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iPlayer should be an online Freeview

This Friday is iPlayer day, according to the excellent BBC Internet blog. This anniversary marks iPlayer’s soft launch this time last year, with a harder launch that began on Christmas day with a TV advertising campaign. Since then, the BBC has been accused of wrecking the Internet, as well as upsetting granddads. Today, the Guardian has reported that the BBC …

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The Dark Knight Blu

We think it’s fair to say the Batman franchise hit an all-time low with the so-bad-it’s-funny Batman and Robin — a movie so horrendous that even the collective nipples of George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell and Alicia Silverstone couldn’t save it. We’d argue that the series peaked with Batman Begins, a much-needed reboot for Gotham’s finest. Now its sequel, The Dark …

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Energy star ratings coming to a TV near you

We’ve seen energy consumption ratings on white goods since the mid-1980s, but now we’ll start seeing the familiar stars on new TVs as well as refrigerators, washers, dryers, dishwashers and air conditioners. Announced earlier this year by the Minister for Environment, Heritage and The Arts, Peter Garrett, this joint government and industry TV labelling program is currently voluntary, but will …

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Sony BDP

We’ve never been slow to criticise stand-alone Blu-ray players, and particularly Sony hardware. We’ve always had good reason, mind — the previous generation of players were massively overpriced and very poorly specified. But by George, we think they’ve got it: the Sony BDP-S350 costs just £160 and is fully profile 2.0 compliant. The S350 is appreciably smaller than previous players from …

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Hancock Blu

Blu-ray is great for home viewing on a large screen, but when you’re on the move with a laptop it’s neither practical or necessary to watch a 1080p copy of a movie. With that in mind, on the Hancock Blu-ray Sony provides a digital copy of the movie which you can transfer to your computer. Of course, it’s not as …

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Panasonic plasmas give you Wiis

Not wanting to be left out of the game, so to speak, Panasonic is bundling free Wiis with its plasma televisions in a promotion it’s calling a Full High Definition Christmas. Insert urination joke here. We’re not going to point out the obvious fact that the Wii isn’t even proper standard definition as we recognise it in this country (it’s …

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It’s here: Sharp brings 108

The bragging rights to having the “biggest big screen” TV have passed from Panasonic to Sharp, with the local arrival of the latter’s 108-inch (274 cm) LCD model LB-1085. Measuring a whopping 2382mm x 1340mm, which equates to a viewing area of roughly 3.2 square meters, the Sharp LCD pips Panasonic’s flagship 103-inch plasma, which has been on the Australian …

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