LG Electronics Blu-ray players look to have turned a corner this year–until now, they’ve been overpriced, badly specified, and worst of all, tedious to use. The LG HB354 is the latest to raise the bar, promising to bring a touch of glamour to the proceedings with its attractive styling and impressive features. Clearly, this system …
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We’ll admit it, we’ve got a soft spot for DivX. The much-used video codec started as a hack of Microsoft’s proprietary MPEG-4 codec, and was born out of frustration with Microsoft’s video-playback lameness. DivX quickly became an important ingredient of Internet video, but in an HD era, something with a little more power is needed. Oh look, here’s DivX 7. …
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Since presidential hopeful John Kerry announced that his running mate will be John Edwards, traffic has surged to www.kerryedwards.com–and so have offers to buy the domain. According to bail bondsman Kerry Edwards, who acquired the domain a couple of years ago and uses it to display pictures of his son, he has been offered $150,000. That would be substantially more …
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After Sony’s press conference at IFA trade show in Berlin, we at Crave UK took a quick look around the company’s booth and snapped some of the new Bravia TVs expected to be delivered by this holiday season. The most interesting product is the ZX1, a 9.9mm-thick LED “backlit” LCD TV, which takes a new approach to TV design, and …
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Some time ago we reviewed an LG home cinema system, which wowed us with its low cost and high performance. So when LG offered to send us its new HT762TZ 5.1 system, with a built-in DVD player and the added bonus of some stylish Champagne-flute speakers, we were understandably excited. As we’ve said many times, in countless reviews, flat-panel TVs …
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As you may know, here at Crave we’re big fans of the off switch. But as we’ve previously noted, it’s an endangered species. Happily, Toshiba is keen to stop David Cameron from mounting a full-on campaign against LCD TVs by allowing its customers to turn them off properly. You probably know what modern TVs are like. You’re pretty lucky if …
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The natural human interface has been a huge theme at this year’s CES. Bill Gates talked up the Surface Computer and voice recognition in the car, Paul Otellini talked up the gesture-based interface of Nintendo Wii, and there were plenty of new ideas around interfaces exhibited on the trade show floor. Attendees mill around Samsung displays to try out the …
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You might remember some time ago that Michael Bay proved he’s a Sony fanboy by ranting about how Paramount would never get a Transformers 2 from him, because it had switched to support HD DVD exclusively. Obviously, once the sugar high from his Kool-Aid had worn off, he retracted the statement and said that 300 on HD DVD was pure …
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So you’ve got all that wonderful home cinema gear installed in your house, everything is looking rosy, but then you make a horrifying discovery. You installed the screen too far away from the HD DVD player and moving it would mess up your whole setup. Enter the HXC5, a box that can send HDMI-compliant video over Cat 5 cable. Crave …
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It’s all go in the HD DVD camp at the moment. Still on a high from the Paramount/Dreamworks deal, we’re now hearing that HD DVD will soon have a 51GB, triple-layer disc on the way. The significance of a 51GB capacity is that it exceeds the current Blu-ray maximum by 1GB. Obviously, 1GB is nothing more than a token increase, …
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