Ian Morris

Denon DVD

If you’re looking to buy a car, you don’t automatically pick the £200 J-reg Vauxhall Cavalier. Your home cinema should be no different, and that’s why Denon makes high-end reference players like the 3800BD, which cost an eye-watering £1,600. Is it 80 times as much as a supermarket DVD player? Yes. Is it worth it? …

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Quantum of Solace should be free

You don’t have to pay to watch Coronation Street because the advertisers are footing the bill. So when a movie has more ads than an episode of Corrie, you’d expect you would be able to see that for free too — the new Bond film, Quantum of Solace, is stuffed so full of product placement, everyone should be allowed into …

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Limited edition Pioneer Kuro: Perfect black meets perfect beige and white

As if the price of Pioneer plasmas wasn’t enough to keep them exclusive, now the company has added two new limited-edition screens. One — the KRP-500AW — is finished in ‘pure white’ and the other — known as the KRP-500ABG — is slathered in ‘beige grisé’. The nuts and bolts of these fancy screens are exactly the same as the …

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Imerge MS1: Store media, get rid of cash

Money may be tight at the moment, but that’s never stopped a gadget lover from dreaming. And dream we do, about a happy place to store our DVDs centrally, away from those clumsy discs and on a honking great hard drive. The MS1 from Imerge is designed to keep your video and audio safe and secure, and most importantly of …

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Freeview HD: Starts 2009, but London misses out

Ofcom has finally announced its plans for high definition channels on Freeview. Although we’ve known for some time that HD would come to Freeview eventually, it’s taken the regulator quite a while to work out the fine details of how it will all come together. The good news is, certain regions will have access to the service from next year, …

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80s movies Blu

Cast your mind back to a time when Tom Cruise wasn’t quite so into Xenu, Winona Rider wasn’t so stealy, and jeans were both tight and light blue. Yes, we’re talking about the fabulous 1980s, a wonderful time in cinema, and now something you can enjoy in the comfort of your own 21st century home, in 1080p. Yep, Beetlejuice, Risky …

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Samsung LE40A856: Size 14 features in a size 8 case

TV manufacturers currently have a bee in their collective bonnet about the depth of TVs. Of course, Joe Six-Pack doesn’t give a flying moose about how shallow his TV is — he wants something that looks the part and will fit in the gap in his home-entertainment centre. Still, the relentless onward thrust of technological advancement must not be abated …

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Samsung PS50A756 1080p plasma: Come on you Red Devils

Samsung is, you may be aware, an official sponsor of London-based Russian football team Chelsea. If, like most right-thinking humans, you hate football with every last breath in your body, you might not know that Chelsea’s innovative nickname is ‘The Blues’. Amusingly, when Samsung launched its new range of ‘touch of colour’ TVs — the colour in question being red …

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Philips HTS6515: Apparently, the sound will embrace you

If your boss said to you, “Hey, we’ve been talking and we’re of the opinion that you can do just as good a job with half as much pay,” you’d soon quit in disgust. The same isn’t true when companies such as Philips claim to be able to produce 5.1-channel surround sound from three speakers instead of six with systems …

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LG 50PG6900: 50

In today’s AV world we have a rapid explosion of little black boxes waiting to take over the space beneath our TVs. Which seems odd, considering modern technology is supposed to be smaller and less obtrusive. Luckily, there are some manufacturers who want to reduce clutter, one of which is LG. The LG 50PG6900 is a 50-inch, 720p plasma with …

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