Here at the CNET.co.uk offices we give daily thanks for the constant influx of the latest gadgets to play with. The downside, as you can imagine, is that it takes a product of polar coolness to trigger a collective drooling in such battle-weary tech journalists. Yesterday, however, a box landed that triggered a mass salivation …

The New York Times is reporting that Warner Bros. has developed what it is calling the ‘Total HD Disc’, which will play in both HD DVD and Blu-ray players. While the format war will continue behind the scenes for some time to come, at least this system could protect the rest of us from it and enable us to pick …

It’s no secret: we’ve been on the edges of our seats, waiting for the 1080p HD DVD player from Toshiba, for a while now. Finally, Crave is pleased to announce, the HD-XE1 is in the office. Until now, only having a 1080i player — the Toshiba HD-E1 — hasn’t really been a huge problem because most of the televisions we’ve …

Barely a week goes by without at least one member of the Blu-ray disc association claiming victory already/by next week/by the new year. Let’s be honest, it gets a little annoying hearing them blabber on about how HD DVD doesn’t have a chance. Traditionally, the HD DVD promotional group has been less vocal when it comes to the mudslinging, but …

Toshiba works hard at shows like IFA — not only does it promote its own gear, it’s also charged with the responsibility of promoting HD DVD, to beat the Blu-ray disc association’s efforts. At its press conference in Berlin it announced two new HD DVD players and two swanky new picture-frame LCD TVs with hordes of gleaming HDMI inputs. Which …

Here at Crave we love Freeview. It’s a fantastic service that offers a bunch of decent channels (and bid-up tv) for nothing but the cost of the box and a TV licence. But we can still see room for improvement. The quality isn’t really up to the standard we’d expect for an HD Ready era. This is especially relevant when …

If you’re an exacting, perfectionist movie fan, you may well be disillusioned with the black levels of flat-panel TVs. Here to re-illusion you is the PDP-428XD, one of Pioneer’s ‘Kuro’ televisions. If your Japanese is a little rusty, you may not know that kuro is the Japanese word for black. Clearly, Pioneer believes this is one ninja TV. The company …

Samsung can’t claim to have produced the first multi-format player — that award goes to LG for its Super Multi Blue player — but it can claim to have the first one that is certified by both the Blu-ray Disc Association and the DVD Forum. The BD-UP5000 offers playback of both formats, but it also offers full HD DVD HDi …

One thing Blu-ray has always had in its favour is that there’s more than one manufacturer making players. With HD DVD, if you aren’t a fan of Toshiba, you’re stuck — at least for the time being. It’s taken Sharp a while to announce its Blu-ray player but now it’s here, we’re very impressed indeed. The best bit about the …

Last week, we mentioned that HMV Oxford Street was the place to go this morning if you were a Matrix fan and wanted to pick up a free HD DVD player — the Toshiba HD-E1 — with your purchase of the box set. We were expecting this to be a popular promotion, but we were blown away by exactly how …