TechRadar: Digital home news

In Depth: How Sony is trying to save the world

James Rivington — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:37:00 GMT

How Sony is trying to save the world

Sony is famous for a lot of things.

Most recently it's been the launch of the PS Vita and some disappointing financial results that have been getting the headlines.

But one thing Sony hasn't had much coverage over is its work to reduce its impact on the environment.

Of course, any manufacturer of oil-based plastic products creates a sizeable carbon footprint but Sony has become a shining example to other electronics manufacturers by committing to completely eliminate its negative effect on the environment by 2050.

The road to zero

The story starts at Sony's 25-storey, 124,041 square metre Osaki Home Entertainment HQ in Tokyo. Unbelievably, it only took a single year to build.

It's the very first building of its kind to use a natural 'bioskin' cooling system, and TechRadar was lucky enough to be invited to visit earlier today.

The bioskin is made up of a network of porous ceramic pipes that are made using soil. Rain water is collected from the roof of the building throughout the year and during the hot Japanese summer, the water is pumped back up through the pipes on the outside of the building.

The water penetrates the ceramic and evaporates from the pipe surface, which cools the surrounding air by around 2 degrees. This shields the building from the sun's intense heat and reduces the load on the CO2-producing air conditioning systems inside the building.

It's the kind of cutting-edge green-thinking that Sony is applying to many of its consumer electronics projects.

TVs made from old DVDs

Sony has also recently developed a new material for its products which is made from 99% recycled plastic. The material is called SoRPlas and is made from recycling old products.

Discarded DVDs are blended up and the metal film from their surface is peeled away. The optical sheets from discarded LCD TVs are also shredded and the resultant shrapnel is blended with the DVD fragments. The strength and stiffness of the recycled plastic can be manipulated according to the proportions of the mix.

This mix is then added to some dye and a very small amount of flame-retardant to make the plastic fireproof, and the resulting material is a plastic that's every bit as good as more 'fresh' plastic.

Using this method, Sony is now able to build products like earphones and its packaging from 100% recycled plastic. It's also now being used to build the bezels of some of Sony's TVs, while 80% of the plastic used in the HDRTD20V 3D camcorder is made from this SoRPlas material already.

Using this material means 77.3% less CO2 is produced compared to conventional plastic, and the aim is to use SoRPlas to replace as much plastic as possible across all of Sony's many factories.

The first step in Sony's 'road to zero' is to harness the environmental benefits of SorPLas to reduce the company's resource consumption by 30 per cent and its CO2 emissions 20% by 2015.

Life cycles

But the goal extends beyond manufacturing. Sony's ultimate aim is to include product life cycles into the zero-emissions plan, which means building energy efficient, environmentally friendly products and packaging.

That means recycled materials wherever possible, eliminating the use of hazardous mercury, developing more efficient solar cells, increasing power efficiency in products, reducing the size of packaging and developing more environmentally friendly battery technologies.

Sony has already ceased production of old-style LCD TVs, with 100 per cent focus on more efficient LED tech. This also means sets can be thinner, using less materials - and has the further effect of requiring smaller boxes.

The bio batteries are also very interesting - they feed renewable glucose and oxygen to natural enzymes to generate electricity. This tech is a way off being used in your everyday smartphone, but it's being developed and looked at very optimistically.

While the zero emissions goal is still very far away, it's initiatives and innovations like these that will make future generations wonder what kind of barbaric tree-hating gas guzzlers we really were.

In Depth: Is 3D technology here to stay?

Jeremy Laird — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 12:00:00 GMT

How 3D works

The third dimension is taking over your local cinema. It's assimilating your HDTV. It might even be popping out of your next smartphone.

And yes, it's creeping into PC gaming, too. It's the next big thing and it's 3D.

Of course, if we're talking PC gaming, then the term 3D is a little confusing. On PC Format, we've been soaking up the 3D gaming groove for nearly two decades, but that's 3D graphics painted onto a 2D screen.

When manufacturers hit the hype button regarding 3D today, what they are really referring to is stereoscopic 3D imaging. What this means is pictures popping out of the screen and poking you in the peepers, not the relentless quest for ever more photorealistic computer graphics courtesy of a games console or highend gaming rigs.

However, whatever you think about 3D (from now on, let's assume 3D means stereopscopic 3D), one thing it definitely isn't is new. 3D images have been knocking around for nearly 200 years and the technology involved in 3D movies dates back over 100 years. That's right – like so many things – the Victorians got there first.

It all started – probably - with a device known as the stereoscope, invented in 1838. It was the first gadget that keyed into the mechanics of human stereoscopic vision.

Humans, of course, have two eyes. The consequence is that each eye views the world from a slightly different angle and receives a slightly different image. The brain takes these offset images and composites them into a single mental picture with depth and perspective. You, therefore, see the world in glorious 3D.

So, that's exactly what the stereoscope does – show each eye a still image from a slightly different angle and allow the brain to work its magic. Cue endless fairground fun and a roaring trade in early 3D pornography.

Like many technologies, good old porn helped with the early cash flow. Of course, the stereoscope had some very serious applications, too. It was used by the military to view aerial photographs, for instance.

Ongoing 3D

Fast forward to the 1890s and British inventor, William Friese-Greene patented a system for capturing and displaying motion stereoscopic pictures and 3D movies were born. Friese-Greene's technology turned out to be too unwieldy for commercial use, but the seeds were sown.

Several variations on the stereoscopic 3D movie riff were tried with the first known paying audience recorded in 1922. Further dabbling followed in the next few decades. Even the Nazis made a few propaganda flicks in 3D, but the golden age of 3D cinema was probably the 1950s.

A number of revivals have since rebooted the 3D revolution only to fade into obscurity. All of which brings us to the present day.

Indeed, after that potted history you might be tempted to disregard the latest 3D resurgence as another blip on the graph before an inevitable return to the historical flatline. This time, however, things are different.

This time, 3D is about much more than cheap cinema thrills. It's spreading into a wide range of platforms courtesy of many different technologies. That includes the promise of less unwieldy, more comfortable 3D viewing. Combine that with the interactivity of games and the result might just be the most immersive leisure experience yet. This time, 3D might be for real.

So, what are the different 3D technologies available today, how do they compare and where's it all heading?

In one sense, they're all the same. Generally, it's all about exposing each eye to a different image. Exactly how that is achieved, however, is where things get interesting.

The heyday of 3D cinema was based on so-called red-green analglyph technology. This involves a single picture containing a pair of merged, colour-shifted and spatially offset images. The viewer is required to wear colour-filtered lenses which effectively allow each eye to view a different offset image. This works pretty well in terms of creating the illusion of depth perception. It's a little more problematic when it comes to colours, however.

Inevitably, each eye is viewing the scene with radically different colours. While the brain is capable of compositing the image to generate the correct colours, it's a lot of work and perhaps contributes to the eye strain many viewers of 3D movies experience.

If coloured filters tend to be less than ideal, the most obvious alternative is polarised light. Again, the viewer is presented with a single picture frame within which two images are interleaved. The most common method is to use a pair of projectors, each with an orthogonally opposed light polarising filter. The viewer then wears glasses with similarly opposed polarising filters and Bob's your spear-poking, eye-popping uncle.

3D gaming

Smoke and spectacles

Originally, polarised 3D technology relied on linear polarisation and thus required level-headed viewing. More recently, circular polarisation has been used, allowing a degree of head-tilt without losing the 3D illusion.

However, if it's perfect colours and freedom to thrash your head about like a lunatic you desire, one solution is active shutter technology. Active-shutter 3D involves a pair of glasses, the lenses of which contain liquid crystals that can be alternated between transparent and black. At the same time, the display flips between the offset images for each eye. With a sufficiently high frame rate, the result is motion 3D.

Like polarised 3D, active-shutter 3D results in a dimmer image and along with the need for a shuttered glasses, it means active shutter requires specialised display technology supporting a higher frame rate (typically at least 100 frames per second).

However, a monitor with a higher refresh rate is cheaper and simpler than running a pair of polarised projectors. So, it's active-shutter technology that is currently the weapon of choice for PC gaming, with Nvidia's 3D Vision platform perhaps the most successful to date.

That said, what Nvidia 3D Vision long with all analgyph, polarised and active-shutter 3D tech share is the need to wear glasses. This, along with a feeling of eye strain, is probably what has so far prevented 3D from becoming a properly big deal. What we really want is 3D viewing without glasses. What we want is autostereoscopic 3D.

The trick here is to create a single display surface that can somehow send a different image to each eye. There are several different types, but they ultimately split into two groups – those that use head tracking technology to make sure each eye is seeing the correct image and those that simply kick out a different image based on the viewing angle.

Glasses-free 3D

As if chucking out silly glasses wasn't enough, autostereoscopic 3D also makes possible movement parallax. For the uninitiated, that means getting a different view of a scene or object depending on your vantage point. In other words, move your head around and you'll get a different look at things, just like in real life.

However, there is one final problem that even autostereoscopic technology can't avoid. In the real world, objects at different distances have different focal points. But a simulated 3D image is generated from a uniform distance. And that confuses the hell out of your eye muscles, eye lenses and ultimately your poor brain.

It's more problematical on a big desktop display than, say, a handheld device with a puny screen. But it's something that's not going to be going away short of using true holographic 3D technology.

Explained: WHDI: what it is and why you should care

Gary Marshall — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:43:00 GMT

WHDI: what you need to know

The Lenovo IdeaPad S2 tablet, shown off at CES 2012, has an interesting trick up its sleeve: wireless HD streaming courtesy of integrated WHDI.

WHDI, which is short for Wireless Home Digital Interface, promises to deliver wire-free HD streaming without lag, hassle or unnecessary expense - so does it work? Will you want it?

And how does it compare to the other four hundred wireless HD standards currently competing for the hearts, minds and living rooms of the world? Let's find out.

WIRELESS WONDER? WHDI promises to cut the cables from your home entertainment kit

WHDI is designed to make your life easy

The idea behind WHDI is simple enough: HD home entertainment without the hassle of home entertainment cabling or drilling through walls when you want to stream content to other rooms.

With WHDI, you'll be able to connect your Blu-Ray player, tablet or any other device in the same way you'd add Wi-Fi kit to your home network.

The current WHDI standard is the second generation of the technology; the first generation got lots of press coverage in 2009 and 2010 but didn't really amount to much.

WHDI does HD and 3D TV

Operating in the 5GHz frequency band, WHDI can stream uncompressed HD at up to 1080p resolution, with support for 3D TV and 5.1 surround sound too.

WHDI isn't Wireless HDMI

That's a different standard altogether, from the Wireless Gigabit Alliance. Inevitably, the two technologies don't talk to one another.

WHDI isn't WIHD

Guess what? That's yet another standard!

WHDI isn't WiDi

You can probably guess where this one is going. Yep, that's different too: WiDi is Intel's short-range wireless telly tech.

WHDI range is reasonably short

WHDI isn't designed to chuck HD video over huge distances: it's a short-range technology that runs out of puff at around 100 feet (30m). It doesn't require line of sight connections, though, so you can hide any adapters behind the TV.

WHDI tablets are pretty nifty

Lenovo's WHDI tablet isn't noticeably different from other seven-inch Android devices, so adding WHDI clearly doesn't add any bulk. It's not a huge battery hog either, and the demo shown off at CES 2012 appeared to work well without any noticeable lag. Lenovo's WHDI tablet mirrored its display, so anything you did on the tablet - not just video, but games and apps too - appeared on the TV.

WHDI TVs aren't out yet

If you're waiting for us to mention dongles, wait no more: as yet there aren't any commercially available TVs with integrated second-generation WHDI - they're coming, but you can't buy them yet - so for now you'll need an adapter such as HP's Wireless TV Connect with WHDI. This $199 device uses WHDI to stream HD content from your PC to your TV.

WHDI says DEATH TO ALL CABLES

We're quite taken with Belkin's Screencast AV4 Wireless, which uses WHDI to connect four audiovisual devices to your TV without any of the usual spaghetti junction stuff.

WHDI prices are reasonably low, but they'll get lower

We've already mentioned the $199 HP kit, while the Belkin Screencast is $249.99. That's not bad for a brand new technology, and of course like all other tech you'll see prices fall the more popular and established WHDI becomes.

WHDI has lots of pals

It looks like WHDI is gathering momentum: WHDI members now include not just creator AMIMON but also LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, HP and Hitachi, and products have been announced by the likes of Belkin and Asus too.

However, it's worth pointing out that many of the same names are also supporters of Wireless HD too. With multiple technologies promising much the same thing, it might be an idea to sit back and wait for a victor - or at least, interoperability between rival standards - to emerge before committing any of your cash.

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Netflix begins broadcasting first original series

Chris Smith — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:55:00 GMT

Netflix has officially made its first foray into original programming with its first series Lilyhammer now available for US streaming customers.

All eight, 45-minute episodes of season one are available to view in their entirety, which sees a change to the week-by-week format we're used to seeing in episodic TV shows.

Lilyhammer stars former The Sopranos favourite and E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt reprising his gangster persona once again.

Van Zandt plays a mob boss who is relocated to Lillehammer in Norway as part of the witness relocation programme, after he turns in his former associate.

Big in Norway

Lilyhammer, as Van Zandt's character calls it, is only available to US-based Netflix customers at the moment, but it has already been a huge success on Norwegian TV.

The show has pulled in a record 1.2m weekly viewers in the country.

UK-based mob fans will be able to watch the show on BBC Four after Netflix signed a distribution deal with the corporation.

Buying Guide: Best NAS drive: 8 on test

PC Plus — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:00:00 GMT

Best NAS drive: Overview

NAS (network attached storage) devices certainly aren't the most glamorous gadgets you can have in your home. A network-connected hard drive might seem like a remnant from a home office – a backup necessity for over-paranoid users and not much more.

Early NAS devices – and even some new no-frills budget ones – do little more than allow any computer that's connected to a network to access an external hard drive as if it was physically installed in the computer. However, a lot of new NAS devices have some great features built in, which can completely transform what your home network is capable of.

Not only can they act as media servers throughout your house – letting your devices access and stream music and videos to any device on the network – they can also be used be used to stream your media across the internet, letting you access the files from anywhere in the world, and effectively allowing you to create your own version of Spotify or Netflix.

As for cloud backup and synchronisation services, while you could pay Dropbox the equivalent of $9.99 a month for 50GB of space, with a NAS device you could have your own service with huge amounts of storage (some NAS devices accept hard drives of up to 3TB) without monthly fees or the need to trust your private data to a third party. We've gathered the best NAS devices on the market to find out just what they are capable of.

Buffalo Cloudstation Duo - £240
www.buffalotech.com

Western Digital My Book Live - £147
www.wdc.com

Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4 - £423
www.netgear.co.uk

Buffalo Linkstation Pro LS-VL - £129
www.buffalotech.com

D-Link ShareCenter - £60
www.dlink.com

Iomega StorCenter ix2-200 - £274
www.iomega.com

Netgear Stora MS2110 - £130
www.netgear.co.uk

Synology DS411 - £485
www.synology.com

Best network storage: 1-6

1. Buffalo Cloudstation Duo

There remains a lingering feeling that setting up a network attached storage device can be complicated, time consuming and fiddly. Buffalo aims to dispel these preconceptions with the Cloudstation Duo, a NAS kit designed to be as user friendly as possible without losing any features or functionality.

The device itself is compact, though quite heavy. Flicking open the front gives quick access to the two 1TB hard drives that come installed. Removing the drives is a bit fiddly at first, but the process is certainly a lot easier than with many other NAS drives.

The fact that the Buffalo Cloudstation Duo is supplied with two large hard drives already installed and set up in a RAID 1 configuration is great, and eliminates a more fiddly and complicated part of the setup procedure.

Read the full Buffalo Cloudstation Duo review

2. Western Digital My Book Live

When it comes to hard drives, Western Digital knows its stuff. While the Buffalo Cloudstation Duo is promoted for its ease of use, the Western Digital My Book Live goes even further in its pursuit of simplicity.

For a start, the small case is completely enclosed, so there is no easy way to open the My Book Live up and replace or upgrade the hard drive as you can with the Buffalo Cloudstation Duo. This means that it's not really suitable as a comprehensive backup device – the lack of hot swappable hard drives means you'd have to physically remove the entire thing if you wanted to store your data safely off site.

The 'My' in the title is evidence that this is a NAS device that focuses on creating your own personal cloud, sharing your own media and files across the internet with as little fuss as possible.

Read the full Digital My Book Live review

3. Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4

NAS devices are a speedy, convenient means of backing up data, and units like the ReadyNAS Ultra 4 featured here are also capable of streaming any multimedia files to any device that can accept them.

Each of the ReadyNAS Ultra 4's bays can accommodate a 2TB drive, resulting in a possible 8TB of storage – that's an awful lot of video, photos and music.

The Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4 supports various implementations of RAID technology, which trades off available capacity against protection for your data. If one of the drives fails, you should be able to recover your files.

Features like RAIDar and X-RAID 2 help you make the most of this handy feature. Powered by a dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, it's speedy and responsive. The onboard DLNA 1.5 media server worked well with a variety of networked players. Even multiple full HD video streams were glitch-free.

Read the full Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4 review

4. Buffalo LinkStation Pro LS-VL

Devices like these are becoming the tool of choice for storing a wide range of digital media, including downloaded movies and TV, music, images and CD/DVD/Blu-ray rips. Speed, capacity and reliability are all essential features, and the Linkstation Pro LS-VL has all three.

This 'Multimedia Shared Network Storage BitTorrent Download Box', ships with a power supply, LAN cable and installation discs, and is available with built-in SATA hard drives in 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB sizes. Windows and Mac OS X compatible, the unit is simply plugged into any network Ethernet port or into the back of your wireless router, and is instantly accessible from any networked device.

The device features transfer speeds up to 76MB/s courtesy of a 1.6GHz CPU, which is a big increase from Buffalo's more home user-orientated Cloudstation Duo.

Read the full Buffalo LinkStation Pro LS-VL review

5. D-Link ShareCenter

D-Link has designed its NAS device to be at the centre of your home network, sharing your files and media throughout your home and over the internet – an admirable aim. The installation process is fairly straightforward, though there are a few options that you need to set yourself, and these can be confusing if you're not used to setting up network attached storage devices.

For example, at one point you're asked if you want to enable NTP server, without any explanation of what this is. There's also a step that asks you to enter your email address, along with port number and SMTP server – a pain if you don't have that information readily to hand.

The network drive wasn't mapped during installation – instead we had to run the D-Link Easy Search Utility, which found the D-Link ShareCenter on our network and then let us map it.

As with other aspects of the ShareCenter, the execution was rather cumbersome and inelegant, but it worked.

Read the full D-Link ShareCenter review

6. Iomega's StorCenter ix2-200

This 2TB NAS drive is billed as cloud storage, which means you can access the drive from anywhere with an internet connection. It's nothing hugely new, but Iomega has provided a good web interface for accessing your stored data online.

Unlike some of the other drives in our test, we had to install software to make it appear on our network. Fortunately, the software is well designed and your hand is held firmly through the process, making it ideal for people who have never used a NAS drive before.

From here, every feature of the drive is clearly explained with colourful bold icons, and essential tasks – such as setting up backups – are highlighted.

There's a range of useful tools too, from email updates to let you know if anything's changed on the drive itself, to the rather useful ability to download torrent files. You can also view hardware statistics, such as how full the drive is, and its current temperature. It's ideally suited to a RAID setup, too, and this can be implemented quickly and easily.

Read the full Iomega's StorCenter ix2-200 review

Best network storage: 7,8 and verdict

7. Netgear's Stora MS2110

We had high hopes for Netgear's NAS drive – after all, Netgear's home networking solutions have often trumped the competition in tests like these. However, we found ourselves sorely let down.

As soon as we connected the drive, all other computers on the network lost the ability to connect. It turned out that the drive had been completely locked down to the previous user, forcing us to do a complete hardware reset. That's not hugely unusual, but we're not sure why Netgear insists on you entering a software-style product key for something that's unlikely to ever leave your home or office.

Although the drive is hefty, the build quality is below par. The front panel – which clicks off to access the hard drives – sprang off in our hands. In fact, merely placing it on the floor caused the panel to flop open. Fortunately, the drives inside feel nicely secure, with a latch at the back to eject them.

Read the full Netgear's Stora MS2110 review

8. Synology DS411

The DiskStation feels like it's stuck between being a consumer-friendly NAS drive and a rack-mounted server. It's supplied without any hard drives, and looks like a small PC, complete with thumbscrews at the back and an array of lights at the front.

Synology recommends certain drives for the product, which are formatted on insertion. This isn't an easy process, especially compared to the more user-friendly drives we've looked at.

Hard drives must be mounted and formatted with Synology's software, and then the NAS drive itself has to be configured via a small patch located on the CD. Then any folders you want on the drive need to be added manually. These all seem like features that would be automated on other NAS drives.

Read the full Synology DS411 review

Verdict

This group test proved to be a perfect microcosm of the current state of the NAS market. On one hand you have devices that stick to the old ways of doing things – heaps of functionality, but with little thought of user-friendliness. The main culprits here are the Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4, the D-Link ShareCenter and the Synology DS411.

On the other side of the divide are the devices whose manufacturers have acknowledged that there is a growing market for centralised storage in the home, and have tailored their devices to offer easy to use interfaces for creating our very own personal clouds without a single network administrator in sight.

We believe that these devices that will excel in the future, when more homes are equipped with internet enabled devices like smart TVs, leaving the backwards-looking NAS devices in their wake.

Best NAS: Iomega StorCenter ix2-200 - £274

The StorCenter ix2-200 encapsulates everything we were looking for in a NAS device. Its advanced features are wrapped up in a user friendly package that's easy to set up and maintain. It isn't as fast as a professional NAS, but for the internet connected home, this is a great choice.

Best value NAS: Western Digital My Book Live - £147

It's not quite the cheapest NAS device on test here, but the Western Digital My Book Live wins the best value award because it has some great features, is reliable and is easy to use. If you want a relatively cheap NAS device that you can quickly set up and then just leave it to do its job without you having to check on it and tinker every now and then, go for this.

In Depth: The 10 most hated programs of all time

Gary Marshall — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:50:00 GMT

10 worst programs of all time

Programs can be our friends: they can help us express ourselves, can solve our problems and can do their very best to make our days happier.

Sometimes, though, they do the Devil's work, making simple tasks so complex and frustrating that you'd happily make everybody involved face a firing squad.

So which programs made everyone angry? Let's discover the software Hall of Shame.

1. Final Cut Pro X

Apple's movie editing software isn't a bad program, but this release turned even the most mild-mannered editor into an incandescent ball of sheer fury. It was sold as an upgrade, but it was really a brand new, version 1.0 product - and that means it didn't have all the features or compatibility that existing users expected, wanted or relied upon.

2. Adobe Reader

Everybody needs to open a PDF from time to time, but Adobe Reader is a sledgehammer sold as a nutcracker: it's enormous - on the Mac, the current version is 69.1MB - it keeps putting a shortcut on your desktop for no good reason, and once you've installed it seems to spend most of its time moaning that you haven't paid it enough attention or installed yet another enormous update. No wonder Windows 8 plans to whack it with a shovel.

GOING: OS X has its own PDF reader, and Windows 8 will do the same with the new Open Reader

3. Ask Toolbar

We're not fans of browser toolbars at the best of times, but the Ask Toolbar is a particularly poor one: it's been variously accused of installing itself without asking permission, making changes to users' browser settings and promoting itself to children. Many problems occurred because over-zealous software writers bundled the toolbar with their own applications but didn't ask whether or not you wanted it.

WHAT'S THAT JEEVES?: We don't like third party toolbars at the best of times, but the Ask one proved particularly unpopular

4. Lotus Notes

IT departments loved this popular messaging and collaboration system, but users were considerably less keen: in the mid-2000s the product was widely criticised for appearing to have been put together by somebody who really, really hated the entire human race and wanted to make it suffer. According to The Guardian, its popularity in business was partly because "the people who choose [business software] tend not to be the ones who use it."

NOT OF NOTE: Lotus Notes still exists, but these days it's very different from its much-hated mid-2000s incarnation [Image credit: Koman90, Wikimedia Commons]

5. Norton Antivirus

Symantec's desktop antivirus software generated enormous ill will through its unfortunate habit of slowing your PC down to a crawl. Part of the problem was that the software tried to do too much: scanning every conceivable thing you do on PC requires significant resources at a time when PCs weren't the flying machines they are today. Thankfully, Norton has addressed such issues these days.

PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS: Happy Norton Man won't be smiling when his system slows down and he can't uninstall the program

6. Microsoft Word

Some people say "I hate Microsoft Word because it's far too complicated!" Some say "I hate Microsoft Word because it introduced Clippy the bloody Office Assistant!" A few say "I hate Microsoft Word because it's often used by idiots to make really horrible-looking things!" Others say, "I hate Microsoft Word because its HTML output made web designers' lives miserable for years!" Still others say "I hate Microsoft Word because I keep sending .docx files that only three people on Earth can actually read!" We say, people! Come together! Let's hate Microsoft Word for all of those reasons!

OFFICE PEST: Aaagh! Aaagh! Aaagh! Aaagh!

7. Adobe Flash

Despite its many benefits - in web design circles it's a powerful and useful creative tool - Flash can be enormously annoying. In many cases the problem was with its users, not the technology - you can't blame Adobe for irritating splash screens, badly designed ads or appalling user interfaces - but for many internet users, a Flash blocker is the first thing they install in a new browser.

NOT JUST JOBS: Flash remains a powerful design tool, but in the wrong hands it can be a powerful force for evil

8. iTunes for Windows

Steve Jobs called iTunes for Windows "like giving a glass of ice water to someone in hell". The reality distortion field was strong that day, because rather than show Windows users the joys of Apple software, iTunes on Windows seems merely designed to depress them. As we've said previously, "the Windows version is a sluggish, resource-hungry mess. Apple has Windows users worldwide loving its iOS devices and despising iTunes, and this needs to change."

SLOOOOOOW: iTunes is proof that Apple doesn't always get it right. On Windows it's a donkey

9. Windows Me and Windows Vista

Yes, we know these are operating systems. This one's a joint nomination: Windows Me because it was a largely pointless update of Windows 98, and Windows Vista because it didn't work properly. Vista in particular should have been a great OS, but show-stopping bugs - copying a file could easily take four million years - and a lack of initial driver support turned a potential racehorse into a donkey.

WOW NOW: The wow starts... now! No... now! Now! NOW! Oh okay, let's just wait for Windows 7 then

10. Internet Explorer 6

Imagine a pristine swimming pool with crystal clear water. That's the internet. Now imagine an enormous poo floating past. That's IE6.

You know something's bad when even its creator dances on its grave. The problem wasn't the browser as such, which was fairly modern when it was released in 2001; it was Microsoft's refusal to update it significantly for years and years, breaking websites and leaving internet users vulnerable to all kinds of online unpleasantness. IE6 was Microsoft at its worst.

TERRIBLE: "Imagine an enormous poo... that's IE6". IE6 is officially pronounced "Aieeeeeee"

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In Depth: 802.11ac: what you need to know

Gary Marshall — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:42:00 GMT

802.11ac: next-gen Wi-Fi

If you thought Wi-Fi couldn't get much faster than 802.11n, think again.

802.11ac, dubbed 5G Wi-Fi, promises ridiculously fast wireless connections, better range, improved reliability, improved power consumption and a free horse. (OK, we're lying about the horse.)

802.11ac is the latest evolution of Wi-Fi, and it should be particularly good for gaming and HD video streaming.

So how does it work, does it live up to the hype, and how long will you have to wait before you can get your hands on it? Let's find out.

Your 802.11ac speed could break the gigabit barrier

The fastest current 802.11n Wi-Fi connections max out at around 150Mbps with one antenna, 300Mbps with two and 450Mbps with three antennas. 802.11ac connections will be roughly three times faster - so that's 450Mbps, 900Mbps and 1.3Gbps respectively. Netgear, brilliantly, illustrates this with two pictures of motorways: the first picture, showing "Today's Wi-Fi", is normal, but the one labelled "3x speed with 802.11ac" is really blurry.

Your 802.11ac speed won't break the gigabit barrier

As with previous Wi-Fi standards, the speeds quoted on the box and in the promotional materials are theoretical maximums, not the speeds you'll actually get: so far devices with potential top speeds of 1.3Gbps have topped out at around 800Mbps. That's still blisteringly fast, of course, but there's still a gap between advertised speeds and real world ones. 802.11ac connection speeds will be reduced by numerous factors: network overhead, which is the chatter your hardware needs to keep the connection going; interference, congestion and physical obstacles; distance; the number of simultaneous connections; and whether the router is running in compatibility mode so that older wireless kit can still connect.

802.11ac video and gaming

Because 802.11ac has bandwidth to spare, it should be great for HD video streaming and for gaming. According to Netgear [PDF], you can say bye-bye to buffering: "802.11ac will significantly enhance the user experience by improving the playback quality to any point throughout the house. With 802.11ac, for the first time wireless will provide similar performance as wired Gigabit connections."

802.11ac routers use more antennas

To improve range and reliability, 802.11ac routers can use more antennas than existing 802.11n kit: your next router may have as many as eight antennas inside it.

802.11ac routers will use "beamforming" technology

Wi-Fi is omnidirectional, but 802.11ac routers will be able to use directional transmission and reception technology dubbed "beamforming". The router will be able to identify the rough location of the device it's talking to and strengthen the appropriate antenna(s) accordingly. The idea is to reduce interference.

802.11ac Wi-Fi uses the 5GHz frequency band

Older wireless kit uses the 2.4GHz frequency band, which is fairly crowded: your kit is potentially sharing radio frequency with next door's baby monitor, your cordless phone and even your microwave. Like high performance 802.11n kit, 802.11ac routers will use the less cluttered 5GHz band where there's considerably more room for data transmission. 802.11ac hardware will use two kinds of channels in that range: 80GHz ones and 160GHz ones.

802.11ac routers will be backwards compatible

You won't need to throw out all your old wireless-capable kit as 802.11ac routers will be backwards compatible with your existing Wi-Fi kit. For example, at this year's CES Buffalo demonstrated an 802.11ac router that operated on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands and that promised to play nice with 802.11a, b, g and n hardware.

The 802.11ac release date is now, sort of

As with 802.11n, hardware is coming out before the 802.11ac standard is actually finalised. That's going to happen later this year, but manufacturers are readying their products now and they'll be everywhere by the summer, with minor software updates addressing any changes that might happen to the standard before it's finalised. We'd expect 802.11ac prices to be steep initially, as they were with the first 802.11n kit, but those prices should start to fall almost immediately.

Apple's putting 802.11ac into everything

Apple's a key early adopter of wireless technology - it helped popularise Wi-Fi in the first place and was quick off the mark with 802.11n support. According to AppleInsider it's going to be quick off the mark with 802.11ac too, sticking the technology into "new AirPort base stations, Time Capsule, Apple TV, notebooks and potentially its mobile devices."

802.11ac hasn't skipped lots of letters

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the body in charge of the 802.11 standard, isn't skipping lots of letters: while major WiFi standards have jumped from 802.11n to 802.11ac, the IEEE didn't just skip 802.11o, p, q and so on. Successive versions of the 802.11 standard can also denote amendments to existing standards, so for example 802.11i introduced improved security and 802.11j introduced extensions for Japanese networks.

In Depth: LoveFilm vs Netflix: which is best for you?

Gary Marshall — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:00:00 GMT

LoveFilm vs Netflix: features compared

Amid much fanfare, streaming video giant Netflix has launched in the UK to compete with the Amazon-owned LoveFilm which launched its streaming service back in 2009.

There's no doubt that streaming video is more affordable than ever, but is there anything worth watching - and if there is, do you have to huddle over your PC to watch it?

We've already posted a Hands on: Netflix UK review, but how does it compare to its rival?

LoveFilm vs Netflix: price

Netflix offers unlimited streaming for £5.99 per month, compared to LoveFilm's £4.99 streaming-only LoveFilm Instant package. You can sign up for Netflix here and LoveFilm here.

Not all of LoveFilm's content will be available to package deal subscribers - of the 6,699 titles available to watch online via the LoveFilm Player, 1,011 are pay-per-view. Netflix, on the other hand, has said it won't be providing pay-per-view content in the UK.

PPV: LoveFilm isn't an all-you-can-watch offering: roughly one-sixth of its catalogue is pay-per-view

LoveFilm vs Netflix: devices

Both services are compatible with PCs, Macs, iPads, PS3s, Xbox 360s with Gold accounts, some Smart TVs and some Blu-Ray players, although LoveFilm only streams its pay-per-view content to PCs and Macs. Netflix is also compatible with the Apple TV, PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Wii, and it has streaming apps for both iOS and Android.

LoveFilm vs Netflix: does it have Breaking Bad?

Netflix has the first two seasons of Breaking Bad ready for streaming, but LoveFilm's only got it in its DVD rental catalogue, not its streaming one. That's a rare content win for Netflix, though: while its TV selection is very good its selection of movies isn't as up to date as LoveFilm's.

BETTER SHOWS: We think Netflix is better for TV shows, but LoveFilm is better for movies

Lovefilm vs Netflix: movies

While LoveFilm's movie catalogue contains a better selection of recent films than its rival, neither service is going to delight you if you're after films fresh from the multiplexes: they're more like half-stocked supermarket DVD sections, so for example LoveFilm has Source Code but not Limitless, Troll Hunter but not The Inbetweeners Movie (although it's got that in its DVD rental catalogue), The Guard but not Due Date (that one's DVD again), The Killing but not The Adjustment Bureau (yep, DVD-only) and so on - and Netflix doesn't have any of them.

Maybe the supermarket analogy is the wrong one: it's more like the DVD carousel you'll find in a rural petrol station with three Chuck Norris movies, You've Got Mail and a copy of Elf.

Both sites are clearly suffering from a problem that's plagued online video for years: the tech is there, but the studios aren't hugely keen on providing their best, most up-to-date content for a cut of £5.99 per month. Luckily for the studios, nobody on the internet knows how to copy, convert or distribute dodgy copies of films.

PLENTY OF CHOICE: LoveFilm's catalogue seems much broader than Netflix's, especially when it comes to films

LoveFilm vs Netflix: quality

LoveFilm streams are 2Mbps if your connection's up to the job, but Netflix can take advantage of faster broadband connections to deliver HD streaming where available. "Where available" is key: older content isn't necessarily in HD, and can look pretty awful on a big-screen PC or TV. Netflix recommends at least a 3Mbps broadband connection for 720p HD, although we'd double that to be on the safe side. Both services will adjust the streaming on the fly to deliver the best picture possible.

GOOD QUALITY: LoveFilm might not offer true HD, but picture quality is still perfectly decent from across the room

NOT ALL HD: Just because Netflix can do HD video doesn't mean all its films are HD. Swingers here certainly isn't

LoveFilm vs Netflix: verdict

Both services are operating in what's called the post-DVD window, so if you want a more up-to-date selection of movies than your local Tesco offers then neither service is for you. However, that doesn't mean they're without merit. They're much cheaper and have a broader selection than satellite or cable TV movie channels, and Netflix in particular is very good for catching up on those TV box sets you kept meaning to buy but never got around to.

We suspect the best way to use the services is as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, pay-per-view services: for example, the combination of a Netflix or LoveFilm account and a couple of pay per view selections, iTunes rentals (or - gasp! - a real DVD, all round and shiny like movies used to be!) still works out cheaper than subscribing to a bunch of movie channels.

Netflix is the simpler, more user-friendly service and it's the one compatible with the most devices, but LoveFilm has the better selection of content. We'd suggest trying both, and if they don't have what you want then try again a few months down the line when all the content deals are in place. The technology's here, but the content hasn't quite caught up with it yet.

NETFLIX QUALITY: When the source material is good quality, Netflix's picture quality gleams. It's not Blu-Ray, but it's not bad

In Depth: Winners and losers of CES 2012

Dan Grabham — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:13:00 GMT

The winners and losers of CES 2012

Now that our jetlag is subsiding, it's time to take a look back at the utter madness that was, and always is, the Consumer Electronics Show.

CES 2012 didn't have a huge amount of absolute stand out kit, but for a time of financial uncertainty, there sure were a lot of launches and the industry certainly hasn't been shy in terms of coming forward with expensive designs.

This was the biggest CES ever, with 1.861 million square feet of exhibit space, beating the previous record from 2008. 153,000 attendees dragged themselves to Las Vegas to traipse the miles around the show and Sin City's infamous megaresort hotels.

So let's look at some of the key themes and check out who did well and who did rather less well.

Ultrabooks are great, but there's a problem

Much to our chagrin, Intel is succeeding in making the Ultrabook moniker stick. Ultrabooks were one of the dominant themes of this CES with so many jumping on the bandwagon to make something that, in basic hardware terms at least, is comparable with the MacBook Air. Trouble is, Intel has a big problem - not that Intel's Mooly Eden would admit it (below). Ultrabooks may be desirable, but they are too expensive. And because of the spec that Intel has put together is tight, it doesn't leave manufacturers much wiggle-room. Hence we're going to see cheaper Ultrabooks, but they'll be lower spec. Core i3 and smaller SSDs won't be uncommon. It's a shame, but inevitable.

Intel does phones

It was also a massive show for Intel as it announced bone fide partners for its Atom chip in smartphones. Lenovo and Motorola have taken a big punt, the latter especially considering its ARM heritage. We can only assume a huge sum of cash was involved. We can't wait to see how this one develops next month at Mobile World Congress 2012 in sunny Barcelona.

Microsoft's move seems odd….

While it's pretty understandable that Microsoft would want to withdraw from doing a keynote talk every year (the last few have been super dull), it seems bizarre that Microsoft would withdraw from having any presence at the show. Still, that's what is currently happening, and the company's massive booth space has already been sold elsewhere for CES 2013. Microsoft's strength is in its partners and it will be happy enough that people like Nokia, Samsung and Lenovo will carry the fight for Windows and Windows Phone – although we'd have expected to see more from the next Xbox by this time next year…

….but they won't be alone

While Microsoft will join Apple has a CES absentee in 2013, we reckon they might join the growing band of companies eschewing a stand in favour of suites at a Las Vegas hotel. Asus and Acer had a presence elsewhere, for example. But while meeting space is allowed, we've seen the CES organisers try and restrict actual exhibiting elsewhere in the past. Dell, who had a massive product and meeting room presence in a separate hotel in 2011, weren't there in 2012 – their key product, the Dell XPS 13, was launched in Intel boss Paul Otellini's keynote.

Nokia is back. Kind of

While the Sony, HTC and LG phone launches at the show were all very nice, Nokia grabbed the headlines. Nokia is beginning from a standing start in the US, but the Lumia 900 was very well received at the show and the when Stephen Elop was joined on stage by Steve Ballmer was a bright moment in a turgid day of press conferences. What's more, a lot of people actually really like Nokia's latest generation of Windows Phones. Even us. The big question, of course, is whether Finland's finest can translate its successful buzz into sales and market share – not only in the US, but elsewhere too.

OLED is still way off mass market

We loved the Samsung and LG 55-inch OLEDs we saw at CES. LG's effort is a ridiculously thin 4mm thick. But while the sets will launch this year, the cost is set to remain probative. $5,000 is the latest estimate for Samsung's Super OLED. Wow. Also interesting was Sony's prototype display technology called Crystal LED, though the company says this new technology is "parallel to its continued development and commercialization of OLED displays." Odd.

The future's in the cloud

Yes, so we've heard it all before. But the OnLive Desktop for iPad really does give us an insight into how we might be using remote computers for tasks more complex than our thin and light portable devices can handle. Here it's about bringing a full desktop experience to the iPad. Clever stuff.

Windows 8 blurs the lines

It's an Ultrabook but it's also a Windows 8 tablet. That's the mantra of one of the finest pieces of hardware we saw at CES 2012, the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga. It sets the tone for what is set to be a massive year for mobile computing. Windows 8 will drive a whole raft of devices that don't conform to the usual laptop-tablet designations and Intel is also talking about touch-based Ultrabooks too. But, once again, cost will be a massive issue with all of these options. These kind of devices won't undercut the iPad. Broadly-speaking though, we can't wait for 8.

Google TV is getting better

The Sony NSZ-GP7 set-top box and LG G6 Google TV show what Google's TV platform is capable of. And, while it's still not a brilliant solution, it is better than a lot of the existing smart TV platforms that remain slosw to start up and tedious to use.

Pie-in-the-sky prototypes

CES remains the place to show off your prototype kit. But is Razer's Project Fiona gaming tablet (pictured below) really worth bothering about? Despite all the buzz, it's a hugely thick tablet that we're betting won't ever see the light of day. We also thought Intel's Nikiski see-through notebook was just plain weird. It has a clever glass touchpad that doubles up as a touchscreen when you close the lid. Sadly though, What Laptop magazine editor James Stables reminded us of its resemblance to Windows Vista's Sideshow tech. Which was rubbish. In TV, Sharp's prototype 8K panel boasted 7,680 x 4,320 pixels. That's 16 times the resolution of HD. Remember that we hardly have any content for 4K displays as yet let alone 8K…

Well done, Lenovo

Our company of the show comes from an unlikely quarter. It may seem surprising, but Lenovo is all set to be a superpower in consumer electronics. Lenovo started the way they meant to go on, previewing laptops and tablets aplenty at the first CES event for press last Sunday. It even had the token secret device, in the form of the IdeaPad K2. But it didn't stop there. At another event on Monday it showed the awesome IdeaPad Yoga mentioned above. But then on Tuesday, Intel announced Lenovo as the first partner for Intel Atom smartphones before Lenovo uncovered the K800 handset at yet another event. It was a nightmare to cover for us journalists but, in the words of Sir Bruce, didn't they do well?

Updated: CES 2012 highlights: what you need to know

TechRadar — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:40:00 GMT

CES 2012 highlights

The world's greatest tech show - CES 2012 - kicked off on Monday 9 January (if you're a show obsessive, note that's a week later than usual).

Running until Thursday, the show sees the entire tech world descend on Las Vegas. It covers more than 1.8 million square feet and has more than 140,000 attendees from across the globe. The biggest names in technology are there to talk about their plans for 2012.

As for every CES, TechRadar is there getting hands on with the hardware that matters and bringing you the latest breaking news from the show. We have a dedicated CES 2012 channel where you can keep up with all the news.

Here are our CES 2012 highlights…

brightcove : 1399303301001

The biggest news at CES 2012

LG unveils stunning 55-inch OLED TV
Steve Ballmer gives last ever Microsoft keynote at CES
Microsoft announces Kinect for PC
Sony develops new Crystal LED tech to rival OLED
Intel promises touch-enabled Ultrabooks
iPad 3 spotted? Or is it the iPad 2S...

CES 2012: Tablets

Without an Apple presence at CES, it's a chance for other manufacturers to shout about their tablet devices. But there's not the mad rush of iPad rivals that you might expect. Poor sales of Android tablets seem to have made the big electronics giants more cautious.

brightcove : 1411796785001

That said, this week we've nodded appreciatively in the direction of the Acer Iconia Tab A700, which will come packing Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich) and a huge quad-core processor. Nice.

Toshiba has also jumped back into tablet waters with the new Excite 10, a stylish 10.1-inch Android slab that boasts a 1.2GHz dual-core TI processor and a 1,280 x 800 pixel display.

But it's Lenovo that has turned heads and widened eyes with its two new tablet models. There's the Asus Transformer-alike IdeaPad S2 running Ice Cream Sandwich and the quad-core Tegra 3-powered IdeaPad K2 (see below), which looks like a supercomputer pretending to be a clipboard.

Lenovo has also been showing off the IdeaPad Yoga, a 13.1-inch laptop/tablet that has been described as "like Microsoft's vision for the Tablet PC from 2002. Only good."

We've also had a play with the ViewSonic ViewPad E70 and the Aigopad m803. While the feisty, quad-core Asus MeMo has Amazon's Kindle Fire firmly in its sights.

Looking to the future, Nvidia has been demoing a prototype Windows 8 tablet, powered by its quad-core Tegra 3 processor. It's good. Very good. Intel should be worried.

Meanwhile, Razer's 'Project Fiona' gaming tablet (see below) has got us all frothed up about gaming on the sofa in 2012. Who needs a PlayStation Vita when you can play PC games on a tablet with two controllers? We hate those fiddly touchscreen joypads...

brightcove : 1387093883001

What of RIM? Rather than unveil a new Playbook model (that would be sheer madness...), the beleaguered Blackberry builder has upgraded its tablet software to version 2.0. We wish we had some groundbreaking features to report. We don't. See for yourself.

CES 2012: Phones

While most manufacturers will be saving their big phone launches until Mobile World Congress in February, several new smartphones have been been spotted on the plush Vegas carpets.

Having absorbed Ericsson into the Sony hive mind, the newest Xperia handsets are the first to break cover without any Ericsson branding.

The Sony Xperia S (pictured above) is essentially a Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc with HD - a 4.3-inch Reality Display (1,280 x 700 pixels), a 12MP camera and the promise of an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade in Q2.

You can also say hello to the new Sony Xperia Ion, a PlayStation-certified, dual-core (1.5GHz) smartphone with 16GB of internal storage and a 12MP rear camera.

Elsewhere, HTC has upgraded the Titan for duty on AT&T. The HTC Titan II is the same 4.7-inch, 1.5GHz Windows Phone that you might be indifferent to. But it's been souped up with a 16MP snapper, wide angle lens, dual LED flash and LTE support.

The US also gets the Nokia Lumia 800 dressed up as the Nokia Lumia 900. What's new? It's LTE-powered, larger screened (4.3 inches) and has a better front camera.

The LG Spectrum also catches the eye with a 4.5-inch IPS LCD that rivals the Retina display on the iPhone 4. While the the Huawei Ascend P1 S and Ascend P1 trumpet Super AMOLED screens and the thinnest chassis on the market. It's only 6.68mm thick.

Intel has regularly missed the boat when it comes to mobile, but that doesn't stop it trying to catch up. The chip colossus has used this year's CES to publish its reference design for smartphones, which stipulates a minimum spec for any manufacturer who wants to use its Atom chips.

Need an example? You're in luck. Lenovo has partnered with Intel to produce the Lenovo K800, an Android-powered Atom-phone with a 720p 4.5-inch display, 8MP camera, NFC and HDMI. It's good. And quite noticeably zippy. But Intel will need better phones than this to establish Atom as a credible mobile CPU.

The future of mobiles in 2012 arguably lies with quad-core handsets like Fujitsu's 1.2GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core super phone prototype. Is it 'super'? Really? The inclusion of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), a 1,280x720 4.6-inch TFT LCD, 13.1MP rear-facing camera and 4GB of RAM would suggest a big, fat "hell, yeah!"

CES 2012: Laptops

Think the laptop is dead? Far from it. Acer launched the 13.3-inch Aspire S5 during its CES 2012 press conference and promised Windows 8 Ultrabooks in the second half of the year.

Forget netbooks, chromebooks and desktop replacement systems. Ultrabooks that pay design homage to Apple's skinny Macbook Air are the new laptop form factor of choice. Without any other stand-out gadgets, they've quickly become one of the stars of the 2012 show.

Lenovo, for example, has unwrapped its good looking IdeaPad U Series ultrabooks at this year's show - the 13-inch U310 model weighs in at 1.7kg and is only 18mm thick.

Intel believes that tablets can't replace laptop computers and that we'll be even happier with a convertible Ultrabook that runs Windows 8 (and is powered by Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge Intel CPUs. Obviously).

HP's Ultrabook effort is the good-lookin' Envy 14 Spectre, which incorporates a roomier 14-inch (1,600 x 900 pixel) panel and is only 21mm thick. Under the hood there's an Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processor, and a 128GB hard drive.

Samsung, meanwhile, joins the Ultrabook club with its Series 5 devices, which will be availble in 13- and 14-inch variants with 2nd generation Intel Core i5 engines and Radeon HD graphics.

Samsung also rolled out the second generation of its Series 9 laptops with a refined 'aerodynamic design'.

LG has also jumped on the Ultrabook bandwagon, showcasing the slender LG Z330 and LG Z430 Super Ultrabooks. What's 'Super' about them? We're not sure.

The 13-inch Z330 features a Core i7 processor, a SATA3 SSD and boasts a skinny frame that's an astounding 14.7mm thick. The Z430 is a little bigger with a 14-inch display and dual SSD/HDD storage.

Other Ultrabook contenders include the HP Folio 13 and the Dell XPS 13, a gorgeous device that could seduce you with its looks before you even thought to ask about the specs. Oh yes, the specs... a 13-inch display, narrow 316 x 205mm footprint, Intel Core i5 or i7 processor, 4 gigs of memory and a 128/256GB SSD.

But the prize for strangest laptop surely goes to Intel's Nikiski see-through notebook. It isn't an Ultrabook (although a thinner version is planned), but it does feature a clever glass touchpad that doubles up as a touchscreen when you close the lid (see below).

CES 2012: HDTVs

Despite the popularity of tablets and smartphones, CES has always been about TVs. Bigger TVs, thinner TVs, Full HD TVs, 4K TVs, OLED TVs and smart Internet-connected TVs. CES 2012 is no different.

One of the stars of the show is LG's new 4mm-thick 55-inch OLED 3D HDTV, which has got Vegas crowds dribbling down their free promotional T-shirts. Only 4mm. That's thinner than your smartphone. It's quite simply stunning and still shots don't do it justice.

Not to be outdone (although it clearly has been), Samsung also has a 55-inch OLED telly of its own. Check out our photos and video.

Could this finally be the year that OLED becomes more than a headline-grabbing technology demo? Our fingers are crossed. Again. Just like last year...

As for Sony, it pressganged Hollywood star Will Smith to look impressed by its prototype Crystal LED technology. Fusing LCD and OLED, the futuristic TV works by packing in six million LEDs to give it OLED levels of clarity, colour and brightness.

In the battle of the BIG screens, LG and Sharp duked it out for the 'largest 3D TV of the show' award. Sharp came close with its 80-incher, but LG just nabbed the gong with its 84-inch ultra definition (3,840 x 2,160 pixel) set. The 1mm bezel "enhances the illusion that the 3D is borderless".

And if you think 4K2K TV is impressive, wait until you clap your eyes on Sharp's prototype 8K panel, which boasts 7,680 x 4,320 pixels. That's 16 times the resolution of HD.

Of course, the next generation of TVs will also be smarter. Sony has plans to play around with Google TV STBs, LG also has a Smart TV running Google's Android telly system, while Opera has unveiled more about its television app store.

While we wait for a Siri-powered Apple iTV, Samsung and LG have both been pimping Kinect-style gesture technology as a replacement for the remote control.

In fact, LG's system uses an add-on camera (pictured above) that looks suspiciously similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 peripheral. Samsung's tech uses the camera that's built into its 8000-series HD TVs.

Panasonic, meanwhile, enlisted the help of Justin Timberlake to launch MySpace TV, which will feature on new Viera HDTVs. Does anybody still use MySpace? And can any of them afford a TV? We're not convinced. Panasonic also has a big OLED TV in the works, but it just wasn't ready for this year's show.

CES 2012: Gadgets

What else have we been impressed by at this year's CES? Sure there have been novelty USB sticks, remote-controlled iPhone-copters and Microsoft had a tweet choir during its keynote. But here are the gadgets that have really caught our giant, Sauron-esque eye...

For a peek into the future of cloud computing, look no further than the OnLive Desktop for iPad. Want to use the Microsoft Office Suite on your tablet? OnLive is happy to oblige.

JVC has announced the world's first handheld 4K camcorder. The GY-HMQ10 can take 3,840 x 2,160 footage at 24 or 50p.

Pico projectors may not have the lustre they had when first released but there's certain companies which keep churning out the pint-sized product again and again. Check out the Optoma PK32.

If you want Apple's AirPlay but don't want to spend hundreds replacing the speakers you've already spent hundreds on, Griffin has a treat for you.

CES 2012: Cameras

PMA@CES Preview video

Photographers will doubtless be intrigued by Fujifilm's newly designed X-Trans 16-million pixel APS-C CMOS sensor. Built into the new X-Pro 1 mirrorless camera, Fuji claims that it is capable of delivering resolution of the same quality, if not superior, to a full-frame sensor. Here's our hands on: Fuji X-Pro1 review.

We've also had some hands on time with the Canon G1 X, which boasts a 14.3MP CMOS sensor, 4x optical zoom, raw shooting and Full HD video recording.

CES is also overflowing with compact cameras. Panasonic has introduced five new models to sit in its Lumix range. They include the 16.1-megapixel FS45 and 14.1-megapixel FS40 models; 16.1-megapixel Panasonic Lumix S5; the 14.1-megapixel SZ7 and the 16.1-megapixel SZ1.

Sony has added three new cameras to its enduring CyberShot range - the DSC-W610, DSC-W620 and DSC-W650. While Samsung has been showing off its WB850F and WB150F high-end compacts.

Olympus, meanwhile, has announced five new compact cameras, including a rugged "Tough" camera. The TG-320 is shockproof, waterproof and freezeproof, and is, according to Olympus, "virtually indestructible".

DLNA Premium Video streams protected content

Jools Whitehorn — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:24:00 GMT

The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) has added DLNA Premium Video to its existing standards, allowing protected films and other content to be streamed to any DLNA certified device.

DLNA-equipped devices can already access media including video and music on any other DLNA device on the same Wi-Fi network, making sharing media around the home relatively easy.

DLNA Premium Video has been developed by alliance members including Broadcom, Cisco, DirecTV, Microsoft, Sony and Verizon.

One DLNAPV device to rule them all

To benefit from the new feature, there must be at least one DLNA Premium Video device installed to act as a central hub for the other non-premium DLNA devices like tablets, phones, consoles and Blu-ray players that most people will already own.

So for example, you would only need one DLNA Video Premium set top box or PVR from your cable or satellite TV provider to be able to watch its paid-for on demand content in another room in the house.

Though at present it will require the purchase of at least one new device, some devices you already own may be upgradeable to Premium Video via a software update.

The DLNA has been demonstrating the new standard at CES 2012, but as yet no DLNA Premium Video certified devices have been announced.

OnLive streamed gaming to come preloaded on Google TVs

Jools Whitehorn — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:11:00 GMT

Google has announced that the cloud gaming service OnLive will be installed on its Google TV platform.

The OnLive platform lets users play full console titles via the cloud on a subscription basis, rather than requiring a download or physical media.

All that Google TV owners will need to start gaming is a Universal OnLive Wireless Controller which looks like a console control pad and costs just £39.99 from the OnLive website.

The complete service won't be available straight away, but Google TV users can explore the "viewer" which allows them to watch and use OnLive social features.

Vizio games

Vizio is showcasing the first TVs with the playable OnLive service built in at CES 2012 and will be the first manufacturer to feature the service in its Google TV products.

The service also allows players to try before they buy – spending up to 30 minutes playing almost any of OnLive's 200 games before having to subscribe.

It has already landed on tablets and even the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play.

With the addition of Google TV, the OnLive service is becoming an even more attractive prospect as users enjoy the benefits of being able to start a game on one device and pick it up later on another – choosing from big name games like LA Noire and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

And OnLive doesn't just deal in games – Tech Radar has just tested OnLive Desktop which gives iPad users a full Windows desktop via its cloud service.

Feedair Friend puts notifications in the red

Jools Whitehorn — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:51:00 GMT

Feedair has launched the Feedair Friend digital ticker display with Wi-Fi connectivity and LED display.

The small, aluminium-bodied device is USB-powered and sits neatly on a desktop, ready to provide updates from your digital world.

Its 147 dot matrix LED display could be just the thing to separate out the important notifications in your life, or maybe just add another information channel vying for your attention.

The data it displays is controlled via an app for iOS and Android phones. With this app you can manage what Feedair calls vidgets (visual widgets) via the Feedair Vidget Bar which sorts messages into 20 different categories including social networking and financial services.

Remember. To. Buy. Milk. Stop.

Tweets, direct emails and calendar alerts can also be displayed, though we're not sure reading a whole email on a one line display is our idea of fun.

"Digital distractions and overload are common among CE enthusiasts, so we set out to simplify and organize media updates in an at-a-glance, cohesive manner," said Feedair founder Simon Milner.

It's speech bubble form factor is certainly cute, and with Feedair actively developing its range of widgets some new and interesting ways of receiving everyday information could be just around the corner.

The Feedair Friend comes in a blue, silver, black or pink and will be on sale from Feedair's websitein March for around US$50.

Netflix takes aim at PlayStation Vita

Jools Whitehorn — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 07:49:00 GMT

Netflix, the formerly US-only movie and TV streaming service that has just launched in the UK, will be available to users of Sony's upcoming handheld console the Playstation Vita.

Film lovers will have to wait until after the PS Vita's launch on 22 February to enjoy the service on its 960 x 544px 5-inch OLED screen. Meanwhile PS3 users are eagerly waiting news of when the recently-appeared Netflix appwill go fully live in their XMB.

War games

Since Netflix launched in the UK yesterday, a price war has started with UK-based service Lovefilm. Netflix first undercut Lovefilm with a £5.99 a month unlimited streaming deal, then Lovefilm returned with a new price of just £4.99.

Where Netflix goes Lovefilm will surely follow, and vice-versa. So expect to see Lovefilm appear on the PS Vita soon after launch as well.

It's all great news for movie lovers, and the competition between the two should see them work harder to launch quickly on new platforms.

Lovefilm is already available on PS3, Xbox 360, iPad and other devices, and both Lovefilm and Netflix are offering one month free trials of their unlimited streaming services.

Samsung inTouch brings web and Skype to your TV

Jools Whitehorn — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:06:00 GMT

Samsung has taken the lens cap off a set-top camera called the inTouch which opens up a world of Skype calling and web browsing to those with older HDTVs.

Running a tweaked version of Android 2.3, it upgrades the functionality of your TV with apps including YouTube and Google News and Weather, plus big screen web browsing.

The camera even comes with its own palm-sized QWERTY keyboard remote for bashing out emails during the Corrie ad break.

Turns your old gogglebox into a Google box

Installation promises to be a doddle, as once perched atop its TV throne it simply requires connection to a Wi-Fi network and its HDMI cable plugged in the back of the TV. It has an internal microphone and speakers so there are no messy peripherals to contend with.

It's also home to a USB port so you can quickly slot in photos and bore your family and friends with the full unedited version of your snaps from your trip to the steam museum, then upload the least unpopular ones straight to Facebook.

The camera itself is a 3MP unit which delivers 720p HD video and can be tilted up and down within a 30 degree range so grandma doesn't just see the top of your head.

The InTouch looks like a handy addition to an older set, but if you're looking for the full Google TV experience, check out Lenovo's 55-inch Google TV which is the first to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

The Samsung inTouch is out in March for $199.99 in the US, with no details of a UK release yet.

iTunes nabs exclusive Avatar special edition

Chris Smith — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:50:00 GMT

A new digital edition of James Cameron's Avatar will arrive exclusively on iTunes next week.

The Avatar iTunes Extras Special Edition will bring never-seen-before special features, offering a behind the scenes insight into how the biggest movie of all time was made.

The new edition, which arrives on December 20, brings a Green Screen X-ray feature which allows viewers to movie around a scene viewing the original green screen footage, prior to the addition of CGI.

Avatar special edition for iTunes also allows lets fans "deconstruct scenes" from the movie with picture-in-picture views of how the special effects were applied.

Simultaneous views

The official press release says: "Fans can experience the global box office sensation like never before as they control scene deconstructions in simultaneous views.

"This new feature will also enable consumers to interact with the performance capture and visual effects levels in 17 of the film's scenes.

"For the first time ever, Green Screen X-ray gives users an interactive look through the visual effects levels to see the original green screen footage behind a pivotal scene."

iTunes Extras launched in 2009 aiming to compete with physical discs by offering the same range of special features, but this exclusive is the first real evidence that content providers are taking it seriously.

The iTunes special edition of Avatar is available to pre-order now from iTunes in HD and SD, but there's no 3D version as yet.

Tutorial: Best codecs for video and how to encode

Graham Morrison — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 09:00:00 GMT

Best codecs for video

Our mobile devices are faster, the way we watch videos on our TVs has changed, and the way we buy and store content is completely different from 20 years ago. We're in the middle of a home media revolution, where shelves of DVDs are being pushed into NAS boxes and discreetly hidden away.

We're only in the infancy of this revolution, though. That means we've yet to find a definitive method, and there are as many good solutions as there are pitfalls.

Codecs are the best example. If you've had anything to do with digitised video over the last 10 years, you'll know that video performance is dominated by the black art of manipulating these encoding and decoding programs. Finding the right one is a balancing act between the amount of processing that goes into creating the video file and the amount required to decode it.

Too much on the input and you'll be waiting until next Wednesday for your file. Too little and the new generation of HD decoders plugged into your TV won't have enough grunt to reconstruct the video stream at 60fps.

Codecs call for careful consideration. That's why, for high definition, it's often better to use a codec designed specifically for the job rather than one from the '90s shoe-horned into a higher bit-rate and resolution than it was ever intended for.

The same is true for any other disparate playback devices. You get the best results from a movie encoded specifically for your usage scenario, whether that's mobile access across the 3G network or playback on a wireless tablet.

We're going to help you solve these challenges using a mix of hand-on tweaks, free software and plenty of acronyms, taking you from 1990s DVD diva to 21st century streaming media mogul. You'll find everything you need to become an expert over the next six pages.

The best codecs

Best codec for high definition

H.264 & MKV

Before we start, we need to first make a distinction between the codec used to store the video data and the container used to encapsulate everything else, because the two are often confused.

The most popular container for high definition content, for example, is called Matroska, as denoted by its MKV file extension. Matroska isn't a codec in itself, because it doesn't define how to encode and decode the video data - it simply stores the bytes from a codec in such a way that MKV-compatible applications know where to find everything for playback. That could be the video, audio and subtitle data (if present), all of which can be encoded using different MKV-compatible formats and codecs.

That's why you always have a choice of which video codec to use with a container. With MKV files, for example, the choice is usually between H.264, MPEG-4 and VP3, the latter of which is based on Theora. All three use similar technology, but the first two are far better than the third.

For high definition, we'd recommend H.264. This is often represented by x264, which is the free software implementation of the codec.

Bit-rates and resolution are important too. 1080p source material has 2.25 times more pixels than 720p, and higher rates can be harder to decode on your playback hardware. As a rough approximation, we recommend generating a file with a size within the 8-12GB region for a typical two-hour HD movie. To maximise quality, aim for a 12GB+ file with a bitrate of 10+ Mbps.

As for the choice of audio codec, this is down to your AV setup's capabilities. Our preference is not to touch the audio at all and use the 'pass-through' option in your encoding software. DTS and AC3 audio streams can be passed within MKV, and this will embed an exact copy of the audio tracks, as found on your original media, within the MKV file, which should play back on your equipment the same way it would with the original.

Best codec for streaming

MPEG-4

H.264 has become one of the most common codecs for high-quality streaming across the internet thanks to portals like YouTube and Vimeo. It's therefore no surprise that it's good at providing a high quality, homogeneous and predictable video stream across a limited bandwidth.

It's a great choice for streaming too, if you encode your video and drop it into a MOV or MP4 file, but we've found that its closely related alternative, MPEG-4, offers a similar pedigree and is usually a better choice at low bitrates over limited bandwidth.

The relationship between MPEG-4 and H.264 is complicated, as they're both parts of a wider MPEG-4 specification, but it's also a codec that's closely related to the data on a DVD that's streamed as digital television. That means it can produce better and more robust results under bandwidth and processor limitations.

There are as many container formats for MPEG-4 as there are for H.264. They include stalwarts like AVI, MOV and the raw transport stream (TS), which you will often have found dumped from your DVB hardware, as well as newer variants like MP4 and MKV. Which you choose will depend on the compatibility of your playback device, but encoding them shouldn't be too difficult.

The only reliable free tool is the open source FFMPEG utility, which you can use to create MPEG-4 compatible files, although there are plenty of expensive commercial options available that may stick closer to the original specification.

When it comes to encoding, the main limiting factor is available bandwidth rather than playback hardware. You may want to stream video across a wireless-N network, for example, and while its specification may boast a transfer speed of 108Mbps, the results are seldom as fast as promised.

Thanks to the vagaries of distance, interference, other users and hardware, wireless 802.11n is seldom fast enough for high definition video, and anything with a lower bandwidth is going to require a compromise. The same is probably true of your broadband connection. You might want to stream videos across the internet from your NAS, for instance, but this operation will be limited by your broadband upload speeds, which are often far less than 2Mbps.

This means you need to find a compromise between resolution, bandwidth and quality that hits your bandwidth sweet spot, and unlike the limitless world of high definition, you'll also need to compress the audio. The codec you choose will depend on the playback hardware, but the most common options is MP3 encoded through Lame.

Best codec for iOS

H.264 and MOV

Even Apple's portable devices are constrained by bandwidth and hardware. That means you need to make as many cuts as you can without sacrificing quality. If you're encoding video for playback on an iPad, for example, it makes good sense to scale your original material to 1,024 x 768 before encoding.

This is good practice for any encoding job where you know the end platform is the only place your files are likely to be played. You should also consider whether you plan to output the video from the device to a bigger screen. For example, you can connect an iPad to a TV and get 720p output, which may affect your choice of resolution. Apple's mobile devices also combine with the software to provide excellent video acceleration, getting the best possible video quality and battery life from your device.

In order to capitalise on these advantages, your video files need to adhere to Apple's strict codec discipline, which at least makes the job of choosing a codec easier. For best results on your iOS device, you need to choose an MOV container using the H.264 codec. 29.97fps (NTSC) is the best framerate to choose, which you can enter as 30,000/1,001 if you're using FFMPEG, and audio should use the AAC codec with a bitrate of around 160kbps.

Best codec for Android

H.264 or AAC-LC

Android devices don't have the same degree of lock-in as their Apple counterparts, which means you're free to install a media player like VLC that can handle many kinds of video file. There's no standard hardware configuration, so playback performance and capability are specific to each device.

Many will accelerate Flash, or even DivX files, because hardware acceleration is more general and not limited to a single codec, but there are still some Google-endorsed standards based on H.264 and MPEG-4. Google's documentation recommends H.264 with a bitrate of 500kbps, and AAC-LC at 128kbps for audio.

Resolution should be the same as the destination device, and you can use an MP4, 3GP or even a raw TS as a container. Google now has its own container and codec combination in WebM. This is also worth a try, because the VP8 codec it uses is closely related to H.264 and is likely to benefit from acceleration now that Google owns Motorola's smartphone division.

The law

Here in the UK, when you format-shift your CD and DVD collection from the discs you own to another device, you're currently breaking the law. That's because, in legal terms, only the owner of the copyrighted material can permit its duplication.

This is also a law that's been openly flouted since the 1980s, when we all started taping singles from the top 40 countdown on a Sunday evening. Music and video players, from Microsoft's Zune to Apple's iPod, have been allowed to flourish despite this obvious flaw in UK law.

This is unlike the US, which has a fair-use caveat that allows personal copying if you're moving the media to a different device for personal use, but things in the UK could be about to change.

The Hargreaves report on intellectual property, a preview of which was published in May [PDF], recommends that the government amends the rules on format shifting to allow for a stance similar to that of the US.

In August, the cabinet declared its full support for those recommendations, hopefully paving the way for a change in the law. Until then, you can't legally copy a DVD or CD that you own and stream it to another device. Consider yourself warned.

Handling audio

We've spent a lot of space discussing video encoding, but in some ways, audio can be even more important. When you're streaming a movie, video data can be scaled to fit the end resolution and format regardless of the input format, but audio isn't as flexible.

If you only include the surround channels, and your playback device supports only stereo, you won't typically hear anything. Some players can downmix a surround stream, but not many, and the ones that can are usually PC-based.

The solution is to encode the stereo and surround tracks if you want to keep the surround data, or just the stereo mix if you don't. Tools like Handbrake will let you downmix a surround stream if that's the only one available, or choose the stream you want to encode from the Track dropdown menu.

If you want to re-encode a surround stream, you can usually choose between AC3 and DTS, depending on which codecs are installed, and lower their bitrates. This will preserve the multi-channel aspect of the audio, but you will need to make sure your playback device is connected digitally to an amplifier that can decode it.

How to encode your movies

Encode your movies

Provided you're legally entitled to do so, getting your data off an optical disc and onto your streaming server or portable device isn't difficult. There are two stages.

The first decodes the disc and grabs the raw data from it, so you'll need the hardware required by your media. This step might be redundant if the source of your material is a legitimate unlocked download, or perhaps a recording from a digital television receiver or PC-based DVB card.

The second stage takes this raw data and runs it through the number crunching routines that generate the final file. Success on the first part depends on the protection used by the source disc. If there's none, then you'll be able to copy and encode your movies in a single step. If there's encryption, then you'll first need to remove this from the data before you can begin the transcoding stage.

Selling software that side-steps this protection is legally dubious, especially in the UK, but there are free tools available that will do the job, leaving you with either a copy of the DVD on your hard disk, or a new ISO burned to disk.

The best tool we've found for transcoding is called Handbrake. This is an open source application that harnesses the power of several free codecs, including FFMPEG, x264 and libtheora, and turns your video data into a file you can easily stream or move to a portable device. You don't even need to worry about the intricacies of codec configuration.

Handbrake includes a list of profiles you can use to quickly select the end device to load the best values into the codecs. These can be previewed and altered before you commit yourself to the final process.

Encoding a film, especially in high definition, can easily take several hours. But the length of time is dependent on the power of your system, so this might be a good time to upgrade that aging Core2Duo you're sitting at.

How to encode your movies with Handbrake

1. Select a source

We installed the the nightly build of Handbrake because it often has cutting edge features and speed improvement, but the official release is more stable. When you run it, you need to select the source location for your movie. After clicking in the 'Source' icon, select the optical drive, folder or file you want to convert.

2. Choose a profile

Once Handbrake has scanned for chapter information, select a preset for the destination format and choose a title from the source. If your presets don't include Android devices, choose 'Reset' from the Options menu. Handbrake defaults to the longest title, which is probably what you need unless you're after the outtakes.

3. Tweak presets

Adjust the video and audio encoding options to suit your own requirements (see the main text for some hints), and use the 'Picture' page to change the resolution, if required. You can use the 'Preview' window to generate a 10-second clip with your settings, then click 'Start' to generate the final file.

How to build the best media PC

Transcoding a video from one format to another takes a lot of CPU power, so a powerful machine will save you hours of waiting and, eventually, your sanity. But before you hand over your credit card details to your favourite retailer, you should first consider whether an upgrade is really necessary and how often you're likely to want to encode a movie.

Initially you'll want to transfer as much of your current collection as you still watch to your digital library. That's a big hurdle, but also a finite one. It might not be worth investing in the best hardware if it's only going to save you a couple of weeks of pain.

Your super video transcoding PC might become a costly white elephant whose resources you're unlikely to test again after an initial splurge. If you only buy a few movies a month, there's no real need to upgrade your hardware. Anything from the last five years will handle even a high definition movie overnight. That said, if you want an excuse to upgrade your machine, a big encoding job is the perfect opportunity.

Processor overheads

As with any upgrade, the best place to start is with the CPU. Most of the codecs we've mentioned use the free x264 library, which is widely considered to be one of the best available, regardless of price. It will use as much processing power as you throw at it, so the CPU question is easily answered with 'the best you can afford'.

If money is no limit, that means something sporting Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture, with its requirement for a LGA1155 CPU slot and memory accelerating potential of up to quad-speed DDR3-1333. We'd recommend the Intel Core i7 2600k, which can now be had for around £240. It has four cores and it's fast.

If you're looking for something a little cheaper, or a CPU that might not require a complete architecture overhaul, AMD's six-core Phenom II X6 Thuban represents great value for money for that amount of processing power, as it can now be bought for around £120.

Video encoding is also hungry for memory, so fit as much as either your motherboard or wallet can take. The more you add, the less your system will have to read either your slow optical drive, or the hard disk.

Unfortunately, graphics cards don't change the CPU equation, despite the promise of GPU-accelerated movie encoding. Modern graphics cards, and the APIs their vendors have built to access their raw number crunching abilities, have failed to offer the advantages that seemed imminent in 2008.

The current consensus on the encoding software that's able to shoe-horn a GPU into encoding duties is that the quality of the output just isn't good enough. As a result, CPU grinding is still the best route for the serious media collector.

The only good news is that this could save you a few pounds, because the latest Sandy Bridge Intel CPU's offer SoC - systems on a chip - and these include graphics. They might not be good enough for the latest games, but they're definitely good enough to show you what you're doing while you fine-tune your Handbrake codec parameters, and for playback.

It might also be worth investing in a screen capable of 1,920 x 1,080 if you want to check the encoding quality of your high definition material without moving it to your television.

Finally, for the hardware, don't forget to add an optical drive that can read your media. SATA II Blu-Ray players can be bought for as little as £50.

With your hardware sorted out, you just need to choose your operating system. There's nothing wrong with whatever version of Windows you've already got, but you will need the latest updates to version 7 for the modern chip designs and drivers, and a 64-bit installation is essential if you've got more than 4GB of RAM at your disposal.

Storage issues

There's no getting around the fact that movies take up a lot of space, which means your storage provision is just as important as the rest of your hardware. Capacity is probably the most important feature to consider, because you may be storing your entire collection on the same machine.

However, you don't need to store all your films on an internal drive. A portable remote drive attached to a PogoPlug is a great solution, as external drives are readily available with 2TB of space, for example, for about £60. Failing that, look for a NAS that offers streaming built-in.

For the internal drive, speed becomes a more important factor. The faster the drive, the more quickly your super-fast CPU will be able to crunch through the data. The fastest drives you can get are solid state, and while they're relatively limited in terms of storage capacity, as long as you're not planning to store the resulting files on the same drive, you won't encouter any problems. You can now get 120GB of SSD storage with a SATA II interface and a 3.5-inch form factor for £140.

Media playback hardware

The hardware you use to access your newly complied media collection is utterly dependent on the device it's being connected to. Our recommended storage solution is a Pogoplug, which is capable of streaming media using a wide variety of protocols. If you're playing your movies on an Android or iOS device, you can download a free app that can access your data through the cloud and stream content directly from your storage device, for example.

Unless you're happy connecting your laptop directly to your TV, you'll need a hardware streaming client. The premium version of Pogoplug, like many other streaming servers, can send video data using the UPnP protocol, and dozens of devices will be able to transform this into high definition video.

You might already have a suitable device sitting under your TV, because two of the most readily accessible devices are Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 games consoles. If you do need a separate unit, we recommend investing in one of the latest Popcorn Hour boxes, which are quiet, simple to use and capable of playing virtually any codec you throw at them.

Local streaming and movies on the go

Local streaming

Now you've got your content encoded and ready to go, learn how to stream it across your local network to any device Networking is the most important part of your setup to get right and can easily become the weakest link in the chain, making all those codec refinements you've just spent an hour on redundant.

There are two principle aspects of networking that affect video streaming. The first is bandwidth, because streaming high definition video is probably the most bandwidth intensive task you're likely to perform, short of running a Tor exit node.

The second is reliability. This is important because even if you have the bandwidth, you also need to ensure that packets are transferred not just quickly, but with enough consistency to ensure your player never goes hungry. It's not like web browsing or downloading game updates - video needs to arrive at your playback device as a predictable and constant stream of blocks.

This provision of data starts at the PC or NAS that holds the videos. Data access needs to be quick enough, which isn't always the case with older units or cheaper NAS devices. You can easily work out how much bandwidth you need because the bitrate value for video encoding is often the same metric used for network speed. If your total bitrate exceeds that of the available bandwidth, you're likely to run into problems.

This competition for bandwidth can cause problems with wireless networks in particular. Any 802.11n wireless gateway will have enough theoretical bandwidth, but not if slower devices are connected at the same time, or if several people are streaming video at once. That's what makes them fail.

The obvious answer is to have two networks - one for video streaming and the other for everything else. Both networks could even be wireless, because several modern wireless routers, like the FritzBox 7390, can now run two frequency bands side by side, effectively offering the advantage of two networks without the hardware overhead. This lets you set your family up on one, for example, and your video network on the other.

As the hub of your network, the router is vitally important. You might want to consider using a standalone switch rather than an ADSL/wireless/router combination, because these are less likely to overheat in use and let you siphon off your video network from your standard connections.

For the ultimate in bandwidth provision, we recommend using a powerline network for your video data and a wireless router for everything else. Ethernet through a powerline network is slightly more costly than wireless, as you'll need a plug capable of AV speeds for both the router, your NAS and each playback client. But if you've already spent a fortune on the equipment that can make the most of HD content, as well as the movies to play on it, the extra £100-150 for those three units is worth it.

They're also plug and play, and after a few button presses, you'll have a network that won't destroy the suspense in the gas station scene from No Country for Old Men just because someone else is microwaving noodles.

The final network consideration is the limit on your upload bandwidth. For domestic ADSL installations, this is likely to be the most limiting factor in streaming your movies to your devices while you're out and about. Typical upload speeds are in the region of 500-800Kbps, for example, which is enough for a low resolution, medium quality film.

But even this number can vary, depending on your distance from the exchange. Users of an ISP that support Annex M, like O2 and Be, or BT's new Infinity broadband will have between 2 and 10Mbps, which are slightly more flexible. But it does mean you'll have to re-encode high definition material for both your television at home and for your portable devices, if you want to stream movies to your phone, tablet or laptop while you're stuck waiting for delayed aircraft at Heathow's Terminal 5.

Movies on the go

Getting content off your LAN and onto the internet can be tricky. You could run your own server, forwarding ports manually and ensuring the setup is secure, or you could use cloud storage like Dropbox, but both are convoluted.

The best option we've found is to use PogoPlug. This is a software and a hardware solution, and the best description of its facilities is that it provides a DropBox replacement where you supply the storage. With the desktop software installed on your PC, for instance, you can share specific files and folders with your online account. As long as your PC is on, you can access those files though a suite of mobile apps, desktop tools and web portals without any further configuration.

If you don't want to leave your PC on, you can buy a hardware PogoPlug unit that will connect to a USB hard drive to provide always-on access.

For movie lovers, the Android and iPhone apps will stream your movies from any PogoPlug source, depending on the video format, and you can use the web browser interface for any other device like a laptop. This works brilliantly at home, where fast wireless provides a seamless stream of data to your palm.

But the PogoPlug software can also stream video outside of your LAN. For a one off $29 payment, you can stream data from your LAN through the internet to any other Pogo-compatible device without any further configuration. This is ideal if you don't have the patience for messing with firewalls or setting up your own servers, and PogoPlugs web interface makes managing your content easy.

Just install the desktop client, select the folders you want to share, and install the client apps on your chosen device. As soon as you've created an account, registered the premium upgrade and synced your collection, you'll be able to stream movies and browse your image collection immediately.

UPnP servers

The PogoPlug is a great plug-and-play solution, but there are many alternatives that may not be quite so convenient but might offer greater flexibility.

Even Microsoft's default media player can act as a UPnP server, automatically streaming your content to other UPnP clients on your network. But another good option is a modern NAS from the likes of Qnap and Synology.

The latest firmware on these boxes include UPnP, iTunes and web streaming without any extra effort, and both manufacturers also offer iPhone and Android helper applications that can be used to view content and upload data to your NAS box while you're out and about. If you need terabytes of storage, a NAS box is the best option.

Alternatively, you can run a server on a PC. This has the disadvantage of always needing to be on to be accessible, but it is cheap. The free TVersity server, for instance, can stream almost any format to any UPnP client and is also very good at converting between formats on the fly. This is great if you've got an MOV file that won't play on a PlayStation 3, for example, because TVersity will make the changes itself.

Stream movies to your mobile with PogoPlug

1. Install the software

A PogoPlug source can be either a desktop application for Windows and OS X, or a hardware device connected to some storage. The desktop option is free if you'll limit your streaming to your LAN, and confi guration is easy. Register an account at PogoPlug.com, install the software and select the folders you want to share.

2. Add the content

You can now add the files you want to have access to. If you've shared your Windows 'My Videos' folder, for example, move your transcoded movie fi les into this folder and log into the web interface. Within a few moments, you should see your content overview updated to include the new fi les you've just added.

3. Watch a movie

Now your content is accessible from your desktop and registered at PogoPlug, you can use any access route to play back your collection. On an iOS device, for example, log in with the same account credentials and navigate to the file. You can stream immediately or download to watch later in another application.

TVs and cars are the future of music streaming, says Sony

Kate Solomon — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:44:00 GMT

Having taken care of games consoles, smartphone and tablets, Sony reckons that televisions and cars are the next bastion of music streaming.

Speaking at a roundtable discussion TechRadar attended about the future of the digital music sphere, Tim Shaaf, president of Sony Network Entertainment, cited research that suggests 161 million people will be subscribed to a digital music service by 2016.

And alongside hardware bundles and ad-funded enticements, it's televisions and cars that will boost that figure over the next five years.

"It's clear from all our research that people are listening to music at home and in their living rooms, which is why we started this service in the living room," he said, alluding to Sony's Music Unlimited service which is available over the PlayStation Network.

"But getting people used to streaming music through their televisions is the hardest leap to make – we've had so many decades of training about how it works and how it fits into your lifestyle."

Doin' swell

And what of the automobiles? "We're extremely excited about this because customers make choices about which cars to buy based on entertainment. It's a huge opportunity," said Schaaf.

"But it's going to take time as you have to solve complicated connectivity issues, ensure driver safety… but it's coming."

Omnifone, the company that powers Sony's Music Unlimited service (as well as providing streaming for BBM Music, HP and Sony Ericsson), agrees that music streaming is about to hit the road:

"Cars and the next really big movement for digital music subscriptions," said CEO Jeff Hughes. "There's a growing acceptance that you have to pay for music – it's a real parallel with the pay TV market – at first there was reluctance but people got used to the idea of paying for extra television channels."

Gaga for gaming

But Universal is looking to social gaming to publicise its digital music offerings, so look out for more Gagaville-style gaming crossovers.

"Zynga has a huge audience and has really cracked the freemium model," said Oliver Barnes, the director of global digital media business at Universal Music Group.

"What it's done is built a really effective pool of users willing to pay for virtual goods online. We're working with a lot of social media gaming companies because they know how to monetise online."

Week in Tech: Spotify, streaming and dying discs

TechRadar — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:30:00 GMT

It's amazing how quickly technology changes: when Week in Tech first wrote about DVDs the hardware cost thousands; now, DVD has been superseded by Blu-Ray and you can get a decent player for as little as £65.

Our round-up of the best Blu-Ray players will help you find the right kit for under the TV - but chances are it's the last disc-based movie or music player you'll ever buy.

We've mentioned the death of the disc before, and the nails in its coffin keep on coming.

Microsoft's boosting its cloud-based SkyDrive service to encourage us to store stuff on its servers rather than on our hard disks - something that'll come in handy when we're using Office on iPads - and streaming music service Spotify aims to render the CD even more rendundant than it already is.

According to Spotify boss Daniel Ek, "Spotify's mission was simple: give people access to all the music all of the time. And make it legal."

Rather than owning music, Spotify thinks you should just stream it - and to make that easier and more entertaining, it's announced an API (Application Programming Interface) that enables developers to create Spotify apps to help you find music, discover lyrics or anything else music-related.

Our columnist Gary Marshall thinks it's "an enormously clever idea", but the idea of Spotify "getting third parties to plug the holes in its product and provide it with content for free... [is] quite breathtakingly cynical."

Spotify Apps: bothered?

Marshall points out that not everybody loves Spotify - artists such as Coldplay, Adele and Tom Waits didn't put their recent albums on the service, fearing lost sales - and warns that "instead of being destinations in their own right [app developers' sites] are becoming spokes in Spotify's wheel."

So are those spokes any good? Kate Solomon has been kicking Spotify's virtual tyres and found them to be something of a mixed bunch.

"While some of the apps are simply album reviews with a one-click process to get you listening to the album in question, others are much more ingenious and go some way to solving the music discovery problem that Spotify has always had," she says. While The Guardian's app is pretty hopeless, others are much better and the Last.fm app is "the shining jewel in Spotify's app-laden crown".

It's not perfect. Some services are US-only, others aren't much cop and Solomon wonders if Spotify's got its priorities straight: as she points out:

"We published an article on 8 things we'd like to see from Spotify in August 2010 and thus far only folders for playlists have come to fruition." Nevertheless it's an interesting way for Spotify to broaden its appeal "and we can't fault Spotify for not just resting on its laurels".

Spotify isn't the only streaming service we've been playing with this week: we've had our hands on OnLive and Gaikai too. Can cloud-based gaming really deliver the goods given our crappy, congested broadband connections? Phil Iwaniuk found out.

It's definitely cost-effective: "Think about how many big-budget single player blockbusters you've played recently that were over in a matter of hours. If you could have bought a three-day pass for them, how many hundreds of shinies would you have saved?" Iwaniuk writes.

But it won't tempt the hardcore just yet, not least because while lag has largely been addressed some of the visuals are akin to YouTube clips rather than crisp, clear HD:

"Hardware manufacturers are unlikely to go bust at the expense of cloud gaming. PC traditionalists will always want to own and play their content locally, enthusiasts will gladly pay £500 for a graphics card and twitch gamers will always look to gain a technological advantage over the competition."

Buying Guide: Best Christmas gifts for gadget-loving cooks

TechRadar — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 10:00:00 GMT

Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat – don't bother putting a penny in the old man's hat, though, you'll need that to put towards one of these culinary contraptions.

If the technophile in your life is more excited about cooking the Christmas dinner than eating it, our round up of the top kitchen gadgets should give you an idea or two for what to stuff in their stocking this festive season.

Beep Egg

Price: £15.99

Web: Firebox.com

Egg boiling is a tricky business. Over-do it and you'll be left with a hard-boiled waste of space. Under-do it and you're stuck with slimy egg white goo all over your soldiers. Not a good start to the day – BeepEgg means an end to all this egg-based woe. Pop it in the pan with your eggs and it'll beep out the tune to Killing Me Softly when your eggs are soft boiled, I Wish I Was A Hen for medium and the Carmina Burana theme when they're hard boiled. Wonderful.

Bodum Bistro Blender Stick

Price: £57.99

Web: Dunelm Mill

Bodum describes the Bisto Blender Stick as a kitchen essential, and it's not far off – hand blenders make it easy for the chef in your life to whip up everything from soups to soufflés. They'll be whisking, chopping, mashing and whipping like a pro in no time at all. What we like about this particular one is that eye-catching orange, green and purple shades it comes in.

Griffin iPad cabinet mount

Price: £63.00

Web: Amazon

We're straying into dangerous territory here because you may have to get your loved one an iPad to stand in it, but the Griffin iPad cabinet mount will handily hang their recipe-displaying slate in style.

It can be fixed to the underside of a cupboard, holding that precious tablet out of the way of the chef's frantic mixing or over-enthusiastic sieving. And when the washing up's done and you're sitting down to a nice mince pie fresh from the oven, just fold the stand away under the shelf and you won't even know it's there. Yours for £63 – iPad sold separately.

Pantone digital scales

Price: £25

Web: Heals

If your epicurean loved one likes a bit of style along with substance, these are the scales for them. The Pantone kitchen scales weigh ingredients digitally leaving no room for error, with the added bonus of coming in eye-catching colours and the now-familiar Pantone design. The scales are available in purple, black and what we'd call pink but must bow to the colour experts at Pantone, who brand it red.

Kitchen Aid artisan stand mixer

Price: £420

Web: Currys

This one may come as no surprise. We could recommend any number of other food mixers, but we just know that the cuisine-lover in your life doesn't want any of them: it's the Kitchen Aid artisan stand mixer or nothing. Kitchen Aid's iconic device works brilliantly, looks gorgeous and you can get all kinds of clever add-ons that make it so much more than a mixer – pasta maker, mincer, sausage stuffer: you name it. The only downside is the price – in the UK it'll set you back a hefty £420.

In Depth: Take Windows Media Center to the next level

Neil Mohr — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 12:00:00 GMT

Power up Media Center: Sharing and display

It finally feels like we're living in the future, there are indeed flying cars, people are getting robotic limbs and our insect overlords have ushered in a third decade of peace and prosperity. Mmm, one of those may not have happened, but we are certainly in a brave new world of digital innovation.

Despite that thanks to terrible companies blocking innovation, pushing their own awful systems and agendas we're stuck in a world where playing file A on device B via network C still isn't a simple thing.

It's all our stuff and it's all on our paid-for networks and yet that's not good enough. It doesn't help that Microsoft, Apple and whoever next controls the majority, thinks its system is best, be it Windows or iTunes. Frankly we think they're all awful, anything – as Apple should well know – that comes between you and doing what you want, is unnecessary.

Nothing highlights this more than with media. Apple's success shows it got it right, people just need a simple, stylish one-click system to play and enjoy their music and video. But where both Apple and Microsoft got it wrong is with the restrictive ecosystem they both implemented.

Media Center is annoying and limited, iTunes can be elegant but in certain ways is even more restrictive. What you want is a system in place that enables you to enjoy your media, no matter what it is or where it is, on whatever device you happen to have. Thankfully we have the answer, or answers.

From slapping Windows Media Center around the face and neck until it behaves, to installing complete replacements for it, there are ways you can simply get your media better formatted so programs display glamorous posters and details.

None of this effectively changes how you might currently store your media, it's just adding or improving the existing software layer so it interacts far better with it.

The main key to all of this however, is using a server, which is a scary name for simply having a central storage box. This could be your main PC or a box under the stairs but providing better access to the media stored on it will transform how you enjoy it all.

Windows Media Center on steroids

Have you done this: clicked the Start Menu Windows Media Center link, been vaguely impressed by its opening animation, bored by its set-up process and then instantly confused by why it even exists? Join the club.

Part of the problem is people often use Windows Media Center (WMC) on a desktop system, where it makes no sense; you're best off with Windows Media Player every time. Another key issue is that WMC is designed for remote control use, with you and your bum firmly entrenched on a sofa. But the killer by far is that by default it can't play your favourite files.

Before we do anything the first thing you'll want to do is make sure WMC is capable of playing the widest range of music and video files possible.

Annoyingly, Windows Vista and 7 altered the way WMC treats system codecs, effectively ignoring the standard installed ones. The situation is further complicated by 64-bit systems using WMC and the sheer number of possible codecs, subtitles and audio decoders out there.

A minimalist approach is to just install the latest Haali Media Splitter from haali.su/mkv this will provide playback, however you will certainly find some more advanced audio codecs missing. We found many people recommending the codec pack from Shark007.net, it is a somewhat overly complicated pack but it offers complete compatibility and a 64-bit companion suite.

Once installed make sure that when you start the configuration tool from the Start Menu to right-click and choose 'Run as Administrator'. Just select the 'Shark007 Recommended Settings' at the bottom and you're away. Playing the field

Now that you know WMC is going to happily play everything you throw at it, plus, almost as importantly, create those pretty thumbnails, just how are you going to enjoy Media Center? In the past you may have thought of a networked HTPC, today even a lowly netbook connected to a HDTV can do the trick with HD content, and do it far more quietly.

We would recommend nabbing a cheap WMC USB infrared remote controller, as they will make your media life a touch more luxurious and work with many other media players as well. eBay should put you right for less than a tenner.

While you can store files locally on the laptop or HTPC we're guessing any sane PC Format reader will be running a server box of some description. Creating a Windows network share is by far the best option, and then you can point Windows Media Center to this for your viewing pleasure.

Mount up

If you would like a more straightforward life the easiest option is to create for yourself a mounted network share, as this will guarantee that the remote folder is mounted and it will also look like a standard drive to Windows. Additionally, this will simplify adding the drive to Windows Media Center as it will automatically pick it up.

Remote shares and local folders are managed via the Media Library, in Windows Media Center you will need to select Tasks > Media Libraries. You're able to add local and remote shares to all the listed sections, for films we recommend Videos over Movies but both will work.

If you want to add a standard Windows shared folder, choose 'On another computer' to add remote shares. If you have problems try 'Let me manually add a shared folder.' The poor design of WMC screams at this point as you cant edit or paste the path in WMC. You'll need to manually type the whole thing starting with a double backslash.

Possibly one of the greatest things we've ever seen for Windows Media Center is the BBC iPlayer plug-in. This was a project to bring iPlayer to WMC, and development got to a working system but it was abandoned in 2009, only to be picked up again here: bit.ly/qB4KKL. Just download and install this bad boy, the interface is beautiful in its simplicity but even manages to mimic the Beeb's iPlayer style.

The chap behind the reboot has recently shown off an update that also integrates TED Talks, 4oD and a host of other channels into the player so keep an eye on this for a massive update. We also suggest taking a look at www.mediabrowser.tv this is another plug-in that provides a new entry in the main WMC menu and offers a slick alternative to the typical Movie or Video display. The free version works perfectly but paid-for add-ons provide even slicker presentations and custom themes. Our final suggestion is the TagSupport plug-in (www.softpointer. com) this enables WMC to support more audio file formats, such as OGG and Flac, which is essential for helping access your entire audio library.

The cable guy

The real point of Media Center is to enjoy music, TV and films on a big screen. The ideal solution is an HDTV and with all offering HDMI, usually a D-Sub VGA port and occasionally DVI, it shouldn't be too difficult getting a suitable cable plus adaptor combination.

Even with HDMI an HDTV sometimes doesn't correctly detect the resolution. It's often the case you'll need to tweak the exact resolution within the display driver. For full HD 1,920 x 1,080 usually works without issues. At 720p try 1,280 x 720 up to 1,366 x 768 to get a sharp image.

For a genuinely home cinema experience you should consider upgrading to a projector. Entry-level 720p units are surprisingly affordable at around £400.

This isn't an audiophile article, so we're not worrying too much about audio. For us a 3.5mm mini-jack audio cable from the laptop or HTPC to the TV will suffice. Any up-to-date system providing HDMI will carry surround digital audio over the HDMI cable.

For older desktops you may need to internally add a digital audio cable for this to happen. Beyond that, if the PC provides an external optical or coaxial audio output, most HDTVs will provide Share and share alike

Three steps to using Windows network shares

1. Check network settings

Win7 introduced HomeShare so presuming your network is set on the server box, open the Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Manage Advanced Sharing, and make sure 'Turn on network discovery' and 'Turn on file and print sharing' are checked. Also select 'Turn off password protected sharing' and select 'Use user accounts…'

2. Create the share

At this point other PCs on the network should be able to see the server and if you enable it, be able to open shared folders too. Now make a folder or drive available to share. Right-click a folder, select Properties > Sharing > Advanced Sharing, click 'Share this folder' and give it a name. Next we need to add users that can share it.

3. Add users and test

From the same dialog, click Permissions > Add > Advanced > Find Now. This generates a list of possible user accounts. By adding additional users you can implement individual, password protected access to specific folders, usually this is easiest to do by using the Computer Management console.

Power up Media Center: codecs and alternatives

Play anything

1. On the pull

The most comprehensive codec pack out there at the moment is the Shark007 pack (shark007.net). You can try installing your own MKV splitter, it won't necessarily be registered correctly with Windows Media Player nor will you gain the right audio or subtitle decoders you require for full compatibility. The website is something of a mess but the correct link is at top of the page.

2. Get it set

To setup the Shark007 pack correctly you need to run it in administrator mode. Locate the Settings Application in the Start Menu, right click it and choose 'Run as administrator'. Once in the easiest option is to select the Shark007 Suggested settings at the bottom of the windows. There are additional options in there for DXVA acceleration that you may want to enable.

3. 64-bits please

An area of added annoyance is that the Codec system uses separate codecs for both 32-bit and 64-bit apps. As we are moving towards using 64-bit software more widely it's going to become more common to need 64-bit compatibility. Again Shark007 provides an additional 64-bit x64 Components download. You'll need to set-up as per the previous step.

Going beyond Media Center

If you've stuck with us so far, congratulations, you should also be enjoying a much improved time with Windows Media Center but just like The Carpenters we've only just begun. So far we've looked at making more of WMC and we've taken it about as far as we're able, but there is one more trick that will benefit not just it, but any other media centre you might choose. That trick is getting your meta tags in order.

Meta tags are like human-created quantum particles: being both the dullest and most amazing thing for your media collection.

Properly created and organised meta tags will transform a media collection from a dull list of text into a blazingly beautiful kaleidoscope of full-screen posters and cover-fl ow vistas. At a basic Windows Media Center level this will replace automatically generated and therefore random thumbnails with official and fan-made posters.

At the more extreme end of things it enables banners, fullscreen backdrops and complete plot synopsis with actor details and IMDB ratings for both films, TV series and also your music collection.

The secret to a better media collection is getting a good meta tag manager, these scan folders and file names checking for existing tags, plus other telltale signs of the file's origin, then go cap-in-hand to a suitable internet database, such as IMDB, TVDB or even just Amazon for full details on the title. At this point it can automatically attempt to identify the correct title, can give up or can return a potential list of titles for you to choose from.

Once selected it'll pull down information on the full title, the year it was released, credits and so on, plus official artwork, fan posters and much more. Importantly, the manager also needs to save this in a way that the different available media centres retrieve the details in specific .XML, .NFO and .JPG files.

One such program is YAMMM or Yet Another Media Meta Manager over at mikinho.com/yammm. This is a fully automated solution that runs as a Windows Service in the background, this can be a little unnerving as you won't know exactly what it's up to. It's a free program that is still loosely supported, the current release is from mid-2010 but a major update with TV series support is promised.

It'll read the structure of any base folder you point it at and download poster and background artwork. It also has a comprehensive folder/file renaming system that can greatly tidy up the titles you see within your media center.

YAMMM is only aimed at films, these have to be in their own folder and it provides no manual override or choice if there's a problem. If you have movie files stored fl at in the folder the author suggests running this single line to the appropriate folder:

FOR %i IN (*.*) DO (IF NOT EXIST "% ni" MD "% ni") & (MOVE "%i" "% ni")

If you don't mind getting your hands dirty to a degree then Media Center Master (www.mediacentermaster.com) is an amazingly powerful tool. It has free and paid-for features but even in its basic form is a powerful film and TV meta manager, capable of automatically grabbing posters and banners, along with full details of the programme or film.

Usefully, it also provides a solid manual mode so any programmes that remain can easily be looked up and Media Center Master will then be able to scurry off with a provided IMDB code to the correct place.

The same goes for your music collection, if its not named, tagged and with the right album art its not going to look the part when you start browsing through it with your friends. If your music collection is as unruly as Alan's pants drawer then head over to mp3tag.de and grab the free MP3tag. It's an ideal tool for tidying up and grabbing album art as it happily ties in with the FreeDB music collection as well as Amazon. This should mean for the majority of your music you'll be able to get correct names and artwork with just a few clicks. Total replacement

So now things are looking prettier, its time to start making things look even better and do more. At this point we're going to dump WMC, it is possible to extend it via plug-ins but we're wanting to explore new places and try out new things. That means having to go beyond the limitations of WMC. We're going to recommend two drop-in replacements and the first of these is Xbox Media Center more commonly called XBMC from xbmc.org.

No matter if you're running media from the local machine or have it available on remote shares, XBMC is a drop-in and enjoy solution. It doesn't require much more configuration than pointing it to the right media folders. Actively supported for many years now, it has always been designed to look good with HD menus and a good choice of skins to choose from.

It's also easily extended through its plug-in system, this has recently been upgraded so they can be easily installed from within XBMC itself. This makes it relatively easy to add support for video from YouTube, TED Talks with automatic programme info support. Viewing images from Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and other sources can be installed, while new audio sources ,such as GrooveShark can be added.

Often the interface to XBMC can be a little head-scratchingly confusing with right-clicks sometimes taking you back a menu level and other times opening a context menu. Adding film, music and picture sources is obvious and straightforward from within the first level menu of each section. If you've not sorted your meta tags yet then XBMC can do this for you, though it's not obvious.

After adding a source you can 'right-click' or in XBMC-speak open the context menu and choose Set Content. This enables you to add a scrapper to the source; this can automatically add posters, fan art and information to the items it finds.

XBMC does have a few deficiencies that more demanding networked users may bang up against. One is that it's not happy running on a 'headless' server, that's one without a connected display or keyboard. It is possible to set it up, then leave it, but there are always issues that will crop up. Another issue is TV distribution: XBMC can't remotely deliver live TV.

Enter MediaPortal which isn't as whizzy in the looks department but with its comprehensive TV tuner support, and TV server features on top of being happy to run on a headless system, it's Windows' best alternative to a MythTV setup on Linux, and matches both Windows Media Center and XBMC in every other respect.

MediaPortal uses a single installer, but installation for a client system is substantially different to that of a TV server. On your server run the standard installer but when prompted choose the 'Dedicated TV-Server' option. This will trundle off, download and install all the bits you need including the SQL database backend. For all your other systems the MediaPortal Client will sort you out and setting it up for your various media folders is a similar affair to any other media centre.

Once the TV server is installed run the TV-Server Configuration on the desktop. Under TV Servers should be the name of the server box and a list of any installed TV tuners. Select the suitable TV one, it should be DVB-T for the UK, and a Country/Region selection will appear. We found choosing 'UK' and 'All Regions' worked best.

After a successful scan select you can double check and organise the channels by selecting the TV Channels entry. To get an EPG created, click the 'DVB EPG > TV EPG Grabber' entry and select all of the channels. MediaPortal also supports time-shifting live TV and scheduling recordings. By default, files are stored on the C drive, so you may want to alter the working directory.

It's also possible to impose quotas, specify naming conventions and disable TV streaming when there are no free tuners available. It's clever like that. We should also mention the system works equally for DAB received radio stations too and you'll find any detected radio stations will be mirrored within the Radio section of any clients along with a radio guide as well.

The TV server makes use of a plug-in system, just as the main client does. Once installed you'll find a number of pre-installed ones, the most interesting of them all is the commercial skip plug-in called ComSkip. Just enable it and it'll do its magical stuff. If you plan on recording a good number of programmes this will help reduce file sizes and avoid manually skipping ads.

We have seen people mention issues with the Windows Firewall not being correctly set. This manifests itself with the client version throwing up the error 'Unable to play: Stream 2.0'. The easiest test is to temporarily disable Windows Firewall and see if that allows TV playback to work. You're able to watch live streams within the TV Server Configuration interface under 'Streaming Server'.

If this appears to be the cause, under the Advanced Settings > Inbound Rules , locate the two MediaPortal entries and under their Advanced tabs make sure 'Private networks' are included.

As we've alluded to, part of the networked media mentality is to extend access to all your media beyond just a single PC in a single room, to all of your devices no matter where you are.

Here, there, everywhere

This is where running a server really comes into its own, while a typical gaming desktop might suck down 300 or more watts of power, a small server lacking any graphics, display and low-power CPU can muddle along at 60 watts, less with a reasonable powersaving scheme in place. That means it's a far more reasonable prospect to leave it running 24 hours a day.

The knock-on effect is that it's perfectly plausible to load up the server with custom services dedicated to serving out media to specific devices and for specific needs. An obvious one is iTunes for any Apple or compatible products that you have. It'll tie into your entire music library without any additional hassles.

If you own a smartphone or tablet then it's likely you'll want to access home media on it at some point. Once again adding a service such as Orb (www.orb.com) instantly makes the entire range of media from music, video, photos and if you have a TV tuner live TV as well, available on your devices.

A host of other options are also available for Apple iOS devices. We've had hours of fl aw-free use out of Air Video. For £1.99 it offers live streaming of any video files from your server either around your home network or over the internet using an easy to use key and password system. It supports subtitles, HD content, multiple languages and more importantly just works.

As new platforms, devices and standards come and go it's not a difficult job to just add in new services to your media server. Some will integrate with your media centre others will be complementary but with your media stored in one place getting access to it will always be easy.

Google TV 2.0 to run Honeycomb, Android Market apps

Chris Smith — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:04:00 GMT

Google has announced a software update for its UK-bound Google TV service, which incorporates the Android Market and Honeycomb OS for the first time.

Google TV 2.0 opens up the service to third party developers via the Android Market, which means all existing applications can be rewritten for the TV screen and new ones can be created.

With Google TV set to launch in the UK early next year, this opens the possibility for the likes of Spotify, BBC iPlayer, LOVEFiLM and Sky Go to have native applications for the service.

Numbers will grow

In a post on the official Google TV blog, the company says: "We are opening up the TV to the creativity of content creators large and small through Android Market.

"Android developers can now bring existing mobile apps or entirely new ones to TV.

"Initially, the number of apps won't be large – apps requiring a touch screen, GPS, or telephony won't show up – but 50 developers have seeded the Market with cool and useful apps for the TV. We're excited to see the number of apps grow."

The new Google TV, which runs a variant of the Android Honeycomb OS seen on tablets like the Motorola Xoom, also has an overhauled, simplified interface which makes finding content easier.

Another big improvement looks to be the YouTube app. Google says it has completely overhauled the way the video sharing portal works on Google TV, with the company also integrating YouTube into the system's content search.

Google TV: All bets are off

When Eric Schmidt announced Google TV would be coming to the UK, many felt that the horse had already bolted, following a disappointing reception in the US due to the lack of content available.

With news that all content providers, as well as game developers can now push their wares using the service, it makes the Google TV proposition an entirely different and much more interesting one.

We're actually quite excited now.

Report: Siri to power Apple HD TV

Chris Smith — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 04:23:00 GMT

Apple's heavily-rumoured venture into the HD TV market will be powered by the Siri voice control app and will launch in early 2013, according to reports

The New York Times is claiming a massive inside scoop on the display Steve Jobs claimed to have 'finally cracked' in his official biography, which was released last Monday.

The 'paper says Apple has known since 2007 that it wanted to build a flatscreen TV, but the arrival of Siri with the iPhone 4S was a final piece in the puzzle.

A Siri-powered TV would almost make the remote control redundant, with viewers simply barking orders like "play Match of the Day" or "record Coronation Street".

Is this what Steve Jobs thought he had "cracked?"

Just a matter of time

The NYT piece says that Apple is waiting for the price of large LCD panels to fall before it begins building the television sets.

However the company is close enough, according to the report, that the launch may come as early as late 2012, although early 2013 is more likely.

The article closes by saying: "It is coming though. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when."

The New York Times article features some fantastic analysis, with word from unnamed Apple employees "guaranteeing" the launch. It's definitely worth a read.

Tutorial: How to speed up your wireless network

Jon Thompson — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 07:00:00 GMT

How to speed up your wireless network

Wi-Fi is a great technology, but how you set up and use it can have a huge impact on its efficiency.

If you're constantly waiting for web pages in general to load, then before you complain that your ISP isn't supplying that promised 24Mb/s connection, spare a thought for what happens when that signal hits the airwaves in your house.

How it works

To improve Wi-Fi performance, we first need to understand what it actually is. Wi-Fi is also called wireless local area networking or WLAN in the management console of your base station or broadband router, and it uses a group of frequencies clustered around 2.4GHz to transmit and receive data between computers.

To ensure that data gets through, it uses a protocol called 802.11. If every network within range all used the same exact frequency of 2.4GHz, the various devices would swamp each other's signals - a bit like two radio stations transmitting on the same frequency.

To overcome this, the protocol allows devices to use 13 numbered channels, which all use slightly different frequencies to ensure that there's as little interference as possible.

Confusingly, there are a few versions of 802.11. The oldest is 802.11a, which is now obsolete. This has been superseded by 802.11b, which has a maximum data transmission rate of 11Mb/s. 802.11g, which is the dominant version in the UK, can transmit at a healthier 54Mb/s. The newer 802.11n can use two channels for a maximum of 300Mb/s.

Encryption

Security is very important in Wi-Fi networks, and this has to do with both logging onto the network and how individual packets of data are encrypted. The oldest Wi-Fi security standard is WEP (Wireless Equivalent Protocol). This was part of the original 802.11 protocol and has been cracked, making it insecure.

This insecurity came about because if enough packets can be captured from the airwaves, software can be used to work out what that password is. Several open source packages now exist (AirCrack, for example) that will attempt to solve WEP passwords, thereby allowing people to log onto your network.

An updated security standard called WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) was introduced in 2003, with a newer version called WPA2 coming along in 2004. This is still secure and uses a government-strength encryption algorithm to keep your networks safe. In some Wi-Fi equipment, the security used is referred to as RSNA (Robust Security Network Association). This is really just another name for WPA2.

CSMA

If every computer on your Wi-Fi network transmitted at the same time, they would jam each other's signals. To prevent this, every Wi-Fi network card sold (including the one in the base station) uses a technique called Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) to share the airwaves.

In CSMA, a situation called contention occurs when a Wi-Fi card wants to transmit a data packet, but hears that a packet is already being transmitted. It waits for a very short but randomly selected time before listening again. If the airwaves are clear at the end of that period, the card transmits its packet before listening again and subsequently transmitting the next packet if the airwaves are still clear.

This 'first come first served' scheme means that over time, all network cards get an equal opportunity to transmit all their packets. CSMA is also used in wired networks, and is a very efficient method of data transmission.

This being the case, it's usually external influences that are to blame for adversely affecting Wi-Fi networks. Before attempting to improve the performance of your Wi-Fi network, it's important to know what its performance is like before you start. Otherwise, how will you know for certain which measures work and which don't?

Set a baseline

The easiest way of measuring current performance is to use an online broadband speed testing service. There are plenty available, and they all work in the same way. One service is Broadband Speed Checker.

First, ensure that your entire network is quiet. Turn off all streaming services such as Spotify (including killing the service in the system tray), all social media services, all torrent services, and all email clients that automatically update themselves. Check to make sure that the WLAN light on your base station is not flashing to ensure that everything is turned off.

From a Wi-Fi connected computer, click Start Speed Test and wait until the test completes. Rather than just performing the test once, collect several results over a few days. Try to run the test at different times of the day to see when the local loop from the nearest telephone exchange to the houses it serves is most congested.

Keep the results of these tests on a spreadsheet and you'll be able to see the best time of day to perform large downloads.

It's also a good idea to perform the same tests from a PC wired directly to the base station. This will give you a definitive measure of the difference in performance between wired and Wi-Fi connections.

Whenever you implement a change, re-test the Wi-Fi speed to see if there's any appreciable difference. You may be surprised to find that some simple changes can help you resist an upgrade to a supposedly faster connection.

Interference

The 802.11 protocol family uses some very clever low-level encoding techniques to ensure that regardless of circumstances, the signal stands a chance of still being heard over other noise, but anything we can do to help it will improve network performance. In some cases, such techniques can make a dramatic difference.

Everything would be fine if Wi-Fi network cards were the only things transmitting at 2.4GHz in our homes, but they're not. There are plenty of sources of interference that can cause the network cards to have to wait multiple times before being able to transmit their packets.

Incredibly, one of the biggest sources of Wi-Fi interference is your domestic cordless phone. If you have one in the same room as a Wi-Fi device, you can expect network performance to noticeably degrade every time you make or receive a call.

Bluetooth devices also use the golden frequency of 2.4GHz to transmit and receive data, and therefore also tend to cause interference on Wi-Fi networks. Microwave ovens are a domestic boon that we usually take for granted, but they're also a source of 2.4GHz interference.

Despite remaining perfectly safe to humans when cooking food, a microwave oven situated less than about 10 feet away from a Wi-Fi network card will degrade its performance. Don't forget that this 10-foot range can extend through walls into other rooms.

Added to these interference sources there are also less obvious ones. Your neighbour may be transmitting on the same channel, and have placed his base station right near your adjoining wall. Mains wiring running through walls and floors, faulty household appliances containing electric motors, and physical obstacles like brick walls also play a part in degrading performance.

More ways to improve your Wi-Fi

Location matters

Once you establish a baseline, it's important to think carefully about where you place your base station. The general advice from ISPs is to locate it at a central position in your property, but this overlooks several important factors.

The number of brick walls between the base station and the computer will affect the strength of the signal. Studded walls carrying cables or water pipes will do likewise, and a large aquarium in the way will also absorb some of the signal. Try to site your base station high up to overcome as many obstacles as possible. On top of a bookcase is a good place, and will give the upper floor of your home a little more signal.

Metal surfaces reflect electromagnetic radiation, and mirrors are no exception. A large mirror will shield the room behind it from Wi-Fi signals. Try to find out where your immediate neighbours keep their base station. With a little co-operation to maximise the distance between them, you can both improve performance.

On a desktop or tower PC, the Wi-Fi network card's antenna may be internal. Because the metal parts of the case and internal frame are earthed, they act as a Faraday cage, helping shield the card from the outside world. Try turning the PC so that as little metal as possible stands between the Wi-Fi card and base station.

Other dense materials can also block Wi-Fi signals. Very large wooden wardrobes, full bookcases and so on can all contribute a small amount to the overall degradation of the signal.

At the base station

If your base station and Wi-Fi network cards all use 802.11g, there's no point occupying the airwaves by also transmitting over the older 802.11b. Transmitting both is called 'mixed mode'. To turn off 802.11b, you'll have to go into the web-based management interface on your base station. To do so, you'll need the admin password (which you changed from the factory default when you got it, right?).

The management software used in different manufacturer's base stations differs, but the terminology is usually the same. In the section for interface setup, select the Wireless or WLAN page. One of the general configuration parameters will determine whether you transmit 802.11b, 802.11g or 802.11b+g. For compatibility, the default is almost certainly 802.11b+g, meaning that you're transmitting both versions of the protocol. Change this to 802.11g and then save the configuration.

If another network within range uses the same channel as you, there's a good chance that it'll interfere with your network's ability to transmit and receive packets. See the box 'Monitor The Airwaves' to discover if this is the case.

Rather than hunt for an unused one as the new BT hubs do, most base stations simply default to channel one, which increases the dreaded network contention. To ensure the least interference from other networks, pick a channel as far away from the strongest signals as possible. When you save the configuration, the Wi-Fi network cards in your computers will all automatically begin using the new channel.

Repeat yourself

If you still have problems after doing your best to increase the strength of your Wi-Fi signal and to minimise interference, there's one last method of overcoming problems. A Wi-Fi repeater simply retransmits any traffic it hears on your network, thereby increasing the signal's strength and extending the network's range.

A repeater can act as a relay to parts of the house that simply can't get a decent signal from the base station itself. If you're particularly security conscious, you can use multiple repeaters and run everything at the minimum transmission power so your signals are less visible beyond your property's borders. Each repeater, again set to transmit at low power, can still serve the farthest reaches of the house.

Get a new aerial

The aerials on Wi-Fi base stations are omni-directional antennas. The signal is transmitted with equal strength in a doughnut shape perpendicular to the aerial. This means that if the aerial is vertical, it sends Wi-Fi signals out across the room.

The antenna that came with your base station has a power transmission rating of about 2dBi (sometimes referred to simply as 'two units'). The higher this number, the more efficient the aerial is at transmitting the power passed through it. Every 3dBi effectively doubles the transmitted power, so if you've increased your base station's power output to the maximum in its web management console and want more, you can increase it using an aerial with a higher dBi rating.

The problem with these aerials is that they transmit in all directions. Most of the transmitted energy is lost, but you can reduce this using a directional aerial, which focuses the transmitted signal in one direction. This creates a long hotspot through your property and can be used to extend your Wi-Fi network to out-buildings without losing most of the signal. Prices start at around £20.

Monitor the airways

InSSIDer2 is a free tool by MetaGeek that you can use to analyse Wi-Fi signal strengths and to ensure you pick an unused channel.

Once installed, run the program and it'll show any Wi-Fi networks in range. In the lower pane it also shows signal strength and channel number. Click the 'Time graph' tab and select your network in the upper pane.

If you're monitoring on a laptop, try moving a few centimetres in any direction. The signal strength will change - but why? All electromagnetic waves have a wavelength, which is calculated by dividing the speed of light (about 300 million metres per second) by the frequency (2.4GHz). This gives a wavelength of roughly 12.5cm.

What this means is that across the room, the signal is stronger at some points than others. You can use this technique to map the areas of your home that have the strongest signal.

Sneakily, you can also use dips in the strength of a Wi-Fi signal to tell when someone is between you and a base station. This is because people are mostly water, which absorbs radio waves. As long as the monitoring PC is in the same position, moving around will affect the signal in a predictable way.

Update your firmware

Some ISPs automatically upgrade the firmware on the Wi-Fi base stations they supply as part of their broadband packages, but if you bought your base station separately to use with an existing wired broadband connection, you'll have to upgrade it yourself. This is a simple process that can fix bugs and improve Wi-Fi performance.

First, make sure you have a network cable at the ready in case the process wipes your current configuration and you need to access the web-based management console without Wi-Fi access.

Next, go to your base station manufacturer's website. Make sure you download the firmware for your exact hardware model - this can be found on a sticker on the bottom of the unit. Download the latest firmware and the latest user manual. This will tell you about any new useful features the firmware upgrade gives.

Upgrading may make the base station lose its configuration, so make sure you save the current settings first. The terminology tends to vary here, so consult the user manual.

When you click the 'Upgrade' button in your base station's maintenance page, browse for the firmware file and click 'OK'. The process takes a few minutes, after which the unit will reboot. If necessary, reload the saved configuration and you're done.

Intel ditches smart TV division

Henry Winchester — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:03:00 GMT

Chip giant Intel is to drop out of the smart TV market due to a lack of demand for internet-enabled flatscreens.

The company will fold its TV-based Digital Home Group, and move the engineers onto tablet, smartphone and Ultrabook development.

Intel's Atom CE4100 chip currently powers D-Link's Boxee Box and Logitech's Revue digital media players, as well as Sony's Google-powered televisions. But it's set to be the last chip of its kind, with competitor ARM likely to fill the void Intel leaves.

"This is a business decision where we're taking those resources and applying them to corporate priorities," Claudine Mangano, an Intel official, told Bloomberg.

TV Go Home

Those priorities look increasingly like tablets and smartphones, where the Digital Home Group's knowledge could be harnessed to create portable devices with smart TV functionality.

The CE4100 will continue to be sold and supported by Intel, and it will also remain - albeit more anonymously - in set top boxes.

By all rights Google TV should have followed in the lucrative footsteps of Android, but we were less than impressed when we reviewed it.

Although there's still potential in the smart TV format, the massive popularity of tablets makes it seem like Intel is doing the right thing.