Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

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Are You Happy With You Philips Hardware?

Yes
17
68%
No
8
32%
 
Total votes: 25

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mgillespie
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Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by mgillespie » Fri Apr 25, 2008 8:32 am

Each manufactuers forum, I am posting a sticky poll, so others can get a instant feel if other users are happy with their purchases.

Benneton
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Re: Are You Happy With You Philips Hardware?

Post by Benneton » Fri Apr 25, 2008 9:55 am

Happy with the hardware.
software/firmware I am not to pleased. No support at all and within a year no more updates.
Simple enhancements that could be realized via a firmware release are not done.
Also the management via the Club Philips site is not handy. everytime I want to do something there are either problems with club philips, my account stopped working or need to add again my devices. What at total bullshit solution to manage this.
Luckaly I use the SL400i 90% in my intranet to stream music.

raven
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Re: Are You Happy With You Philips Hardware?

Post by raven » Fri Apr 25, 2008 10:43 am

I agree with the previous poster. I use a SL300i and a SLA5520, both work ok. But support is non-excisting and the internet radio/favorites section is difficult to setup and use.
Recently i bought a Squeezebox to replace the SLA5520. Although the SLA5520 worked ok, the soundquality of the Squeezebox is far superior, and the internetradio setup is a lot easier/better. Just a pity that the Squeezebox does not work with Twonky and you have to get the slimserver software running, which is not always an easy task.

agb007
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Re: Are You Happy With You Philips Hardware?

Post by agb007 » Wed Apr 30, 2008 12:29 pm

I agree with the other posters. It works fine but a firmware update would be nice.
I have a SLA5520 and SLM5500.

agron

k1200rs
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Re: Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by k1200rs » Sun Aug 31, 2008 8:22 pm

As clients, I have Philips SLA5520, Philips NP1100 and Freecom MusicPal (I finally trashed my MP101's...).
I have some times problems with the SLA5520 WIFI.
The NP1100 is far better (in all respect), very good piece of HW.
MusicPal is good as a standalone device and probably the easiest to use.

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Re: Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by riethmueller » Sat Oct 04, 2008 2:11 pm

No I'm not satisfied with the hard- and software.

Hardware is to slow q.e. scrolling, Software not in line with standards. Very suspicious service-concept. But I had bought three items and have to live with them now. All my newer UPnP devices are not from Phillips.

Tom
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Re: Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by k1200rs » Sun Feb 15, 2009 8:04 pm

I think we need to consider the new Philips UPnP players such as the NP2500 and NP2900.
I have a NP2500 for 2 months now, very good HW. Expensive but very good.
I stream FLAC using Twonky and connected the NP2500 to my AV Amplifier using digital coax, excellent sound (finally something HIFI in the streaming world).

raven
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Re: Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by raven » Mon Feb 16, 2009 4:32 am

k1200rs wrote:... excellent sound (finally something HIFI in the streaming world).
Ever heard about the Squeezebox? I prefer that one 10x over the new philips devices

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Re: Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by k1200rs » Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:00 am

Sorry Sir.

If you stream FLAC and connect your device using a digital coax to your amplifier or DAC, I fail to understand how the Squeezbox can sound or be 10* better. It cannot be as you transport the digital music up to your DAC or to your amplifier...hence what makes the difference is your DAC or/and amplifier.

I see you had an experience with various Philips devices such as the SLA5520, etc. I also had an experience with a number of Philips UPNP renderers and I would also qualify these devices as being poor in terms of quality, usability and features. However, the NP2500/2900 are in a different league (they are also more expensive). Have you had an experience with the NP2500/NP2900?

Besides, personally, I do not want a proprietary protocol/devices that are non DLNA/UPnP compliant. DLNA/UPnP us fairly open and you will find many development, utilities and tools developed around these standards.
There are even open and publicly available UPnP/DLNA projects / applications running on Linux that developers are enhancing further (example: the MusicPal which is becoming a platform for 'hackers')
I think the world is going DLNA/UPNP and for what regards Video/Picture streaming there is almost no alternatives (and why would you have a different server application for your video than for your music?)
There is not one NAS introduced on the market without UPNP/DLNA server, you have the choice between 100's of media renderers (all price and quality), and there are more and more amplifiers / televisions with built-in DLNA client (Loewe, Philips, Pioneer, Toshiba, Onkyo, Sony....just to name a few). This sounds a bit like HDDVD vs. Blueray discussion even if HDDVD was better.
Last edited by k1200rs on Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

raven
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Re: Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by raven » Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:25 am

So you need a good DAC to make your philips sound good. The Squeezebox has a fairly good DAC inside. I got rid of my sla5520 because of the very poor soundquality. I listened to the NP1100 over my own stereo, but that was just a small improvement over the sla5520.
I agree that it is a downside of the squeezebox that you have to run the Squeezecenter software, but this also creates many more possibilities with the available plugins. I can for instance play 1 song and the software will pick automatically the next song (and on and on ..) based on music characteristics (not genre or some common id3 tag) with the musicip plugin. Also Wake on lan is supported, the squeezebox wakes my musicserver automatically when i want to listen to music.
There is support for almost all of the musicservices like pandora, lastfm. Internet radio and presets work like it should be, not via a very slow philips server which is down quite often. And this for just a little bit more money then the np2500.
Did you ever listen to a Squeezebox over a serious hifi set? The philips devices are not bad, they do what they should do (besides internetradio) but the Squeezebox offers a lot more.

k1200rs
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Re: Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by k1200rs » Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:43 am

raven wrote:So you need a good DAC to make your philips sound good.
Well if you want HIFI quality of sound, I am afraid the DAC in the Philips or the Squeezbox will not be able to compete with the high quality DAC's available on the market and that's why they provide digital link. I have seen the same remarks about the Squeezbox DAC in the French Squeezbox forum...
I have, BTW, even never tried the analog output of the NP2500...so, I cannot comment about it (and I take it you never had a NP2500 in your hands, did you?)

I am convinced the Squeezbox is very good, I have seen enough users stating it, I don't need to be convinced or listen to it, but as I said, I know what happened to propriatory protocols / standards vs. open (or consortium related). There are enough examples (I did not need to look at HDDVD either).
So, I am ready to compromize on certain things on the basis that in 5 years time the standard and vendors will still be there with more and better.

BTW, I am also sure that in the UPnP world there is much better than the NP2500:
Sonos but also many providers of HIFI/UPNP 'integrated' solutions (HIFIdelio, Linn, Olive, etc.) which have developed true HIFI solutions with high quality components (at a price). All these vendors are DLNA/UPnP compliant. There are many more major HIFI names who have also announced DLNA/UPnP support, why would they go with propriatory solutions? So, in terms of quality and sound...I know where is the choice.

Finally, please note that the NP2500 and NP2900 are not provided with the Philips Media Manager but with TwonkyMedia manager. It would mean Philips is no longer maintaining the PMM.

GuustFlater
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Re: Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by GuustFlater » Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:06 pm

I just bought the NP2900 and I like it !!!
The sound of this device is really awesome!

The control of the device is really slow which is a pity. Also the remote control has too many tiny buttons.
What's also strange, is wht Philips ships this new device with an old version of Twonkymedia. I downloaded the latest version from the site and expected to be able to use the provided serial: didn't work. So I either need to buy a new license or install the provided old Twonky version.

daan63
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Re: Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by daan63 » Sun May 10, 2009 11:32 am

I had the same problem and found the solution.
The serail number must be entered in CAPITALS (upper case) and not as lower case.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What's also strange, is wht Philips ships this new device with an old version of Twonkymedia. I downloaded the latest version from the site and expected to be able to use the provided serial: didn't work. So I either need to buy a new license or install the provided old Twonky version.

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Re: Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by mikle_01 » Fri Oct 02, 2009 12:19 pm

GuustFlater wrote:I just bought the NP2900 and I like it !!!
The sound of this device is really awesome!

The control of the device is really slow which is a pity. Also the remote control has too many tiny buttons.
What's also strange, is wht Philips ships this new device with an old version of Twonkymedia. I downloaded the latest version from the site and expected to be able to use the provided serial: didn't work. So I either need to buy a new license or install the provided old Twonky version.

Yes - the sound ("Full Sound" option) is really great - but unfortunately the control is slow. Regardless of "CD-Cover" option ist on or off (another great feature, too). But therefore you could jump alphabetically to the desired Album/interpret/folder with the RC.

The fastest device I've ever seen is the Roku Soundbridge M1001; keep pressing the arrow keys "up" or "down" down and it is as fast as you couldn't follow :wink:

The last years I've had a lot of devices - what I learned -any device has it own pros and cons, belive me...
NAS: Synology DS211j 4TB with Twonky 6.0.31 "Kirkwood"- Clients: Philips Streamium NP2500, Sagem "My Dual 700", WD TV Live Gen.2 + Gen.3, - TV:Philips 42PFL8654

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Re: Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by agupta2009 » Sun Dec 27, 2009 6:49 pm

No. I bought Philips Streamium WACS7500 in August 2009. The device has a music center and a station. I was very happy that I got a good deal ($229 shipped) whereas the system is sold at $500-$700. When it was first introduced in 2008, the retail price was $900.

Soon I realized that I did not get a good deal. The system was so hard to configure that I wanted to return it and I am no network newbie. For some bizarre reason, Philips would not allow the wired and wireless adapters to use the same subnet. So, first I had to connect with wired adapter, disable my laptop's wireless adapter, set wired adapter to DHCP, connect to the center using WADM, program wireless settings, revert back my laptop's network settings. All this is not described anywhere in the documentation. I had to spend hours trying to figure this out.

Now, for some equally bizarre reason, I have lost internet radio and connectivity to UPnP server. The WAC and WAS just would not recognize any UPnP server and just would not connect to internet radio. Not sure if this has something to do with the 1.30 firmware update that I applied yesterday.

Philips has practically no technical support for this product and their website is either too slow or down and does not have a single speck of useful information. Philips being relatively unpopular in field of consumer electronics (at least in US), has a very small user base to find help outside of normal support channels.

Bottom line, the WACS7500, though having a very attractive design, is a functionally not so great.

lansdownd
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Re: Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by lansdownd » Wed Jan 05, 2011 5:08 am

I purchased what I think was the first generation of players: SLA5500, 300i, and 400i. All had buggy FW that was not updated to correct the problems. It appeared they abandoned the whole product line in the first year or two.
I went through at least four 5500 models. All of them had hardware failures. I ended up with one limiping along, and is still operating (poorly) today. I gave the 300i as a gift, and I know that it worked, but was not reliable enough for the user. The 400i was the top of the line, and worked OK for a year, when the remote failed.
I sent all the remotes back to Philips expressing my overall disappointment, and stated expectation that they would replace at least the remote for the 400i and one 5500. Not even the courtesy of a reply was received.

I used to be a loyal Philips product buyer, ever since they co-developed the CD with Sony. But I will never buy another Philps product after this and subsequent experience with CD Player/recorders.

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Re: Are You Happy With Your Philips Hardware?

Post by pcfe » Wed Sep 28, 2011 12:25 pm

I am happy with the hardware, way fewer lockups than my Roku Soundbridge used to experience (I doubt either device's lockups have anything to do with Twonky)

On the software side, I am less happy than I was with my Roku. Running a linux-only network, I am yet to discover a decent remote control tool for my Streamium (2500 IIRC but I'd have to check at home to be sure)

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