Philips fits Qatar Four Seasons Hotel with latest technology TV sets

More than 300 Philips 32HF996 plasma and 28HW6404 wide-screen TV sets will be placed at the luxurious beach-front Four Seasons Hotel. The agreement is just the latest for Philips, which has installed thousands of its high-performance Institutional Television (iTV) televisions, valued at more than US$2 million, in hotels in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Egypt.

"The increasing sophistication of the regional hotel market for both tourism and business travel means hotels are looking for highly functional equipment to deliver the level of service increasingly demanded by guests. The Philips iTV range offers the technology and experience necessary to deliver a wide variety of tailor-made institutional television solutions," said Khalid Tuer, Regional General Manager, Consumer Electronics, Philips Middle East.

Anurag Guglani, Manager, Al Mana & Partners, said: "We are closely following the historic developments underway in the Qatari hospitality industry and are well positioned as specialists here on the ground to assist hotels, whether they are looking for in-room solutions, large-screen displays for meeting rooms or elevator and reception announcement panels, find the Philips portfolio right for their needs."

Philips and Al Mana & Partners worked with Intelligent Data Communication, the contractor, in implementing the solution. "Through our cooperation with the professionals at IDC, we were able to seamlessly implement the project. Mr. George A.Kenich, Manager MEP Division of IDC confirms that there are several upcoming projects in Doha which will be under the kitty of CDC, parent company of IDC, we look forward to working again with IDC," Tuer added.

The Philips iTV portfolio ranges from traditional picture tube (CRT) 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, and the set installed at the Qatar Four Seasons is the 16:9 picture ratio 28HW6404 wide-screen television, which allows for realistic immersion into entertainment played from DVDs and satellite transmissions.

The high-definition, DVD-compatible TV provides a range of functions beyond television programming. Besides in-room features such as bill payment and pay-per-view movies, the wide screen TV can be used as a large display screen for laptop presentations and Internet surfing.

The Philips iTV television sets offer more than 24 different built-in 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.

All iTV TV sets are designed with a "SmartCard" open platform interface located on the rear panel to facilitate seamless connection to interactive systems such as video streaming, games, e-mail services and Internet access.