I confess that I have never really been excited by Marantz’s AV receivers. They were never ahead of the features game and always aired too much on the side of sonic caution for my liking. Safe, reliable, solid and about as exciting as endurance snail racing. When the £1,400 SR7005 arrived I brewed a really fresh cup of Horlicks, put my slippers on and settled down for an evening of light entertainment. read more »
All the excitement about 3D has rather distracted us from the fact that many viewers haven’t yet caught up with HD. There’s also another revolution going on, in Internet-enabled TV. Sony’s KDL-40EX503 ticks both boxes.
As far as many people are concerned, free-to-air HD (without the satellite dish) has been a bit slow in coming. So it’s good to see that high-def material is now available to the masses via Freeview HD, read more »
I subscribe to the theory that any disc player worth owning should have the demeanour of a battleship built by a Scottish shipyard. Rigidity foreshadows integrity, and tells me that a manufacturer takes the player as seriously as I take my media.
So Samsung’s debut 3D BD player, the BD-C6900, is a challenge. Its almost impossibly slight frame (it’s more kayak than cruiser) contradicts my world view, and teases me with a transparent lid and glimpses of my spinning discs. Yet I need to take it seriously. read more »
LG’s N2B1 is the world’s first NAS (Network Attached Storage) box with an integrated Blu-ray writer. The benefit of this is obvious: you can quickly and easily archive off upwards of 50GB of files to Blu-ray media as and when you need them. However, this burner won’t play commericial BDs or rip them to the drives. read more »
Epson knows a thing or two about projector technology. Late last year, it announced a 4,096 x 2,160-pixel LCD microdisplay for a new breed of super high-definition 4K2K PJs. Until that nine megapixel future beckons, though, we’ll have to make do with the Full HD displays that are delivered by
the likes of its new flagship EH-TW5500 and (reviewed here), step-down EH-TW4400 models. read more »
Sony may have withdrawn from OLED technology for the time being, but Korean rival LG obviously sees a future for the next-gen display technology, and has ushered this 15in model onto UK shelves. read more »
XiVA’s musicm8 is the easiest entertainment server I’ve ever installed. To get it up and running took minutes at most. Juiced up and connected to my network via Ethernet, and I was good to go. Having wrestled with servers in the past that literally drove me to distraction with their belligerent non-compliance, this was a relief.
For the uninitiated, the cutely-monikered musicm8 (‘music mate’) is a music server and ripper, a contemporary update on the hardware that first brought maker Imerge to prominence in the 90s.
It sits on your network, but is conceived as a living room product. It’s neatly turned out, stands vertically or horizontally and has a CD tray to rip discs directly. Significantly, it’s very quiet when running. read more »
Phillipe Starck, the French designer responsible for the look of Parrot’s Zikmu speakers, says his job was to ‘design a minimalist setting for [Parrot’s] technology for the benefit of man’. Which sounds like exactly the sort of hyperbolic thing you’d expect from the guy also responsible for a £200 bottle-opener.
Still, while you might be forgiven for thinking that Starck’s involvement in these cabinets involved nothing more than doodling a shape on a piece of paper one lazy afternoon, the Zimku does have immediate visual appeal. As iPod docks/stereo speakers go, they stand out easily from the competition. read more »
Panasonic is a superstar of the Blu-ray world. Year after year, its new players are greeted with the sort of unbridled enthusiasm usually reserved for Tom Cruise’s red carpet walkabouts in Leicester Square.
The reason for its techno-celebrity is simple: innovation. Profile 1.1, BD-Live, Blu-ray recording – you name it, Panasonic did it first, and over the years no-one has done more to push the format forward. read more »
Philips’ 47PFL9664H is one of the top dogs of the Dutch manufacturer’s LCD TV range. Strip out the Cinema 21:9 and LED Pro models and it’s actually the most highly-specced TV it offers, boasting a plethora of picture enhancing tech alongside Wi-Fi, web and media-streaming DLNA capabilities – not to mention the iconic Ambilight rear lighting system. read more »
It took a while for Freeview to dip its toe in the sparkling waters of high-definition. After all, the BBC successfully trialled over-the-air digital HD broadcasts a couple of years ago. But specification squabbles, bitrate and bandwidth issues, chipset shortages and the global recession have all gotten in the way of the launch of Freeview HD. Still, better to be late than never. read more »
In France, speaker brand Cabasse is celebrated for its avant-garde creations, but are we Brits ready for floating tweeters and balls that balance on rare-earth magnets? Let’s see... read more »
Measuring just 33.9mm thick, Samsung's flagship UE55C9000 LED TV is more guillotine than gogglebox. But somehow, miraculously, it’s also brimming with the latest audio visual technology. It is, in short, Samsung’s most ambitious and audacious TV ever. And at £7,000, it’s also one of the most expensive you can buy. read more »
The monthly price of multichannel hi-def TV has been slashed with the introduction of Virgin Media’s latest set-top box. The first in what promises to be a new range of receivers and PVRs, the HDD-less V Box HD, made by Cisco, allows subscribers to the cablenet to get on-tap HD without a monthly surcharge (a la Sky). read more »
High Street giant HMV currently has an unprecedented bargain on Blu-ray players - a multi-region hackable model for just £99.99.
The Maidston MD-BR-2102 player is apparently similar to other models badged as Foehn & Hirsch or Momitsu which have been offered by HMV and several online dealers.
Copyright 2006 - 2010 Future Publishing Limited
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon