This is the very impressive Philips Cinema 21:9 HDTV, a 52in animal designed to let you watch movies in all their glory. According to Philips the TV allows viewers to watch films “as the director intended”. The TV is available in UK stores from June ’09, and the price is an eye watering £3,500!
The TV is special because existing same size TVs have a 16:9 aspect ratio, but the Philips Cinema has a 21:9 aspect ratio, meaning none of those big black bars above and below the film.
The TV has some very nice touches, the screen is complemented by an Ambilight lighting system, which has three small lights behind the telly which project smooth ambient glows onto the wall behind.
But you can’t have a TV like this without the sound system to match! That is where the Philips HTS 9810 Blu-ray DVD Home Theatre System comes in. The Philips headline for this product is “Not a home cinema, but a cinema at home”, so you can see what they are trying to achieve with it.
For a start it is a very trendy looking package and would probably get a few wows! from your mates before you’ve even got her going. You get an ultra cool touch-screen control panel which is backlit with illuminated key functions. The system has:
- 4 speaker towers
- main centre speaker
- super-skinny DVD/amp unit
- 150 watt subwoofer to get your doors rattling when you’re watching Transformers!
The system has the Philips 9.1 Cinema Sound technology, which creates a 9 speakers experience, despite only having the five speakers.
Further up the article I mentioned the 3 lights mounted to the TV, to compliment that the all 4 of the speaker towers have a small low-level light mounted near the base. These lights will then dim when the movie starts and also turn on when you pause the movie.
All-in-all these systems may not be cheap. But they are about as close as you can get to having the real cinema experience in your own home. If you have deep pockets and you love film, this should be near the top of your ‘must buy’ list!
Sources: Philips product page, Hexus
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HTS9810 is not a blu-ray home theatre but DVD home theatre. Philips suffixes the model numbers with ‘b’ to indicate blu-ray.