More details after the jump.

Two new Philips Streamiums

First up is the announcement of two new Philips Streamium wireless Hi-Fis, the Philips Streamium MP2500 and the more capable (and louder!) NP2900 (top).

As you can see from the pics, they’re both rather good looking. They’re at the cheaper end of the Streamium spectrum, and so don’t offer all the bells and whistles you get from the more high-end sets. What you get instead is a 32W amp and four speakers (in the case of the NP2900), a large screen, and the ability to wirelessly connect to your PC, from which it’ll stream Internet Radio channels, MP3 tunes stored on your hard drive, or music from RealNetworks’ Rhapsody service.

The NP2900, then, is basically a music streamer without any means of playing tunes itself, and so competes directly with the Logitech Squeezebox and other such gadgets. This is becoming an increasingly crowded market as the idea of streaming your digital music from where it’s stored (your PC) to where it sounds best (your Hi-Fi) finally catches on. We’ll producing a report of the best music streamers in the new year, so stay peeled!

Philips iPod Docks

As well as new Streamiums, Philips will also be showing off new iPod docks at CES 2009. The first, the Philips Docking Entertainment System DC350 (left), is a rather grand looking unit that envelopes your iPod Touch or iPhone, and comes with a remote control from which you can control the tunes you want to play.

It’s also a clock radio, and comes with Bluetooth, so you can make and take calls via your iPhone with it.

Only 6W of power output, though, which is a bit weedy, but at $150, it should be a nice addition to your bedroom if you’re the type who cant get out of bed until you hear the right tune in the morning!

In addition to the DC350, there’s also the Philips DLO iBoom (left), which features a remote control that in many respects is as big as the iPod it’s used to control!

Makes you wonder why the iBoom comes with an iPod dock at all – why don’t Philips simply provide it as a speaker, an amp, and a big cable into which you plug your iPod?!

Anyway, the iBoom will set you back $200 if you’re interested.

Philips SPA5300 PC speakers

Finally, Philips will also be showing off the SPA5300, a set of flash-looking 2.1 multimedia speakers for your PC, complete with remote control.

Summary

This is an odd time of year for gadget makers, with Christmas just around corner, followed directly after by the biggest gadget trade show of the year in the form of CES 2009. As such, the manufacturers are usually focused on selling their current wears as hard as they can, and don’t worry about hyping their future products until the new year.

The fact that Philips and others are starting the hype now, reflect perhaps the challenging retail climate we’re currently in, and how everyone has written off this Christmas, and will be focusing instead on drumming up trade for next year. CES is certainly going to have a different feel about it next month, that’s for sure!

[Source: iPodNN]

You can stream your tunes from your PC, your mobile phone (naturally!), an MP3 player (via USB) or even directly from the Web. In short, anything with a USB connector or that supports UPnP can connect with the Nokia Home Music System.

As far as connectivity goes, Nokia’s little box supports both Ethernet and Wi-Fi for Internet and PC streaming. It also comes with an FM receiver, and will connect to dozens of Internet Radio stations.

It has a great looking display, which will display the contents of the connected device, and you can control your playlist directly from the Home Music’s LCD screen via a remote control, rather than from the connected device.

There’s even an SP/DIF optical connector (for digital connections) and RCA line-out (for analogue connections) to hook up to literally any Hi-Fi ever made, a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, and, as if all that wasn’t enough, a 10W built-in speaker, just in case you haven’t got your Hi-Fi switched on yet and you really need to hear that new tune from Timmy Mallet!!!

Frankly, I’m in disbelief. This has to be the media streamer that has everything – looks, all the connectivity you could ever need, and exactly the right level of features to make it a must have. I’ve been after a media streamer now for some time, and I think I’ve just found it! Shame it’s not going to be available in time for Christmas, but I’m sure I can persuade the Easter Bunny to give me a Nokia Home Music system next year, rather than the half a hundredweight of chocolate he normally leaves!

I’ve been excited by Nokia’s new N97 phone that was also announced today, but this is just the icing on the cake!

[Source: Nokia]

Logitech released a new Squeezebox earlier this year, the Logitech Squeezebox Duet. This was the first new Squeezebox since Logitech took over the company, and given Logitech’s previous background of building computer mice and keyboards, more than a few people were wondering whether a new Logitech-based Squeezebox would be as good as its predecessor?

Fortunately, they needn’t have worried. The Logitech Squeezebox Duet has received rave reviews and is a great addition to your Hi-Fi setup if you’ve got a lot of tunes trapped deep inside the bowels of your PC or Mac. Indeed, so good have been the reviews for the Duet, that TestFreaks (a site that rates gadgets by aggregating thousands of reviews from across the Web) have rated it their best Audio gadget – out of 578 different Hi-Fi devices – with a score of 10/10.

The new Logitech Squeezebox Duet differs in looks from the old Squeezebox by putting most of the controls and the display on a new remote control with a large 2.4″ LCD. This lets you choose the tunes you want to listen without the bother of getting off your couch!

Better still, the Duet also connects directly to Pandora, Slacker Internet Radio, Rhapsody and iTunes without the need for a PC, meaning you can listen to your tunes from these services without having to boot-up.

If you have thousands of tunes locked inside your PC (Windows or Linux) or Mac, poor, tinny PC speakers and a great Hi-Fi, you owe it to yourself and your tunes to buy the Logitech Squeezebox Duet.