Blogs

The grumpy green shape of The Incredible Hulk is the first of the summer comic book blockbusters to make the jump to DVD and Blu-ray on October 13th. After Ang Lee’s thoughtful but surprisingly placid Hulk in 2003, Director Louis Leterrier clearly wants...

This little unit could revolutionise the way you think about iPod speaker systems. At first glance it looks like a conventional iPod dock, and you wonder why Yamaha didn't simply build it into its new PDX-50 speaker system (below), on the way for next...

Proudly displaying an array of early-eighties musical influences The Metro's debut album, More Money Less Grief , frequently risks being dismissed as derivative. Hints of The Libertines, Squeeze, Sham 69 and the odd touch of Ska all make More Money Less...

Piano tuning in hard hats may seem extreme, but when you're stringing a concert grand and working up a tension equivalent to 20 tons, it pays to be careful. It's just one of the things we discovered during our behind the scenes tour of Yamaha facilities...

Three things strike you about the International Audio Show, held each year in Tokyo: one is the venue, the second is that it's free, and the third is the fanaticism of the attendees. It used to be called the Import Audio Show, but in recent times it's...

My day at the show rounded up with a panel discussion on Blu-ray, and how it sits in the Japanese and world markets right now. Well, I say a panel discussion - most of the time was taken up with a lengthy diatribe by reviewer Reiji Asakura about how Blu-ray...

Just in case you thought I'd been at the Yebisu a bit too enthusiastically before wittering on about the au by KDDI 1Gbps internet access plan in the news section , here's the proof of it in action. OK, so it's not delivering the full speed of which it's...

The guy on the left is searching for visible means of support, but finding none - this is Toshiba's prototype Regza Wall TV, designed to be used free-standing, without either stand or wall-bracket. With its over-square upright shape it's not going to...

Almost 24 hours on and i'm still smiling. That's the grin-inducing effect of watching the first two James Bond films - Dr No and From Russia With Love - on Blu-ray . The films are due out on October 20th, along with a seemingly random initial collection...

I have in my hand what appears to be the most desirable object here at CEATEC, and this is it. Allow me to explain, with apologies to those who splutter into their cornflakes that some content on this site has nothing to do with hi-fi or home cinema....

This is Panaonic's vision of the future, forming the centrepiece of its stand here at CEATEC in Japan. And it reckons this is how we'll be living in the next three to five years. The whole home, owned by a bright, dressed in white young couple - let's...

It's raining here in Makuhari, just outside Tokyo, where the annual CEATEC consumer electronics show opened this morning, and we're told there may be a typhoon on the way. But despite the weather and the global economic situation, the exhibiting companies...

Hollywood remakes of successful Asian horror films all tend to hit the same snag: when stripped of the subtitles and cultural differences present in the original, the audience no longer have the added thrill of unfamiliarity to enhance the chills, and...

Last night, I attended a recorded panel discussion organised by speaker manufacturer B&W. The discussion was about surround sound and its importance to listeners, and it will be posted on the B&W website at the beginning of October. So, just one...

It’s been a long wait for Kimberley Pierce to follow up 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry, but with Stop Loss she succeeds in tackling another serious subject with the same sort of power and poise her last film displayed. Stop Loss is the name of the US army program...

There are many things you’d expect of a consumer electronics company celebrating its 90th anniversary – but changing its name and predicting a radical reduction in the range of products it may eventually sell aren’t necessarily on the list. Yet that’s...

Everything is Borrowed , the fourth album from The Streets, has big job to do. Fans want it to make up for its predecessor, The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living, and return Mike Skinner to the heights he attained on his first two albums. Alas, it falls...

Star Wars: Force Unleashed is the most action-packed Star Wars game ever to hit a home console, and it lets you get in touch with your dark side. Jedis might get all the attention, but the real stars of the Star Wars universe have to be the Sith. Think...

This self-titled debut album from Fleet Foxes is a beautiful and self-assured introduction to a Seattle band that have more in common with Crosby, Stills and Nash than Nirvana. Fleet Foxes is a rarity, a pop album that manages to be genuinely innovative...

Baroque seems like an interesting idea at first: it's an RPG for the Wii, a console starved of the roleplaying format. The game's central conceit is that having your character die and restart the game is vital to revealing the plot. On top of that, it's...

5.25pm We're currently soaking up the hustle and bustle at the Apple European launch, jostling for position outside the room where all the action will take place. We're scheduled for a 6pm kick-off, so stick with us to find out all the Apple news, with...

Too Human ’s mix of action and RPG elements should make it the best of both worlds, instead it doesn’t have quite enough of either To be a great RPG, a game must have a deep, interactive story, full of interesting characters and an original setting. Although...

At first, Hellboy seems like it’s going to be a lot of fun. Ron Perlman reprises his role as the grumpy, red demon, the snippets of dialogue are fairly amusing, and the combat gives plenty of opportunity to beat-up little bad guys in humorous ways. Unfortunately,...

Lars and The Real Girl is a softly spoken, melancholic indy comedy that takes a Carry-On film plot and turns it into a mature and poignant story. Ryan Gosling stars as Lars, a small-town lad so shy that his only solution to loneliness is to buy a lovedoll...

Adapted from a pair of hefty graphic novels, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's illustrated autobiography and tells the story of her youth in Iran and Austria, with the Iranian revolution providing a contrast to Marjane's feisty personality and leftist leanings....