Blogs

Gran Torino starts out like a Sanatogen fuelled reworking of Dirty Harry, with a constantly growling Clint Eastwood waving guns around and attempting to replace ‘Do you feel lucky?’ with the rather more prosaic ‘Get off my lawn!’. Give it a chance, however,...

You’ve already enjoyed BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury Festival and smirked at the lower rungs of radio presenters suddenly thrust on TV to communicate with members of the public caked in cow pats. If not, you can catch highlights via iPlayer and even listen...

Personal audio became an expensive but realistic phenemenon on 22nd June, 1979, thanks to the Sony Walkman TPS-L2. Originally borne out of company founder Akio Morita’s desire to listen to classical music while flying, the Walkman was created by Nobutoshi...

It’s somewhat frightening, especially for those of a certain age, to think that it’s 20 years since the Stone Roses' eponymous first album hit the shops. A lot has happened since then - a change of Government, ill-advised dabbling in wars, the downfall...

At least someone’s rubbing their hands with excitement over the Digital Britain report: within minutes of the final version being published, our email alerts pinged, boinged and made other comedy noises to signal the arrival of a press release from Pure...

We're still enjoying the novelty of using an iPhone or iPod Touch as a basic remote control - and for many other handy AV uses, as our recent feature covers - but at CEDIA Expo, we experienced an iPhone app that could elevate Apple's pocket wonder to...

Sometimes you read breakthrough research with a growing sense of wonder – not at the breakthroughness of it, but that people have spent good money to find out what we knew all along. The latest example? A report by a team from Italy's Pavia University,...

One of the recovery strategies outlined for Sony is a focus on markets beyond the traditional domestic, European and North American territories. And in an interview with Japan's Nikkei business daily, it's been outlining how it's tackling the huge population...

Kaleidescape Mini multiroom AV system OK, I've just arrived at the ExCel Centre in London's Docklands and the doors to the 2009 CEDIA Expo have opened. A quick whizz round the show is in order, then I'll report back with the latest news. I'm hoping to...

Today is launch day for the new iPhone 3G S. You can read all about it here , but we thought we'd visit the Apple store in London and check things out before heading to have a quick chat with Apple themselves. Arriving at the Regent Street Apple store...

With their sharp lines and rich colours, animated movies often shine on higher resolution formats, but the Blu-ray performance of Bolt is particularly outstanding. Even without the 3D effects it featured in certain cinemas, the film still retains an astonishing...

It doesn't seem so long ago that China was being seen by the more forward-thinking Japanese audio and video companies as the next big frontier. It was a market ripe for development as an increasingly affluent middle-class developed. Marantz, to take one...

At some point this evening, the free iPhone software update – iPhone 3.0 – will be available to download from Apple. The update includes more than 100 new features that will affect all iPhones, including the brand-new iPhone 3G S. Owners of the iPod Touch...

Bang goes another good reason for a trip to the States: as Virgin Media here announced the launch of its music download service , the last of the USA's Virgin Megastores, the flagship branch in New York's Times Square, closed down at the weekend. That...

This one's definitely at the 'and Vision' end of things, but have been playing for the past few months with a little box I spotted at last year's Hong Kong Electronics Fair, and meaning to write some hands-on impressions for ages. It's a simple add-on...

The home cinema dream of full-range 7.1-channel surround without wires all round the room has moved closer to reality with the announcement of a deal between Californian company Focus Enhancements and Korea's Anam Electronics . Who they? Well, Focus is...

On sale in a couple of weeks in Japan are Panasonic's first in-ear headphones designed for women by women. The new Moon Jewel RP-HJF5 model is the result of work by an all-female team within the Osaka giant, from the product planning and design right...

Good news? From next year it should be possible to make a legal high-resolution back-up copy of Blu-ray Disc movie titles, which will please those with media centre/server systems. Bad news? The 'managed copy' facility will only be available on newly-released...

It's been delayed, it's been the source of wrangling in Congress, and it's had consumers totally confused, but tomorrow the analogue TV signal is finally switched off in the States. And that could mean millions of viewers suddenly have no television....

It’s another pair of polar opposites on our movies channel this week, with Frank Miller’s embarrassingly poor adaptation Will Eisner’s The Spirit picking up a single star for just about managing to look and sound vaguely interesting, while Slumdog Millionaire...

Digital music is here to stay - and it's coming of age. With more ways than ever to acquire and listen to your favourite tunes online, does the industry think the writing's on the wall for CDs? After the chaos of the late 1990s and early 2000s, where...

Now that so much music is available online, more people than ever are listening - but piracy is still a threat to the industry, and its performers. So, how can we get our tunes legitimately? Every so often, an event occurs that changes everything and...

Sony will host its press launch at the E3 Electronics Expo in Los Angeles at 7pm tonight, and it's widely expected to launch a new slimmer, lighter version of its PSP games console, the PSP Go. We've already written a preliminary news story , but here...

As widely predicted on the web yesterday, Sky is teaming up with Xbox 360 to deliver Sky TV, sports and movies through the Xbox 360 from this autumn. Neil Thompson, head of Xbox 360 in the UK, says: "This is another ground-breaking moment for the Xbox...

They may be spending more time than usual keeping a nervous eye on what's going on just north of their Paju display factory at the moment, but that hasn't stopped LG's TV engineers coming up with a couple of serious technological breakthroughs of late....