Of all places for an Apple TV competitor to come from, Phillips was not at the top of my list or, rather, even in the top five. Apparently, this brushed aluminum squareish object from Phillips will be a direct competitor so you don’t have to go hacking and possibly bricking your precious Apple hardware. Details are very limited at this time and an actual UI was not up for demo at Computex.
The 40GB capacity media hub is more or less the same beast that is the Apple TV with HDMI, optical audio outputs, and wireless streaming of audio and video content. Maybe we’ll see something tomorrow at the Phillips show, but I highly doubt it.
Computex 2007: Philips Takes on AppleTV [Trusted Reviews]
Mmmpph. Looks ugly.
Apple TV and Phillips are both doing a better job than Sony’s Blueray and Toshiba’s HD DVD because they are aimed at the future, not the past. I make that point at my post analyzing the future of the DVD player, which you can find here:
http://www.mathoda.com/archives/168