PlayStation 3: Hands-on with Sony's new console
Games and GearFirst up: the PlayStation 3 does look very pretty. Product shots we'd seen had made the unit seem rather big and bulky, but in real life it's a willowy little thing and the curves on the casing will make it blend nicely into any AV setup. Unlike the Xbox 360, there's no bulky power brick. Unfortunately, the glossy finish is a real fingerprint and scratch magnet, but you'll probably be wearing white gloves whenever you touch it, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Setup was a cinch: HDMI in, power cable in, power on, a few settings, and we were ready to play. The good news first: the PS3 runs silently, no fans to be heard here. Crave likes to play online but we had to lie through our teeth to get this baby going. As the PS3 won't be out in Europe until March, the online sign-up screen only gives you the option of an address in the US or Japan, so we got all New Yorker on it, and it was worth it. The PlayStation Store offers downloadable demos, as well as some great fully downloadable games, such as Cash Guns Chaos (a 'tribute' to arcade classic Smash TV), a snip at a mere $7.99 (4.10). Continue reading...
JVC DD-8, DD-3 and DD-1: So far, Sophisti
Home CinemaConvenience is the key word when it comes to home-cinema systems. Nothing drives your significant other nearer to mental collapse than yet another horrendous tangle of cabling. The solution? Space-saving designs that are easy to use and, more recently, the introduction of 'convergence' features that allow you to access a wider range of media from separate sources.
JVC's latest range of so-called 'lifestyle systems' ticks all these boxes. The bizarrely named Sophisti range features three attractively styled systems -- DD-8, DD-3 and DD-1 -- designed to complement flat-screen displays.
You can play standard DVD and CD formats with integrated Dolby Digital, DTS and Pro Logic II processing, using a 3.1 speaker system featuring JVC's Front Surround Technology. These pseudo-surround systems are unlikely to convince you that the missing rear channels actually exist, but they do save space and cut down on cabling. Continue reading...
Diary of a World of Warcrack addict: Part one
Games and GearEveryone's doing it. It's so easily available: only a tenner for the first month's supply. It looks such innocent fun. If I don't like it, I can easily stop. I just want to get out there and see the World... of Warcraft ( South Park, 2006).
These are the things I told myself a week or so ago when I clicked 'buy' on Amazon. The GameSpot UK guys in the office were testing the beta version of the World of Warcraft expansion, Burning Crusade (check out their accounts here and here). I loved the beautiful cartoony graphics and the incredible customisation of the characters. It was all around me. I couldn't escape. I had no choice. But it was no big deal, right? Continue reading...
What MP3 player for my particular needs?
I have an old Creative MuVo2 4GB which is starting to show its age -- I've just had to reformat the hard disk for the second time and the headphone socket is wobbly so the sound is intermittent. Obviously time to upgrade then, but I just don't know what to choose!
These are my criteria:
* Bigger capacity
* Easy to use -- especially for tags and labelling, scrolling through, easy find and select
* Excellent sound (I recently invested in a pair of Universal Ears at great expense so I want a player to give me matching great quality sound)
* Able to be used without the proprietary software
* Easy playlist compiling, including on the move playlisting
* One touch random play if possible
* Clear screen -- nice and easy to see track names
* Small and lightweight, good looking
* Not bothered about video playback, I'm strictly a sound junkie!
* And I don't want an iPod because I don't want to be tied into iTunes alone, I have masses of WAVs, WMAs etc.
Even though I'm not interested in video, is it a Creative Zen Vision:M for me?
Your advice would be very much appreciated! Continue reading...
Hands on: LG GBW-H10N 4x Blu-ray player
AccessoriesBlu-ray is beginning to win Crave over at the expense of its cheaper rival, HD DVD. We've seen nothing of HD DVD but have been virtually inundated with Blu-ray disc players, Blu-ray Media Center PCs, Blu-ray laptops, and today, a standalone Blu-ray disc reader/writer for the PC.
We've just finished installing the LG GBW-H10N and are quite impressed. It slipped into a vacant 5.25-inch drive bay, connected to the motherboard via an IDE cable and Bob became our high-capacity uncle within a matter of minutes. Continue reading...
Student hopes Web site will propel him into space
GadgetsAnyone who has seen Star Wars, Aliens or Crave's personal favourite, Space Balls, will have thought, 'Space is cool'. But it seems as though one student isn't content with just thinking about it: he wants to be the first student space tourist.
He's called Michael Halls-Moore, and he's set up a Web site called BuyMeToTheStars.com, which features a fictional star chart and is selling fictional 'stellar objects' to raise the necessary funds for his journey. Advertisers can buy stars, nebulae or even galaxies and depending on how large the object is, the price goes up accordingly. Continue reading...
Linx Photo 8W: Picture perfect, or wrongly framed?
GadgetsCrave used to dream of a time when we'd all be flying around in space bubbles, eating moon cakes and mating with robots. So many of our dreams have been proven radically insane, yet this electronic picture frame is real. It's an interesting diversion from the depressing realisation that all the great products we thought we'd have by the 21st century have failed to materialise.
The Linx Photo 8W may not be to everyone's tastes. Those who have a natural aversion to the kind of gauche tat that some of the UK's more famous pre-fab furniture stores have to offer will find no solace in this frame. It accepts photos on SD, MMC and MS type memory cards and will display these photos on its electronic screen. The Linx has a resolution of 720x480 pixels. Continue reading...
JVC DLA-HD1 projector: Vast contrast
TelevisionsHigh definition may be breathing new life into nature documentaries and sports programmes, but it's films that are really being resuscitated by the new technology, especially now that 'Full HD' (ie 1080p)Â content from next-generation DVD players has arrived.
Crave seen an influx of hi-def projectors that bring high-definition performance to the big screen -- sending film enthusiasts into a frenzy and increasing the demand for dark curtains and warm, foetid home cinemas. Continue reading...
Win a Digital Christmas: Can you find the tree icon?
GadgetsMy, what generous little elves we are. We've gone and hidden another icon for you to find in our Reviews section for our Win a Digital Christmas competition -- but, ssshhh, we've also released another clue to help you find it...
The tree icon is now planted on one of the reviews on CNET.co.uk, and is the ticket to the fourth of the prizes in our whopping 4,000 tech giveaway -- Samsung's E900 slider phone. This phone not only looks good, but is jam-packed with features such as an MP3 player, a 2-megapixel camera and a smooth heat- and touch-sensitive keypad.
All you need to do is to locate and click on the tree icon, enter your details and, if you can locate the other five icons too, you will go into the draw to win nine fantastic prizes.
This may be the fourth prize we've featured in the competition, but it's not too late to catch up with the pack. In previous weeks we've seen the ornament icon that was attached to the stunning Panasonic Viera TH37PX60B plasma television; the present icon that accompanied the sleek Asus F3Jc multimedia laptop; and the holly icon that was the gateway to the brand new Olympus E-400 digital SLR. These icons are still hidden in their reviews on the site, waiting for you to track them down. Continue reading...
Apple's black MacBook: A lips-on report
LaptopsThere are two things you can bring into an office that will induce the weaker-minded to stand around, coo, and stroke. One is a new-born child and the other is anything Apple has released in the last five years.
What's more remarkable than Apple's recent spate of great design is that no other manufacturer seems to have caught on. Apple's closest rival, Sony, still lags behind with its attractive, though clearly derivative, efforts. The rest of the laptop makers are either going for the gauche, boy-racer market, or churning out ugly grey slabs. It's enough to break a girl's soul.
Sure enough, the new black MacBook inspired the obligatory crowd around the Crave pit. Some dribbled into polystyrene cups, others took turns at trying out the magnetic power cable -- which detaches should someone trip over the lead. The office gimp licked the built-in webcam while making little snaffling noises -- rather like a baby lamb suckling on its mother's teat. The MacBook yielded no milk, of course, other than the metaphorical milk that is the human emotion of pure joy. Continue reading...
Mio C250: Cheap sat-nav, great Christmas gift
HandheldsAre your friends or family members useless with directions? Are you tired of trying to describe nearby landmarks in a bid to get them to where you are? You might want to get your disoriented visitors a sat-nav for Christmas.
The Mio C250 costs a mere 170, which compared to other sat-navs is a bargain. It's pretty good, too, with a large, colour touchscreen, MioMap v3 software with seven-digit postcode search, full UK maps combined with the major roads of Europe provided by Tele Atlas, and a huge Points of Interest database.
The C250 also has in-car, lorry, pedestrian and bicycle modes, speed-camera warnings out of the box with free updates for one year, a built-in MP3 player, and support for traffic updates (with optional antenna and receiver). Continue reading...
State of Play: Xbox 360
Games and GearThe Xbox 360 has been hanging around for a year now, like the dork who got to the party too early. Now the cool kids have turned up: the PlayStation 3, the rich kid with the flash new car; and the Wii, the quirky arty lad who has no trouble with the opposite sex.
But the Xbox has had a haircut, been to Specsavers and lost a lot of weight. People are starting to notice how interesting and funny he is. And the PS3, well, he just won't shut up about that new Blu-ray ride of his. People are getting sick of his bragging. This could be the night Xbox finally scores.
Crave thinks Sony has got too cocky. It's understandable: the PS2 sold over 100 million units, compared to 24 million Xboxes and 21 million GameCubes. It pwned the last gen, in the terminology of the fanboy. But it had an awful lot going for it: it was earlier than the Xbox, looked a lot nicer, had teen cachet (which the GameCube sadly lacked) and a vast marketing budget. Sony built on the strengths of the PSOne, and added a DVD player. Later in its lifecycle it sold millions to casual gamers off the back of party games such as SingStar and Guitar Hero. Continue reading...
rock Xtreme SL Pro: 20 inches in your lap
Laptopsrock has joined the ranks of Dell and Acer and announced its very own 20-inch laptop. Dubbed the Xtreme SL Pro, this deformed monstrosity of a laptop uses a WSXGA+ display capable of pumping out 1,680x1,050 pixels.
Unlike its two biggest (geddit?) rivals, the Xtreme SL Pro is aimed primarily at gamers. rock has chucked in a pair of Nvidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX graphics card in a serial link interface (SLI) interface configuration, so this thing can give the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles a real run for their money. Continue reading...
Top ten girl geeks
Gadgets
Charles Babbage may have invented the programmable computer, but it was Ada Byron (later Ada Lovelace) who is widely credited with writing the first real program for it. She translated Luigi Menabrea's notes on Babbage's machine from Italian, and added her own ideas on how to calculate Bernoulli numbers using the contraption. These notes came to represent the first piece of computer software ever written.
Byron also saw potential in Babbage's machine that even the inventor himself never fully imagined. She suggested that the device might "compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity and extent". Bands who've used ProTools probably agree with her. Continue reading...
Help others by recycling your phone
Mobile PhonesAccording to Telephia's Q1 2006 European Subscriber and Device Report, 27 per cent of mobile phone users in Europe replace their mobile phone every year, and 60 per cent do so every two years. There are an estimated 90 million unwanted mobile phones and PDAs lying around in the UK, and 615 million in the whole of Europe. This figure is set to rise even higher as the age for owning a mobile phone becomes progressively lower.
So what can you do to help? One good tip is to use a service like ActionAid's mobile phone amnesty, which lets you recycle your old mobile phones for free. The organisation will send you a freepost bag in which you can return your old mobiles. It doesn't do what many companies are doing and send the phones off to developing countries (where they often end up in landfill sites). Instead the phones or parts get refurbished and then sold back to the UK market. Continue reading...
LG Chocolate TV, DVD Recorder and home theatre spotted!
TelevisionsLG has given Crave a sneaky first look at a range of AV playback equipment inspired by its beautifully crafted Chocolate phones, also known as the Black Label series. We spotted them during our behind the scenes tour of LG's Corporate Design Centre in South Korea, and though we weren't allowed to take pictures (the TV pic is a CNET.co.uk mockup, so handle with care...), we can bring you a few tasty details.
Among the kit were the PY350 and PY360 50-inch and 60-inch plasma televisions -- which are being touted as the flagship items in the Black Label AV range. The televisions use the same glossy "piano black" finish as the KG800 and have touch-sensitive buttons that glow to life when you get close to the control panel. The sample on display wasn't fully complete, which might explain why the buttons were white instead of red, but the overall aesthetic was pretty nice. Continue reading...
Laptop bags bonanza
GadgetsYou almost certainly are the owner of an MP3 player, mobile phone, PDA, PSP, DS Lite, laptop or camera. Ten years ago it might have been unthinkable to carry more than two of these devices with you at one time, but these days, if you're a true urbanite, it's quickly becoming quintessential to getting through the day.
Admittedly, some of these things are unnecessary, but nevertheless you'll still have them on you because you never know when you'll need to take a quick photo of something, play three hours of Mario Kart or surf the Web at the nearest Wi-Fi hotspot. You might not want to admit it but you, and hundreds of others like you, are hooked on gadgets.
The problem, however, is that with so many new toys you need a substantial bag to carry them around. Fortunately, there are more gadget bags out there than you can shake a squirrel at and we've tested a few of them to see if they're any good. Continue reading...
Crave Talk: London police to get 'RoboCop' cameras
CamcordersThe world draws ever-closer to the dystopia imagined in Hollywood blockbusters -- police in London are to be equipped with head-mounted cameras which will record everything in the direction the officer is looking. The tiny cameras are about the size of an AA battery and can record images of an extremely high quality.
Claimed to be a deterrent for anti-social behaviour, the first run of head-cams are being tested by eight Metropolitan beat officers this month. If successful, all police officers will eventually be equipped with a head camera.
These new 'robocops' add to the growing number of surveillance machines that peer at the public. Cynics argue that the logical progression of the police head-cam will be head-cameras that all citizens are required to wear. The video data would be relayed back to a central database where transgressions are recorded by a computer.
Simply by looking at someone you would be, by implication, surveilling them. George Orwell imagined a future where people were coerced to inform on each other, but what if informing on someone required no complicity with the government? Continue reading...
Evesham Mini PC: Core 2 media dwarf
DesktopsCrave loves the Mac Mini -- who wouldn't? It's small, sexy and powerful, but if we have one reservation, it's the fact that it's a Mac. Okay, that reservation comes only from the PC half of the office, not the trendier-than-thou Mac fraternity, but still...
Pandering to the desires of UK-based Windows lovers, Evesham has recently launched the follow-up to its Mini PC -- also titled Mini PC. Whereas the original borrowed heavily from the Mac Mini, this baby bad boy mimics only the Mac Mini's approximate size and shape.
It's based on AOpen's MP945-VXR chassis, which is a pretty sexy piece of kit. It measures 165mm by 55mm by 165mm, weighs a paltry 1.2kg -- much less than a newborn child -- and has black brushed metal running around its sides. The top is made from a glossy black plastic which flexes somewhat unsettlingly when pressed. The front of the PC has a blue power LED flanked by blue Knight Rider-esque lights that pulse in time with hard disk activity. Continue reading...
Crave Talk: Is Nokia flying too close to the sun?
Mobile PhonesYesterday, Symbian announced that 100 million Symbian smart phones have shipped to over 250 network operators worldwide since the company's formation. Symbian develops and licenses the Symbian OS and has been used on devices manufactured by BenQ, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sendo, Sharp, Siemens and Sony Ericsson.
Nokia in particular, has used it on many phones in conjunction with its proprietary Series 40, Series 60, Series 80 and Series 90 platforms. Most of Nokia's high-end phones run on the Symbian OS version 9.1 with the S60 3rd Edition platform.
Last month Crave went to the Symbian smart phone show and we were blown away by the number of applications Symbian-based handsets can support. It was simply overwhelming --Â from satellite navigation to instant email access to VoIP. But do phone users really want all these new features? Continue reading...
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