commentary No matter what kind of pro-consumer spin the Government tries to put on it, the changes to the media industry announced by Communications Minister Helen Coonan last week will hardly have the punters revved up about entering a new “digital age”. The biggest carrot in the proposed legislation is the release of two new …

Philips’ prototype 100-inch LCD panel Plasma TVs are not going to be the only big screens pushing the size barrier, as evidenced last week when Philips unveiled a prototype 100-inch (245cm) HD LCD TV at the Berlin IFA 2006 consumer electronics show. While the Panasonic plasma that CNET.com.au saw at the CEDIA show at the Gold Coast in July still …

Panasonic’s larger-than-life plasma panel (click for larger image) If you want bragging rights for the biggest TV on your block, start clearing wall space for Panasonic’s upcoming monster of a plasma panel that tips the display charts at 103 inches (that’s 2.62 meters of screen for the metric-minded). Panasonic showed off the panel last week at the CEDIA Expo on …

Want to go with 5.1 speakers for the full surround sound home theatre experience, but can’t bear the thought of all that speaker wire snaking around your lounge? The good newsYou’ll never get rid of speaker wire completely, but we’ve rounded up a few home cinema systems that at least eliminate the biggest headache – connecting the long run to …

Having some friends over to watch the game and wish you had a new big screen to view it on? Perhaps you just need to think bigger … say consider hosting the next FIFA World Cup. As part of its extensive sponsorship, Philips is supplying more than 10,000 flat panel TVs along with DVD players and audio equipment to the …

Do I really need 54 buttons? Yep, I counted. 54 buttons on the remote control of the Home-Theatre-in-a-Box system I was reviewing last week-end. Bear in mind that this was an entry level system. Call me crazy, but by and large, I want technology to make my life simpler. Not that this remote was particularly hard to understand – Power, …

Thanks for your question; we get quite a few along similar lines. As you have an SD TV, it would be a waste of money to upgrade to an HD STB, as no matter what, the output will not be higher than what the set is capable of producing. As standard definition set top boxes produce interlaced signals only (576i), …

Panasonic is betting its future on the proliferation of plasma TVs by investing 180 billion yen (AU$2 billion) in a new plasma display panel (PDP) plant that will double its current production capacity. Scheduled to open in July 2007, the new facility, located next to one of its existing PDP factories in Amagasaki, Japan, will boost Panasonic’s total production from …

Manufacturers wanting to make it in the home technology world had better hire a fashion guru to mix it with their engineers, because on the domestic front, looks count. It used to be that buying a TV was not a particularly big decision.  You figured out the biggest size you could get for the money you wanted to spend, and …

When asked what will be the most significant challenge for Panasonic over the next 10 years, Mr. Toshihiro Sakamoto, Senior Managing Director, President of Panasonic AVC Networks Company replied without hesitation that it was the development of televisions “post plasma”. Although the company is currently building a new plasma display panel plant that will double its PDP production capacity to …