Home Entertainment

After all the hype prompted by the success of Avatar in cinemas and the flood of 3D technology unveiled at trade shows like CES 2010, 3D TV is finally becoming a reality in living rooms. All the major players are well and truly on the 3D bandwagon and they’re set to make a lot of noise to try and entice consumers on board too. To help you navigate the 3D waters as various companies spruik their particular brand of 3D technology we’ve taken a look at what's on offer, when it will hit shelves and how much it will cost. Read More

PS3 owners will soon be able to watch digital versions of new release HD movies via their gaming consoles. Sony has signed an agreement with 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution to provide high definition (HD) movies for purchase and rental on the PlayStation Network video delivery service in the US. Read More

Italy-based technology developer Sisvel and imaging start-up 3DSwitch are promoting a device that gives your TV the brains to recognize automatically whether you’re watching 2D or 3D. The technology works by detecting if you’re wearing your 3D stereoscopic glasses. No glasses, then the TV switches to 2D. Read More

Philips has unveiled its latest 7000, 8000 and 9000 Series TVs for 2010. Although the series offer varying degrees of technological goodness they do share some things in common. All the new sets employ LEDs for improved energy efficiency and contrast ratios, plus a version of Philips’ Ambilight Spectra that projects ambient light onto the wall behind the TV to match the dominant color onscreen. Also common across the series is Net TV for accessing Video on Demand content on the Internet. Read More

Lacie continues to bolster the media streaming market and has recently introduced another model into its LaCinema range which, like most of its predecessors, was inspired by designer Neil Poulton. As such the new Mini HD sports a familiar sleek, piano-black design with front and rear USB ports to connect media for local playback, HDMI 1.3, RCA and optical audio along with 100Mbps Ethernet for connecting to a wired network. Read More

Product designer Matteo Cibic has come up with a very distinctive desktop speaker in the aptly named Hi-Fido. Shaped like a headless dog wearing an Elizabethan collar, Hi-Fido sports a 150-watt speaker that “uses the acoustic properties of ceramic to diffuse the high quality sound with a bass reflex system”. Read More

For home theater enthusiasts or gamers who enjoy the deep thud of a good subwoofer but want a little more “jolt” without the extra noise, Earthquake Sound Corp. has added to its range of tactile transducers with the Q10B and MQB-1 that, when fitted to a theater chair or platform, can virtually loosen your fillings. Along with visualizing and hearing, low frequency sound adds a third sense which brings people further into the realm of virtual reality of movies and games. Read More

Although Sharp seems to have a slightly shaky grasp on the number of primary colors - last time we counted, there was only three - it has come up with a fairly breath-taking LCD television that made its debut at CES. The Aquos LED LCD TV series are set to revolutionize television color as we know it. They boast an industry-first four-color filter that can create brilliant blues and sparkling yellows. Called quad-pixel technology, this means that colors which were difficult to reproduce on conventional LCD screens will now be available for your viewing pleasure. And for a total home-theater experience, one of the models has an industry-first 68-inch screen. Read More

No matter how much you spend, there just doesn't seem to be any clear way to future-proof your home theatre system. You can have the biggest HD screen on the block, but suddenly, if it can't do 3D, it's all but obsolete. With the rush of 3D content that's under development in the gaming, TV and cinema worlds, 3D is set to become the new HD within the next couple of years - and with that in mind, Optoma has pulled the covers off its HD66 digital projector at CES - a US$699 home theatre projector capable of showing 720p content in 3D with a max image size around 300". Read More