Philips fits landmark Dubai hotels with latest TV technology

More than 500 Philips HT5404 television sets were placed at the luxurious beach-front Madinat Jumeirah, while 350 televisions were fitted at the towering Shangri-La Hotel on Sheikh Zayed Road.

The installation for both was completed on schedule for the hotels to welcome visitors to the 2003 Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in September.

"Leisure and business hotel guests expect the latest in television convenience and functionality. At Philips, we have the technology and experience to deliver a wide variety of tailor-made institutional television solutions," said Robert van de Riet, CEO, Philips Country Organisation, UAE.

"From hotel room TVs to meeting room display screens to elevator and reception announcement panels, our portfolio of sets can meet a hotel's complete display needs," van de Riet added.

The Philips Institutional Television (iTV) portfolio ranges from traditional picture tube sets to the Philips 42-inch plasma screen TV with brilliant colour and superb contrast and LCD displays combining picture quality, sound performance, functionality and design. All iTV products are designed to provide the hospitality industry with specially manufactured reliable, durable and user-friendly units.

One of iTV's newest introductions is the revolutionary Philips Mirror TV, which uses a unique polarised mirror technology and can be mounted flush against a wall, ideal for non-traditional viewing spaces. The Mirror TV provides a range of functions beyond television programming. Besides in-room features such as bill payment and pay-per-view movies, the Mirror TV can be used as a large display screen for laptop presentations and Internet surfing.

The Philips HT5404 and HT2217 range of television sets installed in the Madinat Jumeirah and Shangri-La offers dozens of different, easy to use parameters and can be used as stand-alone units or as part of an interactive hotel television system. The sets offer convenient guest functions such as an alarm clock, automatic volume limits during late hours and Teletext.

Servicing the sets is simple, whether it is the automatic reporting of low battery power in the remote control or 12-second channel programming. A wide array of customised remote control units (Smart Loaders) allow for easy and quick copying of channel parameters and blocking channels.

Following trends in North America and Europe, the television sets offer multi-standard television reception, amazing stereo sound and an energy-saving feature that effectively eliminates power usage when on standby.

The HT series is designed with a "SmartCard" interface located on the rear panel to facilitate seamless connection to interactive systems such as video streaming, games, e-mail services and Internet access.