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Samsung to launch first Blu

The BD-P1000 will be the first Blu-ray player to market this year, Seungsoo Park of the Digital AV Division for Samsung has announced. The BD-P1000 is set to land in September for around £800, following a launch in the US in May for $1,000 (£580). The player will support 720p and 1080i high-definition playback, as …

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Samsung HT

Samsung’s HT-XQ100, which we saw at CeBIT 2006, may look like a standard home cinema system, but further investigation by Crave’s gadget monkeys reveals something rather revolutionary. It’s not only one of the first ‘in-a-box’ systems to feature an HDMI output for high-quality digital video, but it’s also capable of video upscaling. This means it will turn your standard-definition DVDs into …

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Samsung’s new LCDs premiere at CeBIT

Samsung’s last LCD TV range heralded the dawn of the flat-screen revolution, with fantastic picture quality, great styling and high-value pricing causing many to ditch their CRT TVs. But sadly their day has passed, and like all much-loved gadgets they must step aside for something newer and shinier. Samsung’s new ‘R7’ range, which we ogled at CeBIT, will be on sale in …

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Crave Talk: Would the future of hi

LG’s BD199 Blu-ray player is dead — an abortive experiment that will make way for a combi player with HD DVD playback as well. This will make LG’s unit the world’s first ‘universal’ high-definition disc player, and it will arrive alongside most single-format models if its planned late-summer release is met. Rejoice, you might think — the high-definition format war …

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Crave Talk: Is this the end of rubbish TVs?

If a doctor were to inspect the world of televisions right now, she’d give it a nice big lollipop and a perfect bill of health. We can’t remember the last flat-screen TV that we’d actively discourage people from buying — they’ve all been spiffing. The problem is that every TV these days is HD Ready, affordable, and even likely to have …

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Canon Xeed projectors calibrate like the Dulux dog

“Hello? Tech support? There’s a spooky looking corporate-drone ghost-man coming out of the top of my projector.” Canon should expect to get lots of calls like this if their marketing photography (right) is anything to go by. Their vision of a businessman in the next decade appears to be an alien from Spielberg’s A.I. Such naive future-gazing is easily forgiven …

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Dolby Digital: High

Dolby is like the Microsoft of the home cinema world — its technology is in everything, so it’s kinda taken for granted. But with high definition approaching, the Dolby Digital badge will make the leap from DVD player to Sky HD boxes and next-gen games consoles. Crave scootled over to the company’s offices to get a demonstration of the latest …

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NEC WT615: Touch me

Crave was on hand at the launch of NEC’s new interactive projector, the dreamily named WT615, a clever product that allows you to control the image displayed on the wall or screen by touching it. Unfotunately, this doesn’t mean that you can pause Tomb Raider and ‘manipulate’ Angelina Jolie, but you can click through links on Web pages just by pressing the spot on …

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Valentine’s Day TV: Sagem HD

Apparently, chefs never go out for dinner on Valentine’s Day because it’s busy and the food is rubbish. But what else can the modern lothario do to impress their lover? Take them to the theatre? Cook dinner themselves? No, if you’re really going to impress your lover this year, you’d better go all out and buy them a brand-new TV. Thankfully, this …

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Blu

The story that dominated CES this year was the standards war around high-definition DVD. This is no longer a phony war: both Blu-ray and HD DVD players will arrive in less than six months. What’s clear from talking to people at the show is that this format war is bad for everyone, most of all the consumer. Toshiba’s HD DVD player …

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