Philips were behind the tape cassette and the CD, but their new music player is a woeful attempt to take on the iPod – perhaps it’s time they looked for a rapid injection of talent.
Apple’s ability to grab headlines is a matter of huge annoyance to many. How come their launch of a phone makes the evening news? A new iPod, and it’s a bigger headline than Darfur. Whoopy-doo, as Americans like to say. Why should I care?
I have an iPhone, an iPod Touch and a new Nano to hand, but to save the anti-Apples out there aggravation, I shan’t review them. They don’t need it. All you have to do is ask someone who has one if you can play with it for a second and any pointless carpings melt into nothing.
And if they don’t, well, that’s fine, too. You can carry on hating Apple and thinking it’s all hype, but you’ll have to accept that the iPhone and iPod Touch changed the face of hand-held digital devices.
In 1984, many said Apple’s use of a mouse and pull-down menus was a silly, stylistic nonsense, but sure enough in the end everyone had to follow. Apple doesn’t always invent or originate all the technology for which it becomes known, but it is nearly always first to bring it fully formed to market.
Proof of how it has changed the digital world, and a clear demonstration of how far its rivals have to go to compete, comes in the shape of the Philips Streamium Player. (Yes, someone was paid to devise that name.)
“Its bright, large display and intuitive UI with Sensory Touchpad SuperScroll let you easily engage with all your music, videos and photos.”
Actually, Streamium is the name for a range of Philips devices that are meant to utilise WiFi home networks and Universal Plug and Play devices to “deliver content”, streamed via wireless, which gives some justification to the preposterous name.
The family of products are multiplatform and allow you to watch movies, listen to music, download podcasts, vodcasts and so on all over the house. Dozens of companies are trying to offer the same thing, but Philips is Philips, so we should pay attention. They were behind the tape cassette and CD, after all. They’re big. They know what they’re about.
Well, no, they don’t. They’re wading backwards in treacle with this. A Flash device (meaning its ROM memory is solid state not disk drive) of 4GB, this product is an insult to the buyer and a stain on the reputation of a once noble company.
Despite the vaunted multiplatform interoperability of the Streamium name, this is a PC-only player. I don’t mind products such as this per se, but what would Mac users who have the Philips Media Manager software and other devices feel about the name Streamium being appropriated for an object that a) doesn’t stream and b) is incompatible with their OS?
But that’s of no importance compared with the cheap, clumsy and dreadful nature of the device itself. I wanted to throw it in the ocean after five minutes (I am in America right now), but instead gave it to a friend who threw it away after 10. One knows the instant one plays the bundled video content, a truly pathetic and dated home movie of some dudes skiing, that we are dealing with a dog. The blocky, pixelated images are so poor as to beggar belief (220 x 176 pixels) – and this is the footage that’s meant to show it off!
It gets worse. It has touch controls, but not touch screen. In the desire to jump on Apple’s multitouch bandwagon, Philips have come up with something worse than an old-fashioned knob. The Streamium offers fiddly controls with terrible delay, so you’re always pressing them too often and reversing their function. The sound level is poor and the phones inadequate. The whole thing’s a gift to Apple.
The price, too, is a disaster – you can get an 8Gb iPod Nano with its stunning 320 x 240 resolution screen for the same money. How mad, sad, ignorant and deranged would a consumer have to be to forgo the latter for Philips’s horror? Believe me, this will be a forgotten failure within a year. I don’t know who is in charge of recruitment or marketing at Philips, but they need a rapid injection of talent, imagination, flair and understanding, or in this sector at least they’ll rapidly go under.
The same price as an 8 GB Nano and this much of a disaster? Excuse me while I screamium. It’d take a real hater-of-Apple to plump for the Philips . . .
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptPhilips were behind the tape cassette and the CD, but their new music player is a woeful attempt to take on the iPod – perhaps it’s time they looked for a rapid injection of talent Weekly column published on Saturday 10th October 2007 … [...]
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Streamium? The fact that it processes a metaphorical stream is no excuse.
They could have called it Fluvium. Or if that sounds too much like effluvium, which I suppose it does, then you could just twist it by one letter and call it Flumium. Or you could go Greek, with Potamion.
Actually, I’ve just had a brilliant idea. All the classics teachers that aren’t being employed to teach children any more could be kept busy naming hi-tech gadgets.
Thank you for your insights about this product. I have yet to take the plunge into the modern technofest. However, when I do finally take that leap (we all succumb eventually), your insights will transform the murky pond of possibilities into a crystalline pool of best choices. Definitely a benefit in a retail society that does not allow full-refund returns if electronic devices are involved.
[...] Stephen Fry reviews the new Philips Streamium: “…this product is an insult to the buyer and a stain on the reputation of a once noble company.” [...]
Perhaps “Steamium” as in “Steamium pile of…” would have been more apropos.
whoop-DI-doo, Stephen! But thanks for another fun entry!
Streamium.
Oof.
There’s a marketing committee somewhere still patting themselves on the back for that name.
@ clynn886: Also rendered as “whoop ti do” but a Google search for “whoop dee do” returns the greatest variety of results.
I’m almost certain “streamium” was mentioned in an issue of Adventure Comics circa 1962. Someone should probably check to see if Brainiac Five is working at Philips these days.
Dear Stephen,
Thanks for the lovely review. Streamium, hmm. I now know how wrong that name really is. A bit overambitious on the part of the marketing guys. Hope they find work soon…
I like the idea of interoperability, but I like the thought, meditation, reasoning, or some other intellectual activity that goes into operablity more. I only wish the folks at Philips put this mess behind them and get back to business.
I know Apple has moved a bit into the multiplatform arena with iTV, about which I’m very curious. I am hoping it works as I would love to be able to use my TV as a computer screen as well as to watch downloadable content.
Also, Stephen, when you have a chance, please let us know where you are, or perhaps better, where you recently have been, even if it’s just a few lines. I rather like imagining you driving in America.
XXOO
Jillian
It wouldn’t be the first Philips player that I’ve wanted to hurl into the void. The DMM software they produced (prematurely) for synchronization was an absolute disaster: http://msmvps.com/blogs/thinice/archive/2005/09/06/65465.aspx
I used to love their TV and VCR products … when did their design ethos change in such a dramatic fashion?
Philips have come up with something worse than an old-fashioned knob
Maybe they ought to go in the opposite direction, and develop a device made out of wood and bakelite, complete with huge knobs and dials, and possibly levers! And why stop there? You could have mp3 players decorated with ornate Rococo scrollery and enamel portrait miniatures. Cloisonne camera phones!
And this is why I am not a designer of gadgets.
Philips as a company does have one asset. It’s really good in high tech engineering. The single reason The Netherlands score as high as they do in EU scoreboards of patents per capita, is because Philips still has its base in the southern town of Eindhoven.
The big problem Philips still faces is that a large part of it is based in Eindhoven, and its employees live within a twenty kilometer radius. And they don’t seem to get around much.
As early as 1991 Dutch journalist Marcel Metze wrote a book called “Kortsluiting” [Short circuit] about the huge problems that the company faces in keeping any talent. The people that Philips needs, can work anywhere they want to. Which isn’t Philips. The people they get, don’t mind to live in Eindhoven.
So, your review just confirms the company has a huge problem in making its own technology work. The engineering may be there somewhere, the presentation always lacks.
A couple of years Philips did make some brouhaha about this, when it changed company slogans. The horrible “Let’s make things better” became “Sense and simplicity”. And the company told that they had come to this change, after its managers had to use their own Philips products for a weekend at home, and couldn’t get them to work.
Nothing seems to have changed.
Yes, I too have to call out Mr. Fry on “whoopy-doo.” I correct, and praise, in my blog: http://www.voxford.blogspot.com.
If it weren’t for one feature you pointed out I may have considered it. Touch control. Possibly one of the most useless recent technological inventions. Like you say, unlike the touch screen, the response delay is ridiculous. I recently bought a mobile phone with this feature, and after 5 minutes of trying to set the date and time without being accidentally zoomed in 3 menus, I took my simcard out of the thing and threw it back into the box, where it’s been ever since.
Actually, make that two features. If the 4GB streamium costs more than the 8GB nano, where, let’s face it, you can get cheaper and less aesthetically pleasing 8GB models these days, it’s an mp3 player with an overinflated sense of self-worth. And nobody likes that.
To give them their due, Philips developed the Streamium name some years ago to describe their range of products that allowed you to stream your digital music collection to a stereo or set of speakers. They worked well and Philips were one of the first big names to make that kind of hardware and it was actually useful. The idea of streaming to a PMP (Portable Media Player) however really seems to have limited potential so they seemed to have pushed the concept too far in order to rush out a device in an attempt to compete with Apple.
That is where the real contention lies for me, there ARE opportunities to compete and better Apple but nobody is doing it, instead these big companies are trying to copy rather than to innovate and inevitably they fall short.
The iPods are great but they aren’t perfect and Apple can actually be quite slow in bringing product developments, which should be time when the other companies jump in and innovate themselves. For example, it took Apple years to introduce some form of gapless playback into the iPod, a feature which the (now obsolete) Rio Karma had been able to do natively for years beforehand. Rio were a small company and were unable to compete but the technology was there and somebody should have picked it up and ran with it and produced a player that people were crying out for and who were actually holding off of buying iPods because they weren’t as good as they could have been. Even now, with the iPhone and new Touch, Apple haven’t incorporated A2DP into the device to enable Bluetooth stereo, a feature that many other devices have had for a while. (In fact the feature may be in there but Apple are holding off enabling it via a firmware update until they’ve developed their own BT stereo headset, which if true, is an incredibly mean thing for Apple to do to its customers).
My point is that rather than trying to imitate Apple, companies should be filling in the gaps that Apple have left and even surging ahead. Instead of producing copycat devices or even worse briliiant devices that they then cripple with ridiculous proprietary software and DRM (yes, I’m talking about you Sony). The opportunites ARE there, why isn’t anybody taking them?
Grrr. Sorry for the rant but you are right Mr Fry, bad technology is a horrendous thing made worse by sometimes being an expensive mistake. We need some talent injected into these companies so that they start producing devices that consumers actually want and that fulfil the potential of the technology that’s available.
Stephen says, “I don’t know who is in charge of recruitment or marketing at Philips, but they need a rapid injection of talent, imagination, flair and understanding, or in this sector at least they’ll rapidly go under.”
I suspect the big problem is at the top of the company. One of the reasons Apple does well with device design is that the man at the top of the organisation has: a) an opinion on the products his company makes – if his teams come up with something he doesn’t like, he says so; b) his instinct for “what works” vs “what doesn’t” is pretty good (not perfect, but he’s right more often than he’s wrong); and c) he really cares that his company tries to do a great job in everything they do. All that is not only important for making sure no rubbish makes it out of the door; it also sets the standard which others in the company work to live up to.
On the other hand, I wonder if the CEO of Philips cares at all about MP3 players; and I wonder if they’d actually know a good MP3 player if they saw one… My guess is not.
So you didn’t like the Streamium then?
Surely a flash device would have random-access-memory memory rather than read-only-memory memory? Or perhaps non-volatile memory would be a better description? Having said that, it sounds as it was far from non-volatile, given the rapidity with which the device met its salty grave.
This will be adding another fresh mound of dirt in the Gadget Graveyard which is filling with those attempts by companies that, as Mr Fry said in an earlier blog, pretend to believe that Apple doesn’t exist and the landscape has changed.
I just feel saddened that I, as I would with Sony, would have expected more from Phillips.
I’m with sheldrake: Where’s my Steampunk handheld device?!
WRT charlesroper’s comment on flash memory being RAM rather than ROM, it’s actually ROM, specifically EEPROM (electrically erasable and programmable read only memory). It’s a ROM that can be reprogrammed in chunks (pages), the erasing of a page is the `flash’ action that gives it its name.
You can get static RAM (SRAM), as opposed to the dynamic RAM (DRAM) that we put in our PCs, and SRAM retains its state without power but it’s expensive compared to flash memory so not used for the mass storage in MP3 players.
@Ralph Corderoy
I’m sorry, but you’re getting confused. Both SRAM and DRAM require power to retain their contents. The difference is that DRAM requires periodic “refresh cycles” because the data gradually fades, and SRAM doesn’t. I think you’re right that Flash is a type of EEPROM, though.
Anyway, I remember reading a review of a Philips MP3 player years ago that complained about the clunky, Windows-only software that had to be used to put music on it. Apparently, very little has changed. There are decent, usable non-iPod MP3 players out there, which is fortunate since people who use (say) Linux need them, especially with Apple now trying to block third-party syncing software.
Mac users were lucky to be spared the Philips DMM software, which “runs” on Windows in only the narrowest of senses. “Waddles” might be a better description, since apart from the appalling security issues of DMM, the sync speed couldn’t have been slower if I was having to copy & paste each bit manually. … unless of course one was using Sony’s horrifically unstable SonicStage, which required an overnight session to sync a few gigs on one of their devices.
After some unsatisfactory experiences with early iRiver HDD players, I’ve been very happy with my Clix, which supports a range of formats, has FM Radio (playback and recording), and is, given the number of times I’ve dropped it, very robust. The “rocker” control interface means that you don’t end up with fingerprints all over the viewing area.
The only serious shortcoming is that you can only charge it during a synch operation; you can’t use (say) a USB-cigarette lighter adapter to recharge in car.
“They could have called it Fluvium. Or if that sounds too much like effluvium, which I suppose it does, then you could just twist it by one letter and call it Flumium”
Best of both worlds…
iFluvium
Another Philips dud product is described here: http://saunderslog.com/2007/11/14/philips-ajl308-wait-for-version-2/
Whatever happened to that once great company?
I say bring back the Digital Music Cassette, it never got the traction it so richly deserved ..
First Streamium products were put on the market in 2003.
[PLACEHOLDER FOR FUTURE ANALOGUE CONVERSATION]
WR, Declan
WWE Divas Video…
Man i just love your blog, keep the cool posts comin…..
As somebody who believes that UPnP streaming around the house is the Way of the Future, and a final solution to all those wires that wives and girlfriends invariably seem to hate with a passion, I revisited this review, and the Philips website, but I’m more confused than ever.
Is the device you’re reviewing a “media renderer”? If so, surely 4GB of internal memory is quite generous if its primary function is to play streamed content? Or is it a “media controller”, in which case you’d need to review it in conjunction with a server and renderer. Did you?
When you say that it’s PC only, are you effectively saying that Macs don’t have UPnP “media server” capability. If so… oh dear, why not? Surely it can’t be the case that PCs are more advanced?
Also, I don’t really understand the relevance of a comparison with iBling. Do your beloved iPods and iPhones have uPNP “renderer” or “controller” capability? No? Oh dear, my N95 does; I can plonk the earphones on and listen to content stored on my (UPnP-capable) PC anywhere in the house. If I had the Philips Streamium server then presumably I could listen to content stored on that. Bonza!
Yes, UPnP streaming is clunky at the moment, but I don’t see any alternatives in the pipeline.
@NeilHoskins: What are you TALKING about? I mean, really, what is the point you are trying to make? Anyone who fails to see what perfect integration iPhones and iPods can achieve to one’s lifestyle can “plonk” whatever they want wherever they want, sadly this won’t lead to any clearer view of things…