Blogs

O2's exclusive contract with Apple for the iPhone is coming to an end in a little over a week, with Orange set to be the second provider available from November 10th. Vodafone will be joining the party in 'early 2010', so it's no surprise that punters...

As reported in News , there's a whole stack of new home cinema equipment on the way from Yamaha over the next couple of months. Above is the £1100 RX-V2065 receiver. complete with set-up microphone and its two remote control handsets, while below are...

Time to call time on the Hong Kong Electronics Fair, with its usual mix of the totally weird and really rather wonderful, from our first experience of the Chinese NVD video format to a sneak preview of a classy-looking Heritage model from Scottish radio...

Fine sunshine for the opening of the Hong Kong Electronics Fair's 2009 Autumn Edition, and while the show feels a little more compact than this time last year, there's a clear indication that the Hong Kong and mainland China- based companies represented...

The weekend of the 17th and 18th of October will see the cream of the AV industry making its way to Manchester for the biggest consumer electronics show this year. The Renaissance Hotel, Blackfriars Street, Manchester city centre, will be the place to...

Interesting discussions with the guys from NXT here at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair: it seems every time I meet with them they have some new and exciting developments of their various technologies, and this trip is no exception. There's everything from...

Bit of a strange day here at CEATEC Japan 2009, and indeed a bit of a scary one in Japan as a whole: Typhoon Melor, predicted to be the biggest the country had experienced for a decade, hit Japan just before dawn, bringing torrential rain and winds pushing...

The Sharp focus here at CEATEC is on a greener world, and the main platform of its stand is a demonstration of a Solar DC Eco-House concept: a house with an independent power supply, virtually zero carbon dioxide emissions and of course lots of Sharp...

Like Panasonic, Sony is going big on 3D TV here at CEATEC Japan 2009, with a punchy stage presentation drawing heavily on group companies' music, movies and more. It has a 3D theatre in the depths of the stand and the frankly rather cramped booths above...

(Caution: the following may cause dizziness) Like it or not, 3D TV is coming, and soon. The CEATEC 2009 show has 3D firmly on the front-burner – a burner 30% more energy efficient than last year's, of course... – with even those companies not building...

Spent a good chunk of the morning on the Hitachi stand here at CEATEC, looking around at a raft of new technology the company has to give us better pictures, 3D pictures and of course significant energy savings. It's kinda familiar stuff by now: the big...

If Toshiba's stand here at CEATEC is all about its Cell Regza technology, Panasonic is pinning its colours on a 3D future for TV, and a greener future for consumer electronics. But it isn't without a taste of even bigger and better things to come: it's...

Just to remind you that there's more to Yamaha than just home cinema receivers and Air Wired iPod docks, the company's putting its music division to the fore here at CEATEC. But that doesn't mean technology is taking a back seat: building on its experience...

More on the Toshiba Cell Regza technology, which we covered in news yesterday; it's the sole focus of the huge Toshiba stand here at CEATEC Japan 2009, which opened this morning. We took a closer look at what the technology can do, saw the impressive...

UPDATE: AS OF 27.10.09, OPPO HAS ANNOUNCED THAT THE EUROPEAN LAUNCH OF THE BDP-831 HAS BEEN 'POSTPONED INDEFINITELY' Not so long ago, buying a do-it-all disc player was simple: you picked up a ‘universal’ DVD machine, also able to play Super Audio CD,...

Panasonic will use the CEATEC Japan 2009 show, opening next week, to show its prototype 50in Full HD 3D plasma TV, which sees high-definition 3D coming down in size to more domestically acceptable screens. Used with high-precision active shutter glasses,...

On show this weekend at 100% Design London has been the latest and greatest in interior furniture and fittings, with everything from the hottest fireplaces to a concept fridge designed to save time and energy by teleporting the food from the farm or store...

If you're a subscriber to What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision , or you buy the November 2009 issue at Tesco, you'll get a free pair of THX Optimizer glasses. Alternatively, head on over to ebay where you can buy them online for just £6. Once you've got your...

Just in case you think I went a bit OTT when I asked whether last week's Apple launch was more hype than hardware , click the pic......

You can read all about Cambridge Audio's much-anticipated new universal Blu-ray player, the 650BD, and its partnering multichannel receiver, the Azur 650R, in our news story . Here are some more pictures of both models for you to enjoy: Cambridge Audio...

Micromega owner Didier Hamdi (right) with Ricardo Franassovici I spent a fascinating day in Paris yesterday with Didier Hamdi, the new owner of French hi-fi company Micromega . Hamdi is an intriguing character: he was a world motorcycle champion in 1991,...

During our trip to Europe's biggest consumer electronics show (IFA) last week, we had a chance to listen to the latest developments in the Blu-ray market with representatives from Disney, Sony and Amazon all present. Together, they head the BDA – Blu-ray...

I suppose by now I should be used to every utterance from the people in the Infinite Loop being hailed as the Second Coming. But even by the usual standards of a lot of hoopla about not very much, Apple's latest world-shaking announcements of last night...

Just as Apple reveals a new range of iPods geared towards people on the move, French company Micromega has consulted with Apple and designed something for people who want to use iTunes as part of their hi-fi. So while half of the What Hi-Fi? Sound and...

UPDATE: A new iPod nano with video camera, a larger capacity iPod Touch and a larger capacity iPod Classic, complete with price cuts, a new iTunes 9, a new OS 3.1 software... There was plenty of news at today's Apple event. Read all the news as it happened...