Michael Robertson, one of Silicon Valley’s most prolific company creators, continues to plug along with so-called music lockers. His most recent music company, MP3tunes, began offering the lockers for free last week in an apparent attempt to draw interest from consumers. Music lockers enable a customer to store music on a company’s servers and later …

Philips is pleased with itself. It’s been ten years since it displayed the first prototype 42-inch gas plasma TV, which was just 100mm thick so could be “hung on the wall like a painting”. At last, say our Dutch friends, the TV has been liberated from the corner of the room. Reality was never Philips’ strong point. It seems to …

Music on the Internet has often been free or legal, but start-up SpiralFrog is looking to offer songs that are both. The 20-person New York-based company has signed a deal with record label Universal Music Group to offer songs for free, hoping to make money by showing ads to users as they download the music. “Essentially they are paying with …

It’s not quite the Oscars — so fewer flashing bulbs, designer dresses and gushing speeches, perhaps — but the annual EISA Awards are highly regarded in the electronics industry. LG has affirmed its rising status this year by scooping three top gongs. EISA is the largest editorial multimedia organisation in Europe with a membership of 54 audio, video, mobile and …

With the arrival of HDTV, Blu-ray, HD DVD, the XBox 360, the PS3 and so on, I am running out of connections at the back of my TV. What do you recommend — an HDMI or component switching box, or is there a better way to connect all these devices? Is there a particular product I should look out for (especially …

Toshiba has added more flesh to the bones of its Regza LCD television range, which we first got a sniff of back in April. The WLT68 range features a whopping three HDMI inputs (two at the back and one on the side) — so you can flick between Sky HD, PlayStation 3 and a Blu-ray or HD DVD player. New …

There’s good news coming for digital telly fans who’ve resisted the temptations of Sky and cable. Freeview Playback — a new standard for hard disk personal video recorders — will be here by the autumn. It will let viewers record an entire TV series at the touch of a single button, will work with programmes that are late or run …

Reality TV addicts will be aware of a daily dilemma presenting itself at around 10pm every night. Do you watch Pete and Nikki’s blossoming relationship on Channel 4’s Big Brother or take guilty pleasure in seeing Sophie Anderton nearing a nervous breakdown in ITV’s Celebrity Love Island? If you want to watch both you’ll need access to a time-travelling machine …

The EMI Group record label has licensed its music catalog of more than 1,000 artists to Qtrax, a legal peer-to-peer network owned by Brilliant Technologies. Qtrax, which has yet to be released, also has licensing agreements with several other music corporations, such as BMI and the Association of Independent Music. Legal P2P networks have become more commonplace in the wake …

Let’s take a quick head count of high-definition devices that rely on HDMI inputs. There are Sky’s HDTV receivers, high-def DVD players and even games consoles like the upcoming PlayStation 3. So, why are so many new screens still arriving with only one HDMI input? It must be a lonely life being an HDMI input — you’re stuck on your …

French legislation that had caused an uproar for its approach to iTunes has finally entered the statute books–but the controversy continues. The law now in force is a watered-down version of a bill that had initially threatened to outlaw Apple Computer’s practice of using digital rights management technology with purchases made on the iTunes Music Store. Apple’s rivals can now …

Apple Computer has refuted claims by Norway’s consumer watchdog that it uses unfair practices by making its iTunes service incompatible with rivals’ systems. Norway’s consumer council complained to Apple earlier this year that iTunes’ lack of interoperability with digital-music players other than the iPod was not in the best interest of consumers. The watchdog said consumers must be allowed to …

An analyst report calls La La a savvy new music site for helping people swap CDs via the U.S. Postal Service. But, the report notes, the company is also a highly effective way to pirate music. La La allows music lovers to find used CDs on the company’s Web site and then order them from their owners, other La La …

France’s controversial copyright law, which had threatened to mandate interoperability between Apple Computer and rival online music players’ digital rights management, has been dealt a major setback as sections of the legislation are being ruled unconstitutional. The Dadvsi law, which had initially been intended to free digital music lovers from proprietary DRM, now could be doing the opposite. Changes to …

When we reviewed the Sony RDR-HX725 hard drive/DVD recorder earlier this month, we whinged about the absence of two key features. The RDR-HX725 didn’t have an integrated Freeview tuner or an HDMI output, which didn’t make us happy. We’re smiling now though — Sony has just announced the RDR-HXD860, which fixes both those problems. Like its predecessor, the RDR-HXD860 has a …