Fake Philips HID bulbs very common now, in fact on the internet most are Counterfeits

[XeRay]

This is excellent investigation but unfortunately the Chinese will just use this is a guidebook to "improve" their fakes.
I don't know why everyone is always sucking up to the Chinese - they are doing tremendous damage to Western economies due to their failure to resepect intellectual property law.

We considered this issue when we published it, but decided people needed to know. No use to others if we keep it a secret. We also kept a few "aces" up our sleeves. We kept a few details to ourselves, that are not so obvious but easily discerned (detected) when you are aware of them. We figured what we provided was plenty for now. If they make the changes necessary to resolve the cosmetic issues we mentioned it will cost them money, cut into the profits. They may not be motivated to do that.

[aa909]

We considered this issue when we published it, but decided people needed to know. No use to others if we keep it a secret. We also kept a few "aces" up our sleeves. We kept a few details to ourselves, that are not so obvious but easily discerned (detected) when you are aware of them. We figured what we provided was plenty for now. If they make the changes necessary to resolve the cosmetic issues we mentioned it will cost them money, cut into the profits. They may not be motivated to do that.

XeRay,

Excellent thread, I wish I had come across this thread a week ago. In any case I purchased what I think are genuine Philips D2s 6000K 85122WX HIDs

I installed them last night and today I noticed that the passenger's side light has a slightly purple-hue while the driver's side has a bright white beam with a blue hue which is what is expected. The difference isn't immediately noticeable but I'm OCD so I picked up on the difference and started doing some internet searches which led me to this forum

I removed both bulbs and compared them to your FAQ which nicely details fake and real bulbs. First item of note is that the two bulbs are identical except that the one with the purplish hue has very little red salt in the chamber and the other with the true white beam with blue hue has a lot more red salt

Now moving on to the comparison, (please see the pictures on the vendors site, my bulbs look the same) I noted that the bulbs have the red salt, blue return lead, clean cut clear glass at the top and the inside notch you highlight in your pdf looks to be real as well. The one thing that has me concerned is that the production code of "M618" which is on my bulbs seems to be used on a lot of the photos I've now come across on the web. is this indicative of a fake or is it just a miscellaneous number without much significance?

Final question, is it possible these are real and that I just got one defective bulb without enough red salt, hence the purplish hue, whereas the driver's side light looks perfect

thanks in advance for taking the time to reply
Art

[Bullzeyebill]

Moving this to Automotive, Motorcycles Included forum.

Bill

[XeRay]

The chance of so many bulbs with the same production code is remote. The price of $150 for a pair of bulbs is also very suspect. Philips charges wholesale about $80 each for those so, his pricing seems impossible. A pair (Authentic) of those usually goes for well over $200 on ebay.
Philips tests every bulb for output, color and intensity, there is no way that difference you describe would have gotten past Philips QC. Maybe your seller bought some 2nds, I suppose that is possible, and could also explain the price.

[BVH]

Seems kinda unusual to move this HID bulb specific related thread to a general automotive/MC thread.

[aa909]

The chance of so many bulbs with the same production code is remote. The price of $150 for a pair of bulbs is also very suspect. Philips charges wholesale about $80 each for those so, his pricing seems impossible. A pair (Authentic) of those usually goes for well over $200 on ebay.
Philips tests every bulb for output, color and intensity, there is no way that difference you describe would have gotten past Philips QC. Maybe your seller bought some 2nds, I suppose that is possible, and could also explain the price.

thank you for the quick reply. I've found a few sellers that seem to have genuine 6000K D2S bulbs, and the price is as you described

BTW looking at the pics on the maxspeed site can you tell if there is anything that immediately rings true of a fake? the red salt seems real and my initial thought was that the vendor is somehow getting out of spec Ultinons that didn't pass QC hence the cheaper price and variation in light color, but this is just my speculation.

Last question, on one of the genuine vendors site they go into detail regarding the "pearl effect" on the purple/blue ceramic lead. I don't think you covered that in your detailed PDF but my bulbs don't seem to have the "pearl effect" but rather a matte blue lead

in any case thanks again for a very informative set of posts and for taking the time educating me and answering my questions

Art

[Scheinwerfermann]

aa909 and others: The lighting modifications/products you're asking about (6000K HID bulbs) are illegal and unsafe. Rule 11 of this board prohibits advocating illegal or dangerous activity. Please stop now, thank you.

[XeRay]

Seems kinda unusual to move this HID bulb specific related thread to a general automotive/MC thread.

I though it belongs in both locations.. but what do I know.

[Phatty McPatty]

The price of $150 for a pair of bulbs is also very suspect. Philips charges wholesale about $80 each for those so, his pricing seems impossible. A pair (Authentic) of those usually goes for well over $200 on ebay.
Philips tests every bulb for output, color and intensity, there is no way that difference you describe would have gotten past Philips QC. Maybe your seller bought some 2nds, I suppose that is possible, and could also explain the price.

OK, gotta ask. Your very first post of this thread is nearly identical to the statement at the bottom of http://hidbulbzrus.com/HID_Legitimacy.html. Is this your site or were you just passing along this info? I ask because the site claims to sell authentic HID bulbs for ~70/pair. Above, you mentioned Philips charges wholesale more than double that. Were you referring to a specific Philips HID bulb or all Philips HID bulbs? I'm just looking for clarification since some of the context was removed by moderators. Obviously I'm not asking you to restate the removed content, just to clarify your pricing statement.

[XeRay]

OK, gotta ask. Your very first post of this thread is nearly identical to the statement at the bottom of http://hidbulbzrus.com/HID_Legitimacy.html. Is this your site or were you just passing along this info? I ask because the site claims to sell authentic HID bulbs for ~70/pair. Above, you mentioned Philips charges wholesale more than double that. Were you referring to a specific Philips HID bulb or all Philips HID bulbs? I'm just looking for clarification since some of the context was removed by moderators. Obviously I'm not asking you to restate the removed content, just to clarify your pricing statement.

I was speaking about a specific bulb type. That is my sons site.

[XeRay]

aa909 and others: The lighting modifications/products you're asking about (6000K HID bulbs) are illegal and unsafe. Rule 11 of this board prohibits advocating illegal or dangerous activity. Please stop now, thank you.

This thread was originally intended for general consuption, (before it was recently moved here) not just automotive. People with battery powered search lights also use these bulbs.

[Alaric Darconville]

This tread was originally intended for general consuption, (before it was recently moved here) not just automotive. People with battery powered search lights also use these bulbs.

While that may be true, the 6000K bulbs that can fit into a regulated automotive lighting device are illegal per se. The intended or actual use is not at issue; it's that they can be installed in regulated lighting devices.

[Bullzeyebill]

Philips does not make any of the Automotive HID type bulbs in China, The fakes are clearly fake. They use the same serial number over and over. The bulbs (samples) have been sent to Philips and they confirm they are fakes. Your story, scenario does not apply in this case.
A close inspection and the bulbs are clearly inferior to the technical eye. An example: on the average the arc chamber (electrode gap) is offset by 1 mm, in some cases almost 2 mm. Also, the bulbs dont last well either. The outer envelope is not UV stop quartz, the electrodes are not thoriated tungsten, just plain tungsten.

None of the Philips Automotive type (D1S/R, D2S/R, D3S/R, D4S/R or DL50 type) HID bulbs are made in China.
They are all ALWAYS and have always been made in Germany, there are no exception in this particular product line. Some Philips Halogen bulbs might be made in China, I have no knowledge in that area. I am a large volume OEM HID bulb buyer from Philips USA and Philips Germany. Philips has contracted some ballast products to be made in China in the past. They have now teamed up with Panasonic (Matsushita) again, as they had been for many years prior, they have also worked closely with Denso / Koito in the past. Philips had a ballast deal with Keboda of China for a time, that deal was a "flop". http://eng.keboda.com/cpjs/qcdz/zmxt/ As far as I am aware, and I am very well informed from my Philips reps. That is the only automotive style HID ballast company Philips has ever worked with in China, at least beyond the talking stages.

XeRay,

Excellent thread, I wish I had come across this thread a week ago. In any case I purchased what I think are genuine Philips D2s 6000K 85122WX HIDs

I installed them last night and today I noticed that the passenger's side light has a slightly purple-hue while the driver's side has a bright white beam with a blue hue which is what is expected. The difference isn't immediately noticeable but I'm OCD so I picked up on the difference and started doing some internet searches which led me to this forum

I removed both bulbs and compared them to your FAQ which nicely details fake and real bulbs. First item of note is that the two bulbs are identical except that the one with the purplish hue has very little red salt in the chamber and the other with the true white beam with blue hue has a lot more red salt

Now moving on to the comparison, (please see the pictures on the vendors site, my bulbs look the same) I noted that the bulbs have the red salt, blue return lead, clean cut clear glass at the top and the inside notch you highlight in your pdf looks to be real as well. The one thing that has me concerned is that the production code of "M618" which is on my bulbs seems to be used on a lot of the photos I've now come across on the web. is this indicative of a fake or is it just a miscellaneous number without much significance?

Final question, is it possible these are real and that I just got one defective bulb without enough red salt, hence the purplish hue, whereas the driver's side light looks perfect

thanks in advance for taking the time to reply
Art

Moving this to Automotive, Motorcycles Included forum.

Bill

Seems kinda unusual to move this HID bulb specific related thread to a general automotive/MC thread.

There is enough justification for this thread to be in the Automotive, Motorcycles Included forum.

Bill

[aa909]

aa909 and others: The lighting modifications/products you're asking about (6000K HID bulbs) are illegal and unsafe. Rule 11 of this board prohibits advocating illegal or dangerous activity. Please stop now, thank you.

sorry, did not mean to create any controversy, I was just trying to understand the differences between genuine vs fake bulbs, the 6000K just happened to be the bulbs in question. I've learned a lot here and returned my fake bulbs for a full refund and finally purchased genuine ultinons from a trusted source

btw just for my own understanding why are 6000K HIDs illegal?

thx
Art

[Scheinwerfermann]

btw just for my own understanding why are 6000K HIDs illegal?

Because they don't produce enough light to meet the minimum requirements for the D2S or D2R light source, and the light they produce is outside the legal "white" boundary and over into the legal "blue" boundary. It is really a foolish idea to run these. Put regular bulbs back in.

[NFT5]

I remain a little confused. Accept that many of the D series bulbs sold on sites like Ebay are, despite being labelled Philips (or other name brands), fakes.

But, I see Philips themselves selling various bulb types and kits. If sold by Philips, branded Philips, can these be determined as fakes? At what point does a product, perhaps actually manufactured by someone else, but under contract, cross the line between fake and genuine?

I'm not advocating use of these, in a motor vehicle they are just as illegal here as there (although import, distribution and sale are perfectly legal here), just including the link for reference in this discussion on fake vs genuine.
http://www.lighting.philips.com.au/v...jsp?id=1012984

[Phatty McPatty]

http://www.lighting.philips.com.au/v2/automotive/productrange.jsp?id=1012984[/URL]

Wow. It's been repeated here many times that these kits aren't legitimate because Philips (among other major brands) doesn't manufacturer illegal kits... but that link is pretty definitive. "Directly interchangeable with the existing halogen headlighting solution."

I look forward to reading the moderators' responses.

[BVH]

That's not a Philips site. Lot of typos and grammar mistakes.

[Phatty McPatty]

It's definitely the Philips Australia site -- lighting.philips.com.au...

[Alaric Darconville]

That's not a Philips site. Lot of typos and grammar mistakes.

There ARE a lot of them, but it's still genuine.

It's definitely the Philips Australia site -- lighting.philips.com.au...

Going beyond just looking at the domain name (which could be fake; a company might not register a domain name in a particular TLD for one reason or another), let's do an nslookup and set our query for the Start of Authority, then see if we get authoritative answers.

nslookup
set q=soa
>lighting.philips.com.au
lighting.philips.com.au canonical name = origin1.lighting.philips.com

philips.com
primary name server = ns1.ext.philips.com
responsible mail addr = ddi-authority.philips.com
serial = 8188
refresh = 1200 (20 mins)
retry = 300 (5 mins)
expire = 1209600 (14 days)
default TTL = 3600 (1 hour)

> server ns1.ext.philips.com
Default Server: ns1.ext.philips.com
Address: 57.67.40.20

> www.lighting.philips.com.au
Server: ns1.ext.philips.com
Address: 57.67.40.20

www.lighting.philips.com.au canonical name = www.lighting.philips.com.edgesuite.net

ns1.ext.philips.com is returning canonical answers for the FQDNs in question. It's genuine. It's easy to register a domain name, but to get another nameserver outside your control to return authoritative answers on your site is another story.

[BVH]

That is an embarrassing site! I'm quite surprised.

[Alaric Darconville]

Accidental double post

[Phatty McPatty]

Going beyond just looking at the domain name (which could be fake; a company might not register a domain name in a particular TLD for one reason or another), let's do an nslookup and set our query for the Start of Authority, then see if we get authoritative answers...

Or, as I did, you can navigate to lighting.philips.com and select Australia. Simple!

[Alaric Darconville]

Or, as I did, you can navigate to lighting.philips.com and select Australia. Simple!

True, true.

[XeRay]

I remain a little confused. Accept that many of the D series bulbs sold on sites like Ebay are, despite being labelled Philips (or other name brands), fakes.

But, I see Philips themselves selling various bulb types and kits. If sold by Philips, branded Philips, can these be determined as fakes? At what point does a product, perhaps actually manufactured by someone else, but under contract, cross the line between fake and genuine?

I'm not advocating use of these, in a motor vehicle they are just as illegal here as there (although import, distribution and sale are perfectly legal here), just including the link for reference in this discussion on fake vs genuine.
http://www.lighting.philips.com.au/v...jsp?id=1012984

Without exception, all authentic D series Philips bulbs are made in Germany, no contract factories or other in ASIA.

[XeRay]

It's definitely the Philips Australia site -- lighting.philips.com.au...

In countries with loose or non enforcement, Philips national divisions, are finding creative ways to increase revenue. This has mostly been done by Philips Hong Kong, for the China/ Asian market, with lax regulation. i have no idea about Australia. These kit ballasts are only slightly better than the ebay specials. These products do not come close to the quality for the OEM markets. Looks like they are re-basing Philips burners with Halogen type bases. All of this may have no blessings from Europe, they may be just turning a "blind eye".

[Phatty McPatty]

Why would Philips manufacture halogen>xenon retrofit kits and pitch them to the public as safety improvements? I didn't find the typical (albeit, nonsense) “for off-road use only" disclaimer either. This goes well beyond the slimy, misleading marketing tactics of their 'tuner' crystalvision bulbs, venturing deep into dangerous (and illegal?). Am I wrong? If these kits are illegal, isn't this pretty thin ice for such a large and respectable company to tread?

Often, these products are advertised using the name of a reputable lighting company ("Real Philips kit! Real Osram kit! Real Hella kit!") to try to give the potential buyer the illusion of legitimacy. On rare occasion, some of the components in these kits did start out as legitimate HID headlight bulbs made by reputable companies, but they are modified (hacked) by the "HID kit" suppliers, and they aren't being put to their designed or intended use. Reputable companies like Philips, Osram, Hella, etc. never endorse this kind of hacked usage of their products.

It seems this is no longer the case. I guess they only endorse their own hacked products.

[bshanahan14rulz]

I think laws vary from country to country. I may be wrong, though ;-)

[idleprocess]

Why would Philips manufacture halogen>xenon retrofit kits and pitch them to the public as safety improvements? I didn't find the typical (albeit, nonsense) “for off-road use only" disclaimer either. This goes well beyond the slimy, misleading marketing tactics of their 'tuner' crystalvision bulbs, venturing deep into dangerous (and illegal?). Am I wrong? If these kits are illegal, isn't this pretty thin ice for such a large and respectable company to tread?

[...]

It seems this is no longer the case. I guess they only endorse their own hacked products.

While I can't speak to how Philips has structured their various subsidiaries, I can say that foreign subsidiaries (or rather the entities perceived as such) are highly variable beasts. Some are run like another division of the main company under tight control of World HQ all the way down to adopting the corporate culture to work as well as possible with the local culture, others are held at arms'-length with moderate autonomy and some synchronization with World HQ, while some effectively license the international brand with World HQ really only concerning themselves with the receipt of whatever share of the revenue that's been agreed upon. This sort of thing can happen anywhere, regardless of where the home company or foreign subsidiary is located.

In the middle or latter cases, the local subsidiary may well "run the machines at night" to produce unauthorized off-the-books product, abuse their connections to World HQ to obtain components for unauthorized use, or slap the brand on products of their own design without permission from World HQ. I suspect a great deal of the questionable-but-not-outright-forged stuff on fleabay ostensibly originating from tier 1 name brand manufacturers involves foreign subsidiaries greatly exceeding the authority granted to them by the "home company."

[NFT5]

In countries with loose or non enforcement, Philips national divisions, are finding creative ways to increase revenue. This has mostly been done by Philips Hong Kong, for the China/ Asian market, with lax regulation. i have no idea about Australia.

Clearly so. At the end of the day these businesses exist to make money for the shareholders and they would be failing in their task if there was a market segment that they ignored. Particularly a market which is as big, and as lucrative, as that for aftermarket HIDs.

In Australia it is legal to import, distribute and sell these kits. It is not legal to have them in a vehicle that is used on public roads. The police do check and issue infringements where they find them.

These kit ballasts are only slightly better than the ebay specials. These products do not come close to the quality for the OEM markets. Looks like they are re-basing Philips burners with Halogen type bases. All of this may have no blessings from Europe, they may be just turning a "blind eye".

I can't comment on whether Philips Europe are "turning a blind eye" or not, but I'd suggest that they don't have a problem as long as these things are selling and revenue is being generated.

If, as you suggest, they are rebasing Philips burners then that comes back to my earlier question. A Philips burner is a Philips burner regardless of the base which might be fitted. The ones being sold by Philips are, therefore, not fakes. Now, if the factory was to produce more of these in order to get greater economies of scale and then sell them via Ebay, Amazon and the like then those bulbs, too, are not fakes.

There is evidence that Philips have had arrangements to do just this with some of the major bulb manufacturers in China. Certainly TaiChang and, I believe, maybe 3 others. It is my understanding that Philips did licence those manufacturers to sell the bulbs and use the Philips name on the bulbs.

I bought, just for the sake of research, a pair of what were stated to be Philips burners on a D2S base. At around $40 I had my doubts about whether they were genuine or not but my supplier assured me they were genuine Philips burners set in to the base by a factory in Taiwan. Visual inspection showed absolutely nothing that I could identify as varying from genuine on the burners themselves. Obviously there were differences in the base. I then installed them, one side at a time and compared to the genuine originals. Again, nothing that I can see in terms of beam pattern, colour or brightness that varies from the originals.

I then bought a pair of what were claimed to be genuine Philips 85122 bulbs. Same thing except that this time I could see no differences in the base, printing etc. that are the usual giveaways. These ones were $80 for the pair. From the limited resources available to me there is every reason to believe that both these pairs of bulbs are exactly what they claim to be, rather than the real fakes, which I have seen and are usually fairly easy to identify as such.

I'm fortunate that I've been to China a number of times, know my supplier (a wholesaler) and have never had any reason to suspect that they are not supplying what they say they are. However, they have said to me on more than a few occasions, that there are many fakes out there and that their advantage is that they only buy direct ex factory. Not every wholesaler, or retailer, is as ethical so, for the general public, whether they get genuine or a fake is something of a lottery.