commentary Dear Channel Ten, Look, I’m sorry I slagged you off last year. So your Web site is pretty cruddy, especially when compared to Nine and Seven’s cannily integrated, partnership-boosted portals. So Yasmin turned out to be the queen of the harpies, and got boned from the network before she could get married. So you …

update One major issue holding back early adopters from plunging headfirst into the world of Blu-ray or HD DVD has been the dearth of commercial content available in Australia. What’s the use of having hot new next-generation hardware if you can’t watch any of the movies that are supposed to be so visually and sonically astounding? After a long wait …

High-definition displays — whether plasma, LCD or rear-projection — offer startling clarity in vision and sound. 2008 is the year that the Olympics will be broadcast in HD for the first time in Australia — and at a reasonable time. Also, with pay TV making tentative steps into high-def it’s a good time to investigate what a new HD TV …

Black boxes: not just for airplanes Allo allo, what have we got here? A little black box that records TV shows and transfers them straight to your iPod, that’s what. Pinnacle — of Pinnacle Studio fame — has announced the Video Transfer, a pocketable device that records video from your telly, camcorder or game console and dumps it directly into …

The war is over. Well, that’s the buzz from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where everyone’s talking about Warner Bros’ suspiciously timed decision to dump HD DVD and become a Blu-ray-only studio. The announcement came on Friday — two days before tech journos from all over the world rocked up to CES to hear Toshiba extol the virtues …

After years of resistance, the Seven Network today became the last Australian channel to allow its digital signal to be retransmitted on Foxtel. Foxtel CEO and MD Kim Williams and Seven Media Group CEO David Leckie signed the retransmission agreement, which allows Foxtel subscribers to watch Seven and gain access to the channel’s electronic programming guide (EPG). In a statement …

Hot: Gestural interfaces At the consumer level, 2007 was the year of the touchscreen. Products like the iPhone, iPod touch, LG’s Prada phone and HP’s TouchSmart PC made it perfectly acceptable to stroke the screens of your gadgets in public. What we’ve seen at CES this year is more advanced interactivity — gestural interfaces where you don’t even need to …

What is Philips’ development process when following an Editors’ Choice winning product like the Aurea TV? Simple: just ask the ladies what they’re into. Introducing the new Design Collection of plasma and LCD screens, CEO Andrea Ragnetti explained their strategy: women, according to Philips’ research, are “more critical consumers who need to see the personal benefits of a product”. Not …

Despite concerted pleas for its axing from politicians, media commentators and the general public, Big Brother will be back to entertain — and no doubt disgust — the nation in 2008. Auditions for the eighth season of the reality series are now open, with potential housemates required to submit a biographical video to the official show Web site. But given …

It’s that time of year again: time to pop the champers, plonk a silly hat on your head and crowd around the communal telly. This week we crash the office Melbourne Cup party for views on hats, horses and online betting. From fronting up to Flemington to crowding around the wireless to kicking back in front of a plasma screen, …