Home Entertainment

March 17, 2008 High flying, deal-making business and the leisurely sport of golf have gone hand in hand for decades, the high-class country club being an exclusive refuge for the wealthy and powerful. With so much money behind it, golf is one of the few sports that can support blue-sky, no-expense-spared technology like the Full Swing Golf simulator. Built into a wall in your home, office or place of business, this immensely popular boys' toy allows you to play over 50 of the world's most famous courses, from the Old Course at St. Andrew's to Pebble Beach, using your own clubs and never losing a ball. A new online mode allows you to play over the Web against your buddies... Provided they have the US$50,000 to $80,000 you need to set yourself up with a system! Read More

March 17 , 2008 High-end projector specialists Meridian has released its latest high-definition video projector, the MF10, which offers extraordinary black reproduction capability, with 30,000:1 native contrast ratio achieved without the use of a dynamic iris, thus ensuring true black reproduction without loss of brightness. Read More

March 6, 2008 The Sony VAIO is a fully functioning PC that integrates HDMI connectivity, a bundled HD TV tuner and Blu-ray playback capability to turn a HD TV into a high definition PC monitor and form the hub of digital entertainment in the home. Read More

February 28, 2008 Consumers who use PCs for high-end gaming or media work can invest in a top-of-the-line computer and still be held hostage by a ticking time bomb cooling system. While fan-based systems are slowly corrupted by dust, and liquid cooling systems face the problems of evaporation and highly damaging seeping, Xyber Technologies offers an alternative that it claims is quieter, more efficient, and more stable. Read More

Toshiba has officially announced what was only a matter of time - the discontinuation of their HD DVD businesses. They have already begun reducing shipments of HD DVD players and recorders, and expect the phase out to be complete by March. Read More

The last week has seen multiple nails added to the HD DVD coffin, with official price drops, extended Amazon clearance sales, and both Netflix and Best Buy announcing they have made the decision to back Blu-ray as the HD format of choice. Read on for a brief history of the HD format war, recent developments, our advice to consumers, and more bargains. Read More

Amazon has launched a massive HD DVD sale, knocking 50% off the price of 103 HD DVDs from Universal Studios, including The Breakfast Club, King Kong, Pitch Black, Dawn of the Dead, and the cult classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Read More

February 3, 2008 Outlaw Audio has introduced the Outlaw LCR, a flexible home theater loudspeaker that is the first to include the company's exclusive Main/Center Optimization, (MCO), selectable crossover technology. This allows the speaker's acoustic radiation pattern to be optimized for use as either a left or right front speaker or as a horizontal center channel speaker simply by flipping the MCO switch. Designed and hand-built in the USA to audiophile-grade performance standards, the Outlaw LCR features two long-throw 5-1/4" SEAS woofers flanking a custom designed 1-inch ferrofluid-cooled soft-dome tweeter, giving it improved bass performance and enabling the flexible MCO crossover circuitry. It is this circuitry that enables users to select between two crossover configurations to optimize the speaker's output for either center channel (horizontal) or main channel (vertical) placement. Read More

January 21, 2008 JVC’s new G series of Everio hard disk camcorders announced at CES 2008 offer new functions that make operation simpler and more intuitive and feature a new, super-slim design that’s some 20 percent smaller than last year’s entry-level model. The new, colorful five-model Everio G lineup for 2008 consists of four 680K-pixel models and one 7 Megapixel model. The four 680K-pixel camcorders include two 30GB models and two 60GB models, while the lone 7 Megapixel model comes with 30GB of recording space. All models feature a new Laser Touch Operation user interface – moving a finger up or down a touch-sensitive illuminated scroll bar just to the left of the LCD monitor screen allows users to browse through and select video clips to view or edit, and operate menus for camera set-up. The 2.7-inch widescreen LCD’s high-resolution GUI is linked to Laser Touch movements, but the feature eliminates the risk of smudging or damaging the screen that users face with a touch-screen interface. Read More