When Warner Bros announced it was becoming a Blu-ray exclusive studio, most observers of the format war agreed that it was a mortal wound for HD DVD. The only remaining question was, how long is HD DVD going to last? Well, according to the latest NPD data (as compiled by Bill Hunt at The Digital …

In the aftermath of the Warner defection to Blu-ray, Toshiba has announced ridiculously cheap pricing on all of its HD DVD players. Toshiba has gone mad!!! Everything must go!!! With the two technologies being quite similar, the main distinctions left are price of ownership and media. With Blu-ray all-but-sewing-up its grip on the movie houses, pretty much all that Toshiba …

updated Hitachi Australia has announced it is pulling out of the consumer market in Australia in a letter distributed to retailers on Friday night. Hitachi is pulling out of the Australian consumer market, which includes camcorders. Celine Herit, Hitachi’s communications executive, confirmed the company would be pulling out of all consumer products — which include camcorders and flat-panel TVs — …

HD DVD is almost certainly dead in the water. The surprise move of Warner to move to exclusive Blu-ray support has sunk any hope the HD DVD group ever had for winning the format war. What’s more, there are rumours that the last two HD DVD studios — Paramount and Universal — are both planning a similar defection. So, can …

Homer gets the iPod silhouette treatment during the keynote at Macworld 2008 Apple’s iTunes Store in the US now allows users to rent movies rather than purchase them, but there’s still no word when a similar service might be available Down Under. Movies and TV shows aren’t available for download from Apple in Australia. Rented movies from the US iTunes …

This Saturday’s federal election promises to be the most exciting in at least a decade. If you’re undecided as to who to vote for or just can’t wait until the first results dribble through, there’s a plethora of ways to stay informed. Will the education revolution make the long march to Canberra? Making up your mind It wasn’t so long …

Another year, another CES has been and gone. As a barometer of things to come it is possibly the best — other trade shows are either too specific (Macworld) or confined to a certain region (EISA, the European Imaging and Sound Association). CES isn’t the best show for specific product announcements but in attending the show we got a good …

One of the things that surprised us most about this year’s CES was the emphasis placed on design. For many, many years TVs were just huge black boxes that sat in the corner of the room. But these days, people want a talking point, and something that has its own style. LG hasn’t always been at the forefront of good …

So I’m at the Sony stand at CES, next to the big tellies. An American guy strides up and demands to know what’s so great about them. Sony booth guy says, “They’re OLED televisions.” “What’s that mean?” “Well, sir, OLED stands for Organic LED.” American guy then does no favours to himself or his nation by living up to the …

We’re living in happy times right now. Happy, because the Internet is no longer restricted to devices with wires. Yes, in 2008 the wireless Web is maturing like the finest cheese or the the tastiest wine. Ready to exploit the growing ubiquity of a Web without wires is Intempo, whose portable Wi-Fi radio is designed to be used on the …

Not that many iPods are actually white anymore, but that hasn’t stopped other vendors from continuing to mimic Apple’s ageing product design break-though. Grundig has launched two compact LCD TVs aimed at people who might want to branch out from standard black or silver options with a “designer white” colour scheme. The Grundig TVs also feature an integrated digital tuner …

Increasingly CES isn’t just a place for technology companies to exhibit their wares — media outlets are getting in on the act to show off their content and explain to consumers how they can use modern tech to access TV shows or other media. We took a trip to the NBC stand to berate them for cancelling Studio 60 on …

Hot: Gestural interfaces At the consumer level, 2007 was the year of the touchscreen. Products like the iPhone, iPod touch, LG’s Prada phone and HP’s TouchSmart PC made it perfectly acceptable to stroke the screens of your gadgets in public. What we’ve seen at CES this year is more advanced interactivity — gestural interfaces where you don’t even need to …

There are many people in the world who don’t like Microsoft. You could hardly argue that it has made some mistakes over the years. But as Bill Gates prepares to bow out of running Microsoft — a company he’s grown into one of the biggest in the world — I can’t help thinking we’re going to be worse off without …

While enjoying the plush carpet and pleasant surroundings at the Samsung CES stand, we happened upon a charming TV, which promptly informed us the temperature was 51 degrees Fahrenheit and that stock in Apple was down by $2.56. What we’d stumbled upon was an RSS TV. This is a really simple concept, but it’s one of the best things we’ve …