Big news for UK high-definition fans — some content is actually available. Tonight, Top Gear: Polar Special starts at 8pm on BBC HD followed by the first two episodes of smash-hit US superhero drama Heroes. For those of you who didn’t decide to watch Heroes in 4:3 with Sci-Fi channel logos on-screen all the time, …

Surround sound is awesome. It makes watching movies a truly exciting experience and teleports gaming into a whole new world. Crave recently had a pop at the new Colin McRae rally game, DiRT, and were blown away by the amazing surround effects, so we are especially excited to hear about these new TX-SR series AV receivers from Onkyo. The new …

In his first media conference since taking back control of Toshiba’s AV product range from Melbourne-based distributor Castel Electronics, Toshiba ISD General Manager Mark Whittard conceded that the HD DVD format the company is pushing has its work cut out for it in Australia — but argued that it is far from dead. “The so-called Blu-ray vs. HD DVD war …

The saga surrounding recording industry-backed fee increases for Internet radio DJs has been raging for years, and the latest chapter surely won’t end this Sunday, when contentious new rules are scheduled to take effect. On one hand, Webcasters large and small, commercial and noncommercial, have been fighting a decision earlier this year by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board that they …

Forget downloading movies from your local video store; by early next year, an on-demand video service from Video Ezy will rely on consumers to physically deliver movies from store to home for viewing on their TVs. The upcoming offering, known now as Video Ezy’s Electronic Video Store (EVS) and due to be launched early next year, will be built around …

In an industry first, all of the commercial TV broadcasters have announced today they will provide an electronic program guide to all manufacturers of free-to-air personal video recorders and similar services.. Julie Flynn, chief executive officer of industry body Free TV said the announcement was a “critical plank” in the transition to digital adoption. “Free-to-view digital television is an open …

We recently looked at a BBC R&D white paper about using MIMO to transmit high-definition TV using the space left over from the analogue switch-off. As a result, we were invited to go along to Kingswood Warren, the home of BBC R&D, to see a demonstration of the system. Kingswood is home to BBC research into technologies that will eventually …

HD DVD is undoubtedly suffering from a lack of support, both from movie studios and hardware manufacturers not called Toshiba. Tosh is totally committed to its format, however, and intends to release two interesting and important updates in the coming months to keep its players on top of their game. The first of these firmware upgrades, available now, adds Web …

As promised, here’s the second of this month’s competitions and, again, we’re kicking ourselves at our bewildering generosity. This time we’re giving you the chance to win a brand-new 32-inch HD Ready LCD television from Panasonic. If you’ve been eyeing up high definition TVs for a while but are struggling to save your gold nuggets, listen up: we’re giving away …

The Humax 9200T is nothing new — we first reviewed it in November 2005 and generally liked it. So why bring it up again now? Well, Humax has discontinued the old model and replaced it with two new ones with a Freeview Playback sticker on the front. To celebrate this sticker — and the spec standard it represents — the …

American mega-network NBC, part of the Universal group, is claiming that piracy is damaging the corn industry. Rick Cotton, general counsel for NBC/Universal, believes that more people watching pirated movies means less popcorn is sold at cinemas. Therefore, piracy is hurting innocent farmers. No, really, someone from NBC actually said that, and from what I can tell kept a straight …

You remember Napster, right? Not the legal one, the one that went before it, the one that meant universities across the world had to get bigger Internet pipes just to cope. Napster started the revolution of digital music and introduced the world to a new idea: getting media over the Internet. Now Napster has gone legit, but we probably wouldn’t …

Steve Jobs, the co-founder and chief executive of Apple, is an emerging force in the mobile phone business, thanks to the snaking lines of gadget fans who queued up last week to buy the iPhone. But now he faces a headache in an industry Apple already dominates–digital music. The Universal Music Group of Vivendi, the world’s biggest music corporation, last …

It’s not often we get to make up a word, but our friends over at CNET.com have introduced the term ‘colour-changey‘, so we feel it’s fair we can add our own word to the vernacular. If you use ‘swivellyness’ often enough, dear readers, this time next year it will make it into the Oxford English Dictionary. Hey, it worked for …

I’ve seen adverts for Freeview Playback and noticed that there are a couple of Freeview receivers with the logo on them. What is it, and why should I care? Tony You should care because those nice people at Freeview, and the hardware manufacturers, are trying to make your life a little better with technology! Put simply, Freeview Playback is designed …