Philips undertook its first experiments into TV in 1925, and in 1927 began series-production of radios, which continues to the present day. When PAL color TV began in Europe in 1967, the first color Philips TV was ready to display the signals. Initially, Philips built liquid-crystal displays together with LG Electronics in a legally independent company by the name of "LG.Philips LCD". At the end of 2008, Philips' TV branch sold off its last shares in the business, which, since then, has been known as "LG Display". The screens in current Philips models are made by LG Display, Sharp, and S-LCD (the Samsung and Sony joint-venture).

The Dutch manufacturer engages the TV sector to a disproportionately strong extent: Philips TV sets just keep setting new technical standards, and we've already praised their Ambilight and 100-hertz technology in the related articles Philips Ambilight and Philips HDTV. Furthermore, the company once toyed with 3D displays that need no glasses, as well as "digital paper" OLED screens for electronic books and even rear-projectors with LCOS imaging-chips. Philips has since withdrawn from all of these areas.

How it all started out: The first Philips TV to display color pictures.

Philips - consumer electronics:
Philips places particular emphasis on manufacturing MP3 players, complete with accessories such as iPod docking stations and numerous varieties of headphones. Besides these, it also makes compact HiFi systems, DVD and Blu-ray home-theater systems, and DVD and Blu-ray players.

Other Philips products:
As well as Philips' TV manufacturing, and its other consumer electronics, the Dutch manufacturer produces telephones and a range of accessories for PCs, such as monitors, webcams, and speakers. Furthermore, Philips maintains a strong presence in the household-appliances market - it's been producing electric razors, for example, since 1939. Small devices, such as irons, blenders, or - more recently - the "Senseo" range of coffee machines, also feature heavily in Philips' range. Finally, the company also makes medical and lighting technology.

Philips' corporate history:
Long before anyone ever dreamt of making a Philips TV, Anton and Gerard Philips began producing light-bulbs in the Dutch city of Eindhoven in 1891. In the 1920s, the company used its experience in that field to begin building vacuum tubes - the age-old predecessors of the modern transistor. Philips then launched a record company in 1950.

The year 1963 saw the manufacturer reel in worldwide success with the Compact Cassette, followed by the 1982 arrival of the Compact Disc - which it developed in collaboration with Sony. In the years of the HiFi-stereo boom from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s, Philips maintained a presence in all product branches, producing tape recorders, cassette decks, record players with built-in pickups, and also, of course, the combinations of radios and amplifiers now known as "receivers".

Philips was also interested in video technology from an early stage: "LaserVision", the forerunner to CD and DVD, hit the market in 1979. The debut met with only limited success, so Philips tried again in partnership with Pioneer and Sony in the late 1980s - the format was initially called CD-Video, and then "LaserDisc". With VCR, VCR-Longplay, and Video 2000, the company tried its luck at three home-video systems, before finally joining the VHS camp.

The success of the audio CD clearly went to the heads of some of Philips' managers: the CDi, intended as an interactive and video-gaming medium, was a total flop, as was the Photo CD developed with Kodak.

For a long time, the manufacturer had its own cathode-ray-tube factory in Aachen, Germany. This, however, was later incorporated into a joint venture with LG Electronics and went bankrupt during the flat-panel boom. Although no such legal obligation remained, Philips paid its half of a severance scheme for the affected workers - unlike ex-partner LG.

Over forty years of making TVs later, Philips is still pushing the boundaries - seen here is the Philips Cinema 21:9 56 PFL 9954 H, the first TV in Cinemascope format.

The following were involved in producing this article on Philips and Philips TVs:

Author(s): Karl-Gerhard Haas
Editor in Chief: Florian Friedrich
Photos: Manufacturers and AV T.O.P. Messtechnik GmbH
Last updated: September 2009