Home Cinema
Sony improves your MovieIQ with Blu-ray
Even as Blu-ray disc and Blu-ray player sales are growing, Sony is looking to make the format more compelling and better use its BD-Live service's Internet connectivity.
At a small press event in San Francisco recently, the company introduced a new feature of BD-Live called MovieIQ, which will be included on some high-profile releases from Sony starting in September. It's essentially IMDb live -- while a movie is playing, facts about casting, directors, production and actors' filmographies pop up on-screen. It's powered not by IMDb, but by CDDB, created by Gracenote, which Sony purchased just over a year ago. Continue reading...
Popcorn Hour C-200: OMG! Now with Blu-ray
Perfect for getting video from your PC on to your TV with minimal effort, we've always thought the Popcorn Hour was the answer to our media-streaming prayers -- and now it seems things are about to get even better.
The Popcorn Hour C-200 builds on the terrific system that earned itself our coveted Editor's Choice award and pumps in some incredible new features too. Here's the headliner: the C-200 comes with a slot ready to accept a Blu-ray drive, meaning that with a simple modification, you can turn your Popcorn Hour into a fully featured Blu-ray player. We've been waiting for so long for this to happen in reverse -- via a networked Blu-ray player -- we never imagined the Popcorn Hour team would simply add support for the format instead. Continue reading...
KEF Concept Blade: Man-size sound
The KEF Concept Blade is a set of enormous one-off speakers engineered to demonstrate the British hi-fi specialist's technical know-how. Developed over a three-year span, these man-size boomboxes are a work of art in both aesthetics and performance. Continue reading...
Editors' Choice May 2009 winners
Hello children everywhere, and welcome once again to the cream of the kit we have reviewed. CNET UK Editors' Choice awards are given to the very best gadgets we test each month, and manufacturers would sell their first-born to get one. Honestly. So without further ado, here are the winners for May 2009.
HTC Magic
The T-Mobile G1 introduced us to Android, but the HTC Magic has made it crave-worthy. The Magic ditches the keypad in favour of an all-touchscreen device, packed into a glossy white body. Android is an appealing concept, but it needed the lust-factor of a great-looking phone before we could really love it, and the Magic has put its spell on us. The user interface is still not as slick as the iPhone, but the Magic is more flexible thanks to its open-source operating system, features such as stereo Bluetooth and video recording, and access to the Android Market app store.
Continue reading...
Photos: LaCie LaCinema Black Record media streamer with Freeview recording 
The first thing you notice about the LaCie LaCinema Black Record is that light just falls into it. This squat, glossy black box is clearly intent on reminding you of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey at every possible opportunity. The other thing you notice is that, not only is this media streamer hungry for light, it's also got an appetite for fingerprints. The LaCinema is designed by someone called Neil Poulton, who is apparently a Scottish designer living in Paris.
Now, we don't want to be mean here, but we're not sure what LaCie is paying him the big euros for. This isn't the first thing to be encased in shiny black plastic -- we hear Darth Vader is planning a multi-billion dollar lawsuit. The rest of the design is fairly straightforward. It's a box with a blue light on the front that illuminates whichever surface you place it on. Still, we don't wish to be overly critical here, because the LaCinema does look pretty good and it certainly won't clash with your other home-cinema equipment. Continue reading...
Wyplayer: Freeview PVR and a fully featured media streamer
Our favourite thing we plug into our TV has to be the Popcorn Hour. Nothing comes close to offering the high-quality media streaming and general awesomeness that we've come to adore from that brilliant little box. There's a new device in town, however -- it's called the Wyplayer and it thinks it can offer more than pretty much anything else on the market.
For a start, it's got a built in DVB-T receiver, which means you can use it to watch Freeview TV channels. If you opt for the version with a built-in hard drive, you can even record shows directly to disk. And because there are two tuners, you can record one channel while watching another -- hardware power prevents recording two channels at once, sadly. Continue reading...
Pioneer BDP-LX52, BDP-320 and BDP-120: True blu trio
Pioneer may have stopped building brilliant tellies, but it's still knocking out top-notch Blu-ray players, announcing the BDP-LX52, BDP-320 and BDP-120.
Leading the trio is the top-end LX52. It's the first to feature Pioneer's Precision Quartz Lock System, which abbreviates to the tongue-swoggling PQLS. We're going to pronounce that 'puhklus'. It's designed to eliminate wobbly audio when connected to a puhklus AV receiver. Continue reading...
HDMI 1.4: Throw it all away and start again
HDMI is rather like sleep: a gigantic waste of time, but essential because there's basically no alternative. If we could take a pill and never sleep again but still feel refreshed each morning, you can bet we would. And if there was any other sort of cable that could get 1080p video and lossless audio to the rest of our AV gear, you can be sure we'd take advantage of it. Sadly, there isn't and the onward march of progress means we must re-invent the HDMI standard to make use of new advances in technology.
So, what's changed in HDMI 1.4? Firstly and inevitably, it's a new size connector. Yes, that's right -- not only will you have to buy new equipment and new cables, but you'll also not be able to use new, HDMI 1.4 cables with older HDMI 1.3a equipment -- not without an adaptor at least. This decision is apparently to enable smaller devices, such as camcorders, to have HDMI 1.4 connections on them. If you're aware of HDMI, you'll know mini HDMI cables have existed for some time, but HDMI 1.4 is a totally different size to even these cables. Continue reading...
Terminator 3 Blu-ray: What's better than robots? Girl robots, that's what
Recently news has reached us that the third best TV show in the history of mankind has been cancelled in the US. We're talking here about Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles --the best show is Arrested Development (also on FOX and also cancelled), and the second best is Lost. If you're not aware of the show, then you should immediately purchase it on Blu-ray or DVD, because it's got Summer Glau in it and also because it's got Lena Headey but also because it's very cool.
Almost as if to cushion the blow, Sony Pictures has chosen the week The Sarah Connor Chronicles was cancelled to release Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. What the company appears to have forgotten is that this is the weakest of the three films -- and when T4 comes out, it will be the weakest of four films. However, it does have some things in its favour. Firstly, it has Arnold Schwarzenegger and having The Governator in your movie immediately adds 30% more awesome to the finished product. Continue reading...
Ghostbusters on Blu-ray: Dogs and cats to live in harmony?
1984 was a pretty amazing year for cinema. If you’ve got a favourite 80s film, there's a good chance it was released this year. It was, for example, the year than Arnold Schwarzenegger came from the future to kill Linda Hamilton. Harrison Ford also made an appearance with a whip and a hat, with the intention of looking around a doom filled temple. But most crucially, it was also the year that New York's most terrifying ghosts were banished by a team of freelance scientists.
Now, some 25 years later, we're being given the chance to once again see Ghostbusters, one of the best movies of all time. This time though, it's being shown in 1080p and comes on a little plastic disc. Frankly, we couldn’t be more excited about this movie arriving in HD on Blu-Ray – it’s one of those films that stands the test of time through fantastic casting, terrific props and a liberal dose of humour. Continue reading...
