Philips ships all-in-one home theater

Electronic News, Nov 17, 1997

$5,000 Product Boasts Big-Screen TV, DVD, CD Audio and a PC

Palo Alto, Calif.--Philips Electronics last week began shipping the DVX8000 multimedia home theater, claiming to enable a convergence of DVD, CD audio, television and PC applications in one living-room appliance. The retail price is pegged at $5,000.

"We've taken a brand new approach to the convergence of audio/video technology with multimedia PC functionality," said Brad Beitel, GM of the Philips Digital Entertainment group. "We believe our approach will invigorate the growth of the PC market as consumers look for an even greater entertainment and interactive experience than they can get with existing multimedia PCs."

The DVX8000 features a large-screen monitor, multiple speakers for surround sound and components linked to an array of entertainment, educational content and information such as broadcast or on-line media. The DVX8000's video capability includes a high-end video line doubler, a television tuner and a DVD player for movies, CD- and DVD-ROMs as well as CD audio. The audio capabilities include digital audio technology from Marantz, Dolby Labs and LucasFilm.

The DVX8000 also supports complete PC functionality for Internet browsing, games and educational information. The PC portion of the DVX8000 includes a 233MHz Intel Pentium processor with MMX technology, a Trident Microsystems' 3-D graphics accelerator, 4MB of video memory and 32MB of DRAM as well as a modem, USB connector, floppy drive, hard disk drive and Windows 95.

"Philips has taken the 'living room' approach for bringing a digital convergence product into the home entertainment system--focusing on the consumer electronics functionally and adding the PC capabilities to enhance the overall experiences," said James Staten, analyst at San Jose, Calif.-based market research firm Dataquest. "The result is a product that focuses on delivering the best aural and visual experience, which are the factors that will matter most to the buyers in this segment."