digital convergence still elusive: Domestic disafray reigns with gadgets
By Kevin J.O'Brien
Herald Tribune 01-09-2005

BERIJM: Like many Europeans, Norbert Schaar is an avid fan of digital technology. That is why the 39-year-old English teacher paid €189 to replace bis old computer  monitor with a 17-inch flat panel screen from Fujitsu Siemens. While the sleek monitor is saving Schaar desk space, it fails to fulfill a promise that electronics makers have been repeating for years: It works with his computer, bul it cannot "talk" to any of the other gadgets in his home — his mobile phone, fixedrline phone, stereo and DVD player all are unable to use the screen's visual real estate.

Such domestic disarray defmes the state of "digital convergence," a topic set to dominate the largest European consumer electronics fair, the Internationale Funkaustellung, or IFA, which opens here on Friday. No matter how many times executives of the record 1,189 exhibitors invoke the phrase during the fïve-day event, experts say true convergence remains elusive.

"The development of a seamless digital home is happening only gradually," said Rudy Provoost, head of Philips Consumer Electronics, the unit of the Dutch company that is the largest European maker of consumer electronics. "We are still a way off from the truly digital environment, but we are making progress eachyear."

According to Harbor Research, a San Francisco-based fïrm that specializes in home automation, the progress is haphazard and barely perceptible. In a report on digital convergence in the home, Harbor described current efforts as "a fragmented landscape full of narrow-point solutions, time-sink gadgetry, entertainment obsession and software/platform incompatibility."

Jurgen Wagner, an electronics industry analyst in Frankfurt at Bankhaus SaL Oppenheim, a German private bank, said he, too, was often stymied at home by devices that are not designed to work or are incapable of working with each other. "We are still a ways off from having a functioning digital household," he said.
In an interview, Provoost, a 45-yearold Belgian, singled out two reasons why hè believed the seamless digital household was only slowly taking shape.

One is that companies like Philips are being forced to work with competitors or outsiders in unrelated fields - companies that provide content or software, for example - to sell their latest digital hardware.. Many of them, like Microsoft, DirectTV, IBM, Yahoo and Virgin, will be showing their wares at
IFA this weekend.

On Saturday, Philips plans to unveil its fïrst home-entertainment personal computer, the Philips ShowLine, which will have a 250-gigabyte hard drive, processors by Intel and will run on Microsoft's XP Media Center operating system. The company will also announce a joint marketing and promotion campaign with the leading German pay-television channel Premiere to push high-definition televisipn ahead of the 2006 World Cup.

Philips makes HDTVs, and Premiere, with the rights to broadcast the games in Germany, on Wednesday said that it was starting three HDTV format channels in November to draw more revenue from sports fans.

Premiere's chief executive, Georg Kofler, said HDTV receivers would become available in volume in early 2006 and he expected the World Cup to help make HDTV a mass-market technology.  "Ahead of the 1974 World Cup, many households swapped their black-andwhite TV sets for a color TV. We are expecting a similar drive through next year's World Cup," Kofler said Wednesday in Berlin, according to Reuters.

For Philips, "the days of being a stand-alone maker of home electronics are long over," said Provoost. "We are in a phase where major manufacturers are building multilateral alliances to advance digital technology." Provoost said the marketing alliance with Premiere could serve as a model for other alliances throughout Europe.

Although Philips has a range of high definition TVs, sales have been disappointing because there is not much content available to see. "We need content and that is why we are entering into these types of alliances," he said.

A second and more thorny hurdle, particularly in Europe, is what Provoost described as the European Commission's lack of activism in removing regulatory barriers to the spread of digital technology. He singled out Europe's failure to approve a single, common digital broadcast standard and its slowness in starting to roll back or at least harmonize national copyright levies that are adding to the costs of portable entertainment devices. Copyright levies in Spain, for example, according to Provoost,
increase the cost of a basic MP3 player to €131, or $161, from €79.

"What I would like to see is the European Commission taking a more proactive stance instead of a wait-and-see approach," said Provoost, who is also chairman of EICTA, the European Information & Communications Technology Industry Association, a group of 80 manufacturers and trade associations lobbying the commission to harmonize the Continent's copyright laws. Martin Selmayr, a lawyer who works for the commission's Information Society & Media directorate, said the EU body was taking very seriously the issue of copyright collection systems, which are different in each of the EU's 25 member states. This autumn, Selmayr said, the commission is planning to recommend either political or regulatory action that could begin to harmonize and reduce fees.

In Europe, digital broadcasting standards are set by the Geneva-based Digital Video Broadcasting Group, a consortium of 270 broadcasters, equipment makers and network operators that so far have authorized about 50 different digital broadcasting standards in Europe. For global device makers like Philips, the multitude of standards is complicated and costly. The approach differs fundamentally from the commission's strategy in the 1980s and early 1990s to develop the single GSM mobile phone standard, which now operates 78 percent of cellphones around the world, according to the London-based GSM Association.

Selmayr said the commission's philosophy on digital broadcasting was to let the DVB group set multiple standards and allow the free market to decide
which ones are best.