IFA 2008: Philips Rolls Out CinemaOne, the All-In-One Home Theater System

Innovation is almost always the key to success, and it really seems that the engineers and designers from Philips took this very seriously into consideration when creating the CinemaOne. And that's because this relatively small product (roughly the size of a football) combines a DVD and CD player, an iPod dock, a five channel amplifier, six speakers, and a subwoofer, delivering a level of versatility rarely encountered in the case of other devices.

The secret behind the abilities of the CinemaOne is related to the very ingenious placement of the speakers. Thus, the surround sound experience is caused by six precisely angled speakers which are positioned around the body of the CinemaOne. The 4-inch subwoofer is built into the base of the unit whereby the installation is clutter free without the need for extra power cables and speaker wires. Practically, all you have to do is plug this thing in, connect it to a signal (audio and/or video) source and you're good to go.

The CinemaOne has been equipped with a five-channel amplifier and DSP (Digital Signal Processing) unit, capable of processing Dolby Digital, DTS, MPEG2 multichannel or stereo sound tracks. Moreover, it's compatible with just about every movie format you might think of, including here DivX, Mpeg and WMV, as well as with a wide variety of media, whether we're talking about DVDs, CDs or the iPod's memory (unfortunately, no Blu-ray, but we might see this option in a future model).

And since we've mentioned the iPod, we'll have to point out the fact that the dock also allows an iPod to be controlled via the unit’s remote control, while all track information can be accessed via the TV screen. Moreover, the CinemaOne can even upscale movies before transmitting them via HDMI to a widescreen, high-definition set.

Unfortunately, as in the case of all the other products introduced at IFA by Philips, no significant information regarding the pricing and availability have been provided, so we'll probably have to wait until these things arrive in stores to see what's what.

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