Philips UHD 880 Media Player will stream 4K UHD content to all 2013/ 2014 UHD TVs, offered free to customersThe new UHD 880 box made by parent company TP Vision, was unveiled at IFA Berlin this week.
It uses new compressing technology HEVC and will increase the level 4K UHD content on Philips UHD TVs, giving it a big huge competitive advantage.
The media player run Android L and solves one of the big challenges of the 4K UHD era – availability of content.
The new Philips Media Player will receive HEVC encoded videos via Wi-Fi, Ethernet and USB, HDMI 2.0 connection.
4K UHD content is displayed at up to 60 frames per second and 30 frames per second (on Philips 6809 and 7809 series UHD TVs).
The UHD 880 will be compatible with all 2013/14 Philips UHD TVs and is available for free to consumers who purchased a Philips UHD TV 8809,8909 curved, 9109 and 9809 series.
The video compression standard HEVC (high-efficiency video coding) is already used by Netflix and other providers to stream 4K content.
Support of dedicated video services will be announced in due course, the company said.
The Media Player is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2015 in Europe and Russia at a suggested retail price of 249 EUR (A$345). No word if it will be available in Australia.
It will be upgradable to support any new HEVC video streaming offerings from video service providers that are developed for the Android platform.