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Sky Sports on BT Vision a game-changer says boss, Freeview HD 3rd gen BTV box confirmed | Home Cinema Choice.

BT Vision’s press launch to celebrate its new Sky Sports Pay TV subscription bundles turned out to be rather more exciting than expected. The press corp at the event comprised a mix of the usual tech scribblers and sports journalists present to interview the three soccer stars featured in BT’s new TV ad campaign (Michael Owen and two others who I failed to recognise – look it’s sport, what do you expect?). [Read more →]

Legendary US AV chain Ken Cranes goes down – Technology Forum | TechRadar UK.

I was sad to hear about the demise of Ken Cranes AV stores in the US. The name will be very familiar to long in the tooth AV enthusiasts. Canes was a popular source of laser discs for UK and European AV fans back in the day, when all video was analogue and a 12inch silver platter was as good as it got.

The 62-year-old Californian store chain said it had been ‘powerfully affected by the nation’s unusually severe and continuing economic downturn… (and in) a steep, relentless decline in same-store sales activity led to the difficult decision.’

Even as the AV biz moved on from laser disc, the family business was a big retailer of home theatre and large screen TV on the West Coast. Company president Casey Crane [Read more →]

Eurovision 2010 – was HD picture quality compromised? – Technology Forum | TechRadar UK.

Not only is Eurovision good fun, it’s historically been one of the best HD transmissions of the year. But I’m not so sure about last night. Sure it looked great, but I felt there was rather more noise and artifacts than previously. Is this an example of the BBC’s infamous HD bit-choking? My reservation is tempered though by the fact I was watching this on a different screen than 2009 – a Samsung 9000 Series 3D job.  [Read more →]

I recently attended a fascinating briefing session organised by Samsung to provide background to the brand’s first range of 3D TVs and 3D Blu-ray player. R&D chief Simon Lee has been taking his team around Europe, doing similar sessions with various media. The event was notable for a couple of reasons.

In an effort to push the brand’s on-the-fly 2D-3D conversion technology, the engineers used the 2D release of Avatar on Blu-ray. We were shown long sequences of the world’s most famous 3D movie, released in flat-o-vision 2D, then dimensionalised back into faux 3D by Samsung. The convolution of the demonstration made my head spin.
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Did you celebrate Free Comics Book Day this weekend? I sure did! I started my search for free comics by visiting my local library. Several years ago they made a half-hearted attempt to support the initiative which I thought was great. But I knew something was amiss when I went it. The place was as quiet as the grave with no FCBD books to be seen. When I enquired I received nothing but blank looks and eventually a glare of disdain.

[Read more →]