Hey folks Valkor here, still catching up on all that is and was CES 2006. We have lots of reviews to share. That’s right I said reviews. This year we didn’t just go to CES and fool around, we put some products to the test. Some shall stand and some shall fall. In the case of Philips entry into the Mp3 arena with their GoGear HDD1850 or the HDD6330, It will definitely stand well on it’s own against the big guns like Creative, Ipod, and Samsung, but with just a little wobble.

The HDD1850 looks and stands about the same as the IPOD with video, but it has a sleeker finish with no wheel what’s so ever. Everything is controlled by sliding your finger across its base such as volume, changing songs, and interacting with the menus. However this may be the HDD’s only weakness. I say might because when I tried accessing the different menus on the player, the controls seemed a little too sensitive and I’d end up skipping over the option that I wanted and going other places entirely. Other mp3 players that use touch controls have an option for controlling sensitivity and I don’t see why this one won’t. We will get an update on this one as soon as possible.

Once you get past the controls you will find that listening to the HDD is no different than most other players out on the market. It sounds great and it’s definitely dependent on what headphones you use. The music they had to demo wasn’t what I normally care to listen to so for me to get a full feel of the device I would have to put it through Val-cave testing. Also I find that Mp3 players are much the same with no real difference from one to the other. Philips is no exception and if you like Philips brand products than you will definitely love the HDD 1850.

The HDD also comes with one other option and that is you can view pictures along with your music. So now you can load up all your favorite pictures, show em off to your friends and view them while listening to your favorite songs. The pictures that they showed were awesome and beautiful, but demo pics are one thing. I would like to see a variety of pics from 1mp on up, to cartoons and CGI images.

Everything gets packed into an 8 or 30 gig hard drive which is enough to hold a ton of Mp3 and images, making this player compete directly with the color IPOD and creative Zen Micro (w/ color). Plus it also works with Microsoft’s Playforsure. Now what does that mean? Taking this directly from the Press release:

PlaysForSure™ compatibility To ensure maximum compatibility with the growing number of legitimate music download services, the new Philips GoGear HDD jukebox range supports the PlaysForSure initiative from Microsoft^®.PlaysForSure ensures interoperability of devices and services so that consumers can simply know their device and service will work together. The PlaysForSure logo enables consumers to match the logos of both their playback device and preferred service. Consumers wishing to buy a Philips GoGear HDD jukebox will easily be able to check whether their preferred content supplier supports the PlaysForSure initiative, ensuring they fully enjoy downloaded content on their Philips player. A further advantage of PlaysForSure is its highlight of the portable subscription phenomenon enabled through Windows^® Media DRM10 (formerly known as Janus). Both Philips’ GoGear HDD devices will be compatible with portable subscription offerings, allowing consumers full access to more than one million track catalogs from supporting online services. With this out-of-the-box support, consumers will have the ability to fill their Philips GoGear HDD jukebox for less than the price of one CD per month.  Philips also makes downloading simple through high-speed data transfers via USB 2.0.

However, and this is again one of those wobbles, this kind of player might be too little too late to have any effect on the guys like Creative and Ipods because they have done the picture thing and have moved on to movie players (which allow you to show pictures as well). However if all you want is the music, with a color screen, graphic interface, great sound, with touchy control pad, then I would suggest the Philips players. Retail for both: $279 for the HDD6330 and $249 for the 1850. We’ll have more as we get more info.
Email: valkor@the-other-view.com

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