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, …

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 …

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 …

Employers across the UK gasped a collective sigh of exasperation as the BBC announced its plans to broadcast all its World Cup games on the Internet. Viewers will be able to log on to the Web site and watch every World Cup 2006 game at the same time as they are shown live on BBC TV. The service is likely …

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, …

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 …

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 …

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours here at the office with Valleywag‘s most cherished and adored tech celebrity, Jason Calacanis. Love him or hate him, the bloke’s got contacts, and he confirmed to me that he knew first-hand that Apple was working on a networked television. These LCD HDTVs will be fully networked, with the ability to stream all …

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 …

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 …

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 …

You used be able to buy a massive CRT with a built-in Dolby Pro Logic decoder and a set of speakers. Bingo: greatly improved sound out of your TV and no need to buy an external surround-sound system. Sadly, this practice has gone the way of the HD DVD, and we’re left with flat TVs that have stereo speakers, and …

If you are worried about the long-term economic future of our country, and the prospects of keeping your job over the next couple of years you might not want to consider the Loewe Connect 32, which in this particular configuration costs £2,300. At that price, this is the sort of TV you buy if you don’t want to derail the …

This Christmas is going to Blu, if Sony has any say in it. The company is about to go all out in promoting Blu-ray as a technology, and will release with it two new players. The Sony S350 supports the latest Blu-ray standards for under AU$500. (Credit: Sony) The company unveiled the BDP-S350 and the BDP-S550 Blu-ray players this week, …

We’re pretty big fans of Humax PVRs here. They have proven to be reliable and feature-rich, if a little beastly looking. Happily, there’s a new model in town and it’s adds a bunch of new features and looks very pretty indeed. The new model, the Humax PVR-9300, offers the same basic twin tuner system as the 9200. It’s well worth …