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- YouTube Store opens for movie rentals
- Sky: free broadband up to 20Mbps guaranteed
- Best Buy opens eco-tech stores in UK
- YouTube’s 5th birthday: 5 landmark uploads
- Sharp Aquos review: Quattron TV
- Sharp Aquos Quattron TV review: net connected skills
- Sharp Aquos Quattron TV review: new screen tech tested
- Alan Wake prequels hit Xbox Live on Sunday
- Asus tablet: Eee Pad due July
- Lunchtime Lowdown: Steam for Mac, Symbian gossip and Assassin’s Creed 3 details
| YouTube Store opens for movie rentals Posted: 23 Apr 2010 08:30 AM PDT
Google trialled a YouTube Store with movie rentals in January when it sold a selection of indie flicks from the Sundance Film Festival but now it's properly opened for business in the US with film rentals starting at $0.99 and going up to $4 for newer films. Rental periods in the YouTube Store from 24 to 72 hours but though there are some well known titles in the mix (Reservoir Dogs and recent Oscar winner Precious to name two) most of the content on offer is pretty low profile. Compared to other options like iTunes, the YouTube Store doesn't look that compelling yet. It's prices are too high and it's selection is a little meagre. Let's hope by the time it makes its way to the UK, YouTube will have sealed some deals with the major studios. While you wait for YouTube movie rentals to make it to these fair shores, check out our celebration of YouTube’s 5th birthday, YouTube: 5 landmark uploads. Out now (US only) | from $0.99 | YouTube (via ReadWrite Web) Related posts:
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| Sky: free broadband up to 20Mbps guaranteed Posted: 23 Apr 2010 07:30 AM PDT
To get the Sky Everyday Lite package, you need to be both a Sky TV subscriber and signed up to the Sky Talk phone service. If you are, you'll qualify for free broadband at up to 20Mbps but will have you downloads capped at 2GB a month. The Sky Everyday Lite package is rolling out on 1 June. Sky is introducing Sky Unlimited on the same day which promises truly unlimited broadband for £7.50-a-month. What does Sky mean by unlimited? It says there will be "no usage caps, fair use policies or traffic management". Sky says it won't use traffic shaping which means monitoring your downloading and throttling certain uses like file-sharing or video streaming sites like iPlayer if you've use them a lot. Whether you’ll actually get 20Mbps download speeds with your free broadband depends entirely on your location. Due June 1 | from £free | Sky Related posts:
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| Best Buy opens eco-tech stores in UK Posted: 23 Apr 2010 07:00 AM PDT
The first UK Best Buy store will fling open its doors in Thurrock, Essex next Friday (30 April) and it's going to be packed with eco-friendly kit. The £86,950 Tesla Roadster is going to be on show at the store as well as more affordable electric vehicles like the Gocylce electric bicycle and Brammo Enertia electric motorcycle. The Best Buy GreenTech sections will also stock smaller green gadgets including the Owl and Wattson energy monitors and Power Traveller solar chargers for laptops and mobiles. There'll also be an Al Gore pleasing amount of energy saving plugs and adaptors to help you save energy with your existing gadgets. Best Buy stores will be opening in Southhampton and Merry Hill in the West Midlands in June with Aintree following on in July and Croydon in the Autumn. Out 30 April | £free | Best Buy Related posts:
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| YouTube’s 5th birthday: 5 landmark uploads Posted: 23 Apr 2010 06:30 AM PDT
1. The first upload 2. The first full HD video 3. The first 3D clip 4. The first download 5. The first live video And finally… Related posts:
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| Sharp Aquos review: Quattron TV Posted: 23 Apr 2010 05:34 AM PDT The Sharp Aquos Quattron TV has been billed as a revolution in flat screen technology: it boasts an extra yellow pixel to add to the standard RGB colour matrix, which purportedly enables it to serve up eye-poppingly brilliant colours – 1,000 times more than its rivals, according to Sharp. So is this 46-inch LED TV a true game changer or simply a gimmicky standard model? Read on for the skinny on the Quattron TV in the concluding part of our Sharp Aquos review.
Read the rest of our Sharp Aquos Quattron TV review We'll get straight to the point: if you've checked out our Sharp Aquos Quattron TV screen tech review, you'll know the extra pixel doesn't really deliver a noticeably superior image to rival models using the standard RGB pixel setup. There's no "Oh wow, this is the best TV ever" moment when you first switch the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV on. But there's no doubting that this TV does produce a very high quality picture. Whether it's the fourth pixel, the 100Hz processing or the edge LED backlighting doing the job, there's a lot to like about the LC-46LE821E. Colour, contrast and sharpness are all handled capably. So, picture aside, how does the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV shape up? To take that question literally, it's a very elegant flat screen TV – probably the best-looking model Sharp has ever produced in fact. Its edge LED backlighting has allowed it to be very thin indeed (just 39mm in depth), and it's also curvaceous and packed with eye-catching details like touch-sensitive controls. The TV's slimness makes it suitable for wall mounting, and Sharp has located the connections on the left hand side panel to make life easier for anyone who chooses to do so. The design may be stylish and everything, but the sheer shininess of the screen isn't something we're entirely happy with. It's so reflective that if you're one of the 99 percent of people that happens to have a window in their living room, you're going to struggle to get a completely clear image during the day – you'll probably see yourself in the screen, in fact. You’d be best invest in a good set of curtains or blinds if you're thinking of buying the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV. The connection selection is in line with what you'd expect from a high-end TV. There are four HDMI inputs (one of which is HDMI v1.4, the others being v1.3), as well as Scart, S-Video, composite and VGA inputs. There's no dedicated component video input, but Sharp supplies an adapter allowing you to route this through the VGA connector – handy for owners of older, non-HDMI Xbox 360s, but hardly the most elegant of options, as it means an extra length of cabling flapping at the side panel. An optical digital output allows you to rig the TV up to an external audio system, which is handy if you're using the built-in Freeview HD tuner, which offers Dolby Digital surround sound. There are also USB and Ethernet connections for media playback, which we've covered in detail in our in depth networking skills Sharp Aquos review. On the feature front the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV feels slightly under par. In this day of web-connected tellies, the stoically offline LC-46LE821E feels like something of a throwback. There's no sign of web TV, no catch-up service a la Sony's new Bravia tellies, and DLNA media streaming is limited to photos and music. That said, the inclusion of Freeview HD can't be sniffed at: free high definition channels, ready to watch right out of the gate are always a plus. The Sharp Aquos Quattron TV model we tested was a European version almost identical to UK models but without a Freeview HD tuner: however models on shop shelves here will include it. Standard definition Freeview looks decent enough, however, and benefits from a rather swanky-looking high resolution EPG. One neat feature is time shift, which allows you to pause a Freeview programme for up to 150 minutes (or an hour if it's HD). Granted, it's nothing new (and anyone who already uses a PVR such as Sky+ will probably never touch it) but it's nice to have as an option. Of course, one major missing feature we could point to is the lack of 3D compatibility. Considering the TV's price tag of £2,000 (although we've seen it available online for around £1,650), it'd be nice to at least have the option to upgrade to 3D since so much 3D content is in the pipeline for later this year, from Sky and others. A quick word about audio performance: as with many extremely thin goggleboxes, the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV struggles to serve up really engaging sound. There's little dynamic range and bass is nearly non-existent (although the clear voice mode does work fairly well at boosting dialogue). The speakers do an acceptable job, but no more. All things considered, the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV is a strong, dependable all-rounder capable of producing excellent pictures. But anyone expecting a revolution in TV tech is going to find themselves slightly disappointed, and the features and spec are decent rather than cutting edge. Read the rest of our Sharp Aquos Quattron TV review Related posts:
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| Sharp Aquos Quattron TV review: net connected skills Posted: 23 Apr 2010 05:33 AM PDT The Sharp Aquos Quattron TV, like the majority of today's high-end boobtubes, comes with a selection of media playback features, slathering the basic television cake with a thick layer of network streaming and movie, music and photo compatibility icing. So how does it shape up against rival tellies? This section of our Sharp Aquos Quattron TV review will clue you right up.
Read the rest of our Sharp Aquos Quattron TV review There's no built-in Wi-Fi on offer, but the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV comes with an Ethernet port (on the left side panel) to handle networking duties. Rig the TV up to a router via a length of dependable CAT-5 cable and you can have it sitting pretty on your home network in seconds: we just hit the automatic setup option and everything was sorted in a matter of moments. The Sharp Aquos Quattron TV doesn't come emblazoned with the DLNA logo, but in theory most Windows and Mac UPnP servers should work, letting you stream music and photos to the TV via your network. Using a MacBook and the free EyeConnect software, we had no issues getting music from an iTunes library to play (you can browse by the usual criteria, and also look through playlists). But hitting the photos option again brought up the music folder: the TV couldn't find the Mac's iPhoto account. The media browser on the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV is quite basic and not particularly pleasant to use. There's a lag when moving through lists, and no option to scroll up or down an entire page, so if you brought up a list of songs and wanted to pick out Beach House's "Zebra", for instance, you might as well stick a weight on the remote's "down" button and toddle off to make a cuppa. It's true that many TVs' media browsers are a bit, well, stodgy, but this one feels decidedly last gen compared with the new Sony Bravia range and its quick, user friendly XMB interface. There's no option to stream video at all, which is quite a disappointment given the specifications and price point of the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV. Similarly pitched models from Samsung, Philips and Sony all feature this. It's the same with web TV. The Sharp Aquos Quattron TV doesn't feature any web-connected widgets, access to catch-up TV services or a web browser. Given the TV's high-end billing, that's a definite disappointment, as almost all of its direct rivals boast some sort of web connectivity, whether it be the ability to browse YouTube videos, access the BBC iPlayer or bring up an on-screen widget to tell you what the weather (or your stock portfolio) is up to. Sharp has completely disregarded this side of things, and that doesn't look good. You can also play media content from a USB device on the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV, thanks to a slot on the left side panel. This is slightly more comprehensive than the Ethernet streaming, as it encompasses not only music and photos but also video – and when it comes to the latter it's fairly non-fussy about what it plays. We tried XviD and DivX (including DivX HD) clips and found no issues at all with playback. And DivX HD content looked fantastic on the screen: rich in detail and clean, vibrant colours. You can also register the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV for DivX Video on Demand (VOD) content. This means you can purchase and download DRM-protected DivX movies on your computer, move them onto a USB stick and play them back on the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV. There's no way to actually purchase and stream or download the movies through the TV itself, sadly. The Sharp Aquos Quattron TV's skinniness means its speakers aren't really able to deliver a textured, dynamic sound, so whether you'd actually want to listen to digital music through them is debatable – any half-decent hi-fi can outperform this TV audio-wise. Bass in particular lacks substance, which diminishes the impact of almost any type of music aside from acoustic balladry. Still, it's nice to have the option. The only music format the TV supports is MP3 however, and while it'll play back all bitrates right up to 320kbps, that may disappoint hi-fi heads with large lossless music collections on their computers. Read the rest of our Sharp Aquos Quattron TV review Related posts:
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| Sharp Aquos Quattron TV review: new screen tech tested Posted: 23 Apr 2010 05:32 AM PDT The Sharp Aquos Quattron TV has one humdinger of a unique selling point: it can supposedly create 1,000 times more colours than rival LCD TVs. While most LCD televisions create all their colours using a red, green and blue (RGB) colour matrix, the Quattron adds an extra yellow sub-pixel, which its makers claim allows it to create shades of colour never before seen on an LCD TV. But do these bold promises hold up to real world scrutiny? This section of our Sharp Aquos Quattron TV review will tell you just that.
Read the rest of our Sharp Aquos Quattron TV review It’s a simple question: does that fourth pixel put the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV head and shoulders over every other LCD TV when it comes to colour reproduction? The answer, you'll probably be a tad disappointed to learn, is no. But the TV's colour reproduction is up there with the very best tellies you can buy, even if it doesn't noticeably surpass them. Sharp's claim that the TV can produce 1,000 times more colours than regular RGB LCD televisions may well be true, but it's almost impossible to judge that with the human eye. We can certainly say that it's capable of producing a huge range of colour shades – browsing through a selection of digital photos it's easy to see how well the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV deals with gradation from light to dark. Some flat screen TVs display "bands" of colour in these gradual shifts, which can be quite jarring when you see it, but that's certainly not the case with this TV. It produces clean, bright and accurate colour, particularly when fed HD signals. Whack on a Blu-ray and you'll see just how well this LCD telly delivers colour. The yellow paint of taxicabs in Casino Royale's Miami scene on the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV is beautifully clean and clear, while Bond's skin tones are also accurate and, well, just look right. The Sharp Aquos Quattron TV uses edge LED backlighting, and while it doesn't offer quite the same impact on contrast as direct LED backlighting and localised dimming, does deliver very impressively on both the black level and brightness front. The backlight is adjustable, too, so if you crank it right down you can pull the blinds and turn out all the lights and the TV will still display strong, deep blacks, where many TVs' blacks turn a washed-out grey in such situations. At the other end of the scale, whites and other colours blaze out incredibly brightly from the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV. Watching the North London derby, we were dazzled by the sheer whiteness of Spurs' shirts. There's also 100Hz processing on board. A lot of rival models are now including motion processing technology offering 200Hz or more, so the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV can't claim to be at the bleeding edge in this regard. That said, its motion processing – which doubles the number of frames per second from 50 to 100 – does a good job with fast-moving content like football, so you don't get significant motion judder. The TV has a full 1080p resolution and delivers the sort of sharpness and detail you'd expect from a high end model. You can adjust sharpness, but HD content from Blu-ray, Sky HD or an Xbox 360 looks sufficiently detailed. Object edges look sharply defined, but at the same time the TV keeps a reasonably firm control on noise. You can spot speckles of noise in certain situations (dark, but not quite black backgrounds seem the worst culprit), but nothing too off-putting, at least from a good quality source. Overall, the Sharp Aquos Quattron TV delivers a truly impressive image, particularly with high quality HD sources. Does its fourth colour pixel represent a revolution in flat screen technology? No, quite frankly – but whatever the technology inside the TV won't let you down when it comes to serving up excellent pictures. Read the rest of our Sharp Aquos Quattron TV review Related posts:
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| Alan Wake prequels hit Xbox Live on Sunday Posted: 23 Apr 2010 05:30 AM PDT
The Bright Falls Alan Wake prequels will be available to Xbox Live Gold subscribers on Sunday. Xbox Live Silver subscribers will be able to watch them on Monday and everyone else will be able to see them on Xbox.com and Brightfalls.com on Tuesday. Microsoft is promising big things from the Alan Wake prequels, comparing them to David Lynch: "TV fans will find that the series evokes the same ghostly chills as Twin Peaks did when it premiered 20 years ago this month." That's a pretty big claim. New episodes of the Alan Wake prequels will arrive each week with the last two arriving on 17 May, three days after the Alan Wake UK release date. Due Sunday | £free | Alan Wake Related posts:
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| Posted: 23 Apr 2010 05:00 AM PDT
Asus chairman, Jerry Shen, has announced that the first of two long-predicted Asus tablets will be shown off in June. Asus hasn't revealed many specs for the Asus Eee Pad tablet but we know it'll use a Tegra chip, and run the Android OS. The Asus tablet also has a webcam, USB ports and Flash support. Asus has added those features to the Eee Pad in a bid to battle the iPad. If previous pronouncements by Asus’s Johnny Shih play out, we can also expect another Asus tablet this year. Asus says its planning to launch the Eee Pad in Q3 2010 but the famously leaky component makers of Taiwan suggest it'll arrive in late-July. The rumoured price of the Asus tablet currently stands at $479 but we'd expect that to be a lot lower given Asus's aim to compete with the iPad. There’s going to be a wave of iPad rivals washing over us in the next few months with the HP Slate and the Dell Looking Glass also in the fray. Related posts:
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| Lunchtime Lowdown: Steam for Mac, Symbian gossip and Assassin’s Creed 3 details Posted: 23 Apr 2010 04:30 AM PDT
First up, some saucy Symbian news for mobile fans: Samsung is rumoured to be prepping a new phone using the open source OS, but there’s bad news over at the Nokia camp, as the Finns have announced that Symbian 3 will be delayed. Elsewhere in mobile, rumours broke out that the iPhone could get free Google Maps Navigation alongside Android – and speaking of Google’s mobile OS, we’ve got guides to all the best phones sporting it over at our Android Invades hub. In computing, Steam for Mac got its first demo on video, while on the PC front, we’ve got the solution for easy networking without the router, or even the wires: Q-waves‘ clever USB streaming kit. Find out more about Q-waves. Finally, in gaming, we may just have the name of the upcoming Assassin’s Creed 3. Stealthy, eh? Still want more news? Jump over to the homepage and load up on it as it breaks. Check out our Android Invasion, starting with our first robot romance video below! Related posts:
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