This morning after reading the Superscope thread I did a bit of Googling and found a What Hi Fi article about them and Marantz. https://www.whathifi.com/news/60-years-marantz-are-all-about-music That led me onto the associated thread about Philips which has some great history and pictures https://www.whathifi.com/news/phili...-going-back-to-where-philips-brothers-started I knew that the Funai deal didn't go through but assumed that the Philips products like TVs which you occasionally saw in supermarkets continued to be made by Philips. A bit of a coincidence that tonight I saw this headline: http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/news...ng-dollar500m/ar-AAwDckK?li=BBoPWjQ&ocid=iehp it turns out that Gibson had bought the Philips name for consumer goods and probably now regret it. http://www.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle/News/en-us/Gibson-Brands-to-Acquire-WOOX-Innovations.aspx I am inclined to think that if they had put 20% of the effort they put into their Guitars into their audio products, instead of putting out a lack lustre range of £30 CD Cassettes, £90 Hi Fis and £200 TVs they might have made more of a success of it. A sad end to a brand who were once as big in Europe as Sony or Panasonic. p.s The first Flat screen TV I ever saw for sale was a Philips costing £10000 back in about 1997.
...very well spected, sir ! if you spread your research over other "traditional" middle-european brands, you will find out that important tv/hifi-brands such as GRUNDIG, NORDMENDE, SABA, AEG, TELEFUNKEN, UHER, GRAETZ, LOEWE-OPTA, METZ etc. etc. all disappeared from the market in the middle/late 90'es. major cause was cheap products from far-east and their blockade against producing flat-screens as their managers thought nobody needs a flat-screen tv (!). in fact, the european hifi-industry allready started collapsing earlier due to japanese (and other far east) cheap productions - the dead of this industry went part like an avalanche allready in the late 80'es - their last attemt for surviving was using asian oem-products (remember f.ex. Grundig Beatboy 100, UHER Tramp etc.). same will happen to major (not european only) car-manufacturers next, if they don't start producing affordable electric vehicles (chinese make "Weltmeister" is in the starting-holes to launch a cheap long-range ev (size of Tesla model 3) in autumn for a stating-price lower than a standard VW Golf - they even chose a german sounding name to make sure europeans will buy - and they will... back to electronics: SONY was the only japanese company who didn't want to make flat-screens as they thought their "black trinitron" was better - it maybe was, but costumers decided a flat-screen wasn't only hip, but easier to carry and to integrate in your home - Sony almost went banrupt, they only survived throughout making good cameras and were leader in the upcoming console-market (Playstation).
I remember going to the now demolished Philips research labs in Salfords, Surrey, probably around 1995-96ish on a science trip when I was at college, and they were researching the technology behind led and plasma screens then. We all had to put on anti-static suits and special shoe covers to keep out dust, was fascinating!
I think Philips put most of their attention into creative styling instead of high quality. If you look at their boomboxes, none of them look like any other.....they are very unique. But none of them are top build quality. Plus many or even most of them weren't made in Japan, they were made in Austria, Portugal, Singapore, Korea, or Taiwan.
Actually, if my memory's correct Sony had the first "flat screen" Trinitron TV set back in the mid-90's. I think you guys are talking about what we think of as modern day flat-bodied sets with LED or plasma technology. I did have a huge Phillips TV back in the early 2000's, it broke a year and a day after I bought it, so no warranty. I swore then to never buy a Phillips Product again....
I think almost all the manufacturers were caught out by how quickly the price of Flat Screen TVs fell. By flat screen I mean the ones less than 20cm thick which you can hang on the wall. Sharp did most of the development work. At some AV show back in about 1995 they were exhibiting a 20" LCD. Back then it was such an achievement that it had its own special room with security guards. It was years before you could buy one in the shops. I was almost caught out when I saw a 15" LG reduced from £1000 to £650 in House of Fraser department store (another company now suffering from reduced consumer spending). I was very tempted but in the end decided £650 was still a lot of money. About two years later I bought a 22" LG for £200. I can date the £10000 42" Philips to 1996 or 1997 from the film Apollo 13 as that is what they were showing on it. There was a crowd of people gawping at this TV. To this day I don't know if they were thinking "I have never seen such a huge TV" or "I have never seen such an expensive TV". Finally since Autoreverser commented on cars I found out today that the next Vauxhall / Opel Astra will be a restyled Peugeot with a different badge. PSA seem to be trying to beat VAG for the number of different badges on similar cars.
Popular Science Magazine has some great articles on the development of flat screen, this one dates from 1975 https://books.google.com/books?id=Y...aAhXL7YMKHYAOCKIQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Thanks for that. It is a lot earlier than I expected. I wonder how many of the companies doing the research ever made a return on their investment, even if only from patents (which would have been running out by the time Flat Screen became popular). The big problem with early LCDs was yield. In about 2002 my boss gave up on trying to buy an LCD monitor for his computer as the first three he took home from the shop all had duff pixels, something that back then the manufacturers claimed was inevitable. Some even quoted a maximum number of duff pixels on their spec sheets, but he thought for the money he was paying it should be perfect. For every within spec LCD made several would go in the bin just like the infamous Sony Chromatron. Unlike the Chromatron which needed a fundamental redesign (to the Trinitron) within a few years the problems with Duff Pixels had been solved and prices started to drop. Having read the article, and the bit about taking the panel from room to room I realised one of the main beneficaries was Apple. Can you imagine an Ipad without an LCD. In contrast Sharp ended up being bought by the company that actually manufactures Apples products, Foxcon.
Yeah and the thing that annoys me now is every Vauxhall advert on tv and radio now has the tagline 'Vauxhall, British since 1904' Erm no, you're not! The UK is the only country they've ever been called Vauxhall, but technically all Vauxhalls have ever been are re-badged Opels who are a German brand, both were bought by General Motors, now sold to Peugeot. So technically, the name is British, the cars were German, now they're French.
That has annoyed me too. However, I think you will find that Vauxhall had some input into the design process. After all they kept the Astra name and dropped the Kadett. Further back, just like Ford, each country designed their own cars. Back to Peugeot my Father had two UK built Peugeots. We know how that ended. Slightly off topic I went (along with half the other teenage males in Bristol) to see Samantha Fox unveil the 309 at the main dealer where he bought his cars. The DS name also annoys me as when at school my friends mother had a Citroen DS23 which I often travelled in so I know what a real DS is. If its doesn't have hydraulic suspension it isn't a DS. That car didn't need a jack as you could just stickthe supplied prop under it and retract the wheels. Some marketing is as silly as sticking a badge on a cheaply made Indian Car and pretending it was a prestige British product. As if anyone would ever try that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_CityRover
Haha the Tata Indicar and the Citi(Shitti)Rover, a car so bad they wouldn't let Top Gear test drive one, so they bought one instead!
To mark what may be the end of AV from Phlips I thought I would do a list of some of their innovations: First Glass based valves (crucial to the allies WW2 Radar) http://www.dos4ever.com/EF50/EF50.html Compact Cassette http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2013/08/30/50_years_of_the_compact_cassette/ Early Colour TV - Philips were one of the first European companies that could make all the components including the tube. https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/1967-philips-g25k502/ I fed that price into the BOE inflation calculator and got £5900 in 2017 money ! I was going to say that colour TV wasn't a mass market product back then but apparently there were actually waiting lists for Colour sets when they were launched. First Home Video Recorder (N1500) https://www.rewindmuseum.com/philips.htm Semiconductors - Where I work started off as a semiconductor factory built by Philips in 1956. The first Chipsets for CD players and Teletext were designed and made there. The worlds largest semiconductor foundary TSMC started off using Philips know how and processes. https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/1539-brief-history-tsmc.html I have read elsewhere that they invested no money, just their knowledge. Laserdisc https://www.rewindmuseum.com/philipslaserdisc.htm Joint Developer of the CD with Sony https://www.philips.com/a-w/research/technologies/cd/beginning.html Philips provided the optical knowhow from Laserdisc. Sony providing the D to A circuitry from the PCM F1 VCR based audio recorder. Video 2000. Probably the most advanced home video recorders, but by the time they came to market VHS was entrenched https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_2000 CDi - Launched before other CD based games consoles like the Playstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philips_CD-I Where did it all go wrong? Well some of the later products like Video 2000 and CDi were flops. Some of their products (including their boomboxes) had dubious reliability due to their habit of using as many plastic parts as possible. Most of all I think they underestimated the publics appetite for cheap mediocre products. Laserdisc was developed as, despite inventing the home VCR. Philips thought that no one would want to buy films for on tape due to the poor picture quality. Most of all I think they underestimated how quickly the prices of technology would drop. At my Mums there is a 2007 catalogue, which I think was an extended range from Index (Argo's rival). Have a look at the prices of a few Philips products just 11 years ago. These were comparable to other companies like Sony back then. I did think The ambilight TV was expensive at £1799, but then realised the model 37" without Ambilight was still £1299.
Philips CD-I was a by-product of a Nintendo venture that didn't go according to plan for either of them. Originally Nintendo approached Sony as they wanted a cd-rom drive for the SNES, Sony made one and produced the only console as a prototype that would play both Sony discs and SNES cartridges. This was named the PlayStation, but unknown to Sony, on the day of the big reveal at a CES show, Nintendo pulled the plug on Sony behind their backs, they didn't agree with the deal they were getting with regards on the cd-based software that Sony would produce. Nintendo had also secretly approached Philips to do the same thing as Sony had done, however they allowed Philips to have licenses for a few Nintendo characters on the CD-I, hence why there are Zelda and Mario games on the CD-I. Philips never produced a SNES add-on, the CD-I flopped (I have about 7 or 8 of the consoles in my collection!) as they were horrendously expensive back in the day (circa £700 in the 90's!) and Sony went on to make the PlayStation and the rest is history! There is a video or 2 on youtube by Ben Heck about restoring the SNES/Sony PlayStation if anyone wants to watch it.... My aunty had a VHS2000 machine, if I remember right, the tapes were slightly smaller than a standard VHS and you could record on both sides. She got rid of it years ago, think she just threw it away! What a waste!
