Twenty years ago, a new technology, Ambilight, arrived in homes with Philips televisions, which, as the name indicates, was designed to “enlarge” the presence of the television in the environment in which it was placed using light. Today Ambilight is a mature technology, on which the managers of TP Vision, the parent company of Philips, are betting everything, convinced that the uniqueness and immersiveness of Ambilight are the key to the success of their new televisions. And they are probably right, not only because, as Paolo Vecera, Head of Business and Marketing of TP Vision, tells us, “80 percent of the people who have tried it buy a television with Ambilight again”, but above all because in a market in which the technological perfection of the moment is within the reach of every manufacturer, differentiation from others is a very important key to emerging. Especially in a period like the latter, which has seen a sharp decline in the television market. “This is why we are aiming for a new dimension of Ambilight”, Vecera is keen to underline, “the Ambilight Plus, with four sides of light, but on a very high quality television model, the 959, Oled+, with the eighth generation P5 processor , artificial intelligence integrated into the system and excellent 102 Watt audio created in partnership with Bowers & Wilkins”.
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In short, Philips wants to get out of the fray of low-price televisions and tries to aim high, with a new line of products that cannot be confused with all the others. “So yes”, confirms Vecera, “we are betting everything on Ambilight, also because since last year we have changed our way of thinking: we no longer treat it as a feature inside our televisions, like Dolby or 4K, but as a category of its own, offering a completely different viewing experience. The biggest difficulty is showing it inside the shops, making us perceive the difference between us and others, but we will need time to talk about a truly original product. The challenge is complex, especially at a time when Italians are trying to save by choosing seemingly more convenient products, but we are very confident.” The ‘flagship’ model, presented yesterday in Barcelona, is the aforementioned Philips Oled+ 959, but not to be outdone are the 909, with a few watts less audio, and the 808, with a WRGB Oled panel. “It is clear that a company with many ideas but little turnover cannot move forward,” says Vecera, smiling, “so we try to balance a range of medium-high quality products, The One, The Extra, the Mini-Leds, with the avant-garde, to make the final consumer understand that there really is something more in these. We try to constantly innovate, every six months we launch important innovations, today we have to defend ourselves with quantity and turnover, but we have voluntarily left the lower market segment, where standing out is now very difficult”.
And to stand out, TP Vision also presented a new operating system in Barcelona, Titan, with which the look and feel of Philips televisions will be even more ‘personal’, and will be on 90 percent of the TVs in the 2024 range. “It’s about a separate company from us, but we are their primary investor. Which means, therefore, that the system is also available for other operators in the sector”, says Vecera, “with Titan we have very important advantages, we believe we have built an operating system that is not only for our use and consumption, but is designed by understanding the needs of consumers. The interface is completely customizable, the way of searching for content is completely new, above all because it accesses the various platforms without having to install anything, it fishes in the apps regardless of whether you are a subscriber or not, we can integrate it with three advice feeds . With Titan we are more transversal, across the entire television system and obviously there is excellent integration with our other products”. Which, as the brand says, are “Sound and Vision”, and which were enthusiastically presented in Barcelona by Kostas Vouzas, the CEO of Tp Vision. There is therefore a very thin, space-saving sound bar with high quality audio, the Philips TAB 6309, “Superminimal, very small, 37 millimetres, almost invisible”, says Vecera, “it was produced to never exceed the edge of the TV, and think for 80 percent of the TVs on the market”, and then the radios, the speakers, the systems, and above all the headphones, with all the various types, from True Wireless to those with the headband , which arrive in a particularly fragmented market and where low quality and very low priced products are everywhere: “Here too we have focused on differentiation”, underlines Vecera, “we have included features that can help the athlete, with the headset to which I remove the pavilion, wash it and sanitize it, and when connected to an application, it tells me my heart rate under stress or the pressure during the cardio hour; there are those ‘bone conduction’ ones that allow me to run but have a relationship with the surrounding environment. It’s hard to understand why if I go to play five-a-side football I wear suitable shorts and a t-shirt, and if I go running I have to keep my true wireless headphones with the risk of losing them or getting them dirty, instead of using headphones suitable for the function”. And here too innovation is advancing: “In the third quarter we will launch a headset with a solar panel, which does not need to be recharged, a panel that absorbs light even under a lamp, so that you will never have to recharge the wireless headset.”
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