Tech support in 140 characters or less? Panasonic’s going to give it a whirl, or shall we say tweet, as part of its social media customer service initiative. Panasonic Australia is launching support services for its Viera televisions and Lumix cameras through Twitter and Facebook. Customers will be able to contact Panasonic support reps through …

One of favourite elements of 50s American youth culture is the drive-in cinema. The combination of gorgeous cars, Technicolor movies and the company of a member of the opposite sex on the back seat was enough to drive adolescents mad. In the dreary, repressed UK, there wasn’t enough room and the weather is utterly hopeless — so outdoor cinema never …

Sleet, hail and widespread flooding of the UK aside, apparently it’s summer. And with summer comes holidays, and with those come bored, listless and fidgety children. Happily, Philips wants to reduce the massive harrassment under-occupied youths inflict on their parents and provide a way to anaesthetise them against the pain of imagination and creativity. That’s right, the Philips PET744 is …

Sony is enhancing arsenal of its BD-Live features with the introduction of movieIQ, which connects viewers with a live real-time movie database powered by Gracenote. Angels and Demons will the the first to offer movieIQ. (Credit:Sony Pictures Home Entertainment ) movieIQ will directly link scenes within the movie to relevant information including updated filmographies of the director and cast, production …

Records. Remember them? The ones that you threw at your sister because she broke your favourite cup, and then recently tried to resurrect/glue together when vinyl became “cool” again”? Sydney’s 2SER is doing its bit to bring back vinyl. (Technics 1210 image by Ben Hodgson, royalty free) Well, Sydney radio station is paying tribute to the lost art of vinyl …

Update: 3D-capable TVs were all the rage at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year. CNET staffers who saw them were underwhelmed, but that hasn’t stopped vendors like Sony pushing ahead with the technology. (3D Glasses image by Harry Fodor, royalty free) At a Sony Blu-ray briefing in Sydney this morning, visiting Japanese honcho Yoshinami Takahashi, the deputy …

In the great hi-def format war of 2007, Toshiba lead Team HD DVD into second place as Blu-ray‘s minions claimed victory. Today, the Japanese giant has confirmed to CNET UK that it has applied to join the Blu-ray Disc Association. “Toshiba aims to introduce digital products that support the Blu-ray format,” the company said, “including BD players and notebook PCs …

ITV, far from moping over having to flog Friends Reunited for a £100m loss, is set to launch an HD channel on Freeview — the terrestrial broadcast wotsit — by the end of 2009. It’s thanks in part to the BBC, which has leased some of its broadcast spectrum bandwidth to ITV. For 50 per cent of you — it’s …

Let’s be honest. Toshiba doesn’t generally make TVs with all the bells and whistles you’d find on some Korean tellies. Neither are its models as sparsely populated with extras as Panasonic‘s excellent but rather straightforward sets. Toshiba is, like its TVs, a company aiming for the mid-market. That’s possibly what makes its Regza 42RV635 so appealing. Its 42-inch screen is …

Sagem has announced a new freesat digital TV recorder to come in two flavours: the DTR94250S with a 250GB hard drive, and the DTR94500S 500GB. Looking very similar to current Sagem Freeview PVRs, both versions include twin tuners so you can record two channels, or record one channel while watching back another recording. They include USB and Ethernet ports, which …

Over the weekend, Engadget reported that Toshiba is planning to launch a Blu-ray player before the end of the year. There are so many better things Toshiba could be doing with its time. Allow us to explain. With prices tumbling for Blu-ray hardware, making a Blu-ray player doesn’t seem like a reliable way for Toshiba to make money — there …

The internet has claimed another victim, Channel Seven’s Austext information services, which will cease operation on 30 September 2009; closed captioning will continue operation, however. Come 30 September, Austext’s teletext weather, lottery, finance and news pages will shuffle quietly off into the ether. All that will remain will be Channel Seven’s closed captioning service, which, the company says, will continue …

We’ve been promised wireless HDMI for years now and frankly, we’re getting impatient. This is especially infuriating for tech journalists who attend CES each year to see an amazing array of wireless devices, only for them to never see the light of day. This year is different though, because right from the start, Panasonic and Sony both promised wireless HD …

When you first pick up the Digital Vision GiGo Freeview receiver, you’ll almost certainly have the same reaction as us. Namely, this thing feels like it’s made out of cardboard. This is not a sturdy device: it’s what we’d say the exact opposite of an Apple product feels like. The whole thing reeks of cost-cutting, right down to the fact …

Here are some things that aren’t dead: Jeff Goldblum and plasma TVs. Of course, if you’re reading this in 2050 there’s a good chance that Jeff Goldblum is now dead, but if it’s 2050, why on Earth are you reading about a plasma from 41 years ago? That’s like us reading about a black and white TV in a little …