Hardware

What VIZIO delivers with this system is a fully ready-for-action system, the box containing both the cables for the speakers and the gear necessary for your to mount the speakers if you do so desire. Of course you’ve also got the option to set the bar at the base of your television if you’ve got it on a television tablet station, and your subwoofer certainly needs to sit on a flat surface.

But your satellite speakers just beg to be hooked up to the corners of your room, angled directly at your head, and so forth. In the box you’ve got two satellite wall mount brackets with the attachment screws you’ll need to mount the satellite speakers to them. These satellite speakers aren’t wireless, you should note, each of them need to be connected to the sound bar in order to blast sound. The wireless connection exists between the subwoofer and the sound bar – up to 60 feet of space can exist between them – though the signal is best under 30 feet, and in the clear, too.

Once you have the wireless connection in place, each satellite speaker is connected to the subwoofer with a single RCA cable. The sound bar is also able to be connected to your television with as little as a single cable, if you like. The back of the bar has a USB port, a digital optical audio in, coaxial in, a single analog audio in port and a set of analog audio in ports.

Each of these inputs are seen by the sound bar as a different option accessible by the set of buttons on the far left of the unit or through the system’s remote control. Because of this, you’re able to connect several devices to the bar at once, choosing between them if you’ve got a need for such a thing.

Button controls on the side of the sound bar include five separate clickers, one each for power, input, and Bluetooth input, with one button for volume up and one for down. You’re able to “wake” the system from its low power “sleep” after it’s not been in use for an extended time by pressing the power button or by tapping a volume up or down button. This set of buttons is easy to get used to, but we’d have preferred some physical differentiator between the set to more easily tap at once.

The remote control works with a digital display that contains one of our other – admittedly very few – complaints in that it doesn’t seem to light up enough to be read in the dark. While it’s nice to be able to see which option is being selected, in-the-dark movie adjustments will be limited to what you’ve memorized for controls. If that’s just volume adjustments and track controls, you’ll be good to go. The controller itself is a conveniently small size and has a soft-plastic bottom, making it a comfortable experience – and again, one easy to get used to for sound control.

Sound

Each channel in this system’s surround speakers works with 1 x 2.5″ full-range driver. The subwoofer works with a 6″ throw (high excursion) driver and the full system has 102dB sound pressure with what VIZIO says is less than 1% total harmonic distortion. The sound bar works with 3 channels, left and right, each of the three tweeters coming in at 3/4” each. This the system is rounded out with a set of Center Channel 2 x 2.5 full-range drivers.

You’ve got a pack of software compliments to the hardware delivery here with features like DTS Circle Surround, DTS TruVolume, and Dolby Digital / DTS Digital Surround for audio decoding. Needless to say, this system can get loud. There’s really no arguing that.

The delivery you’re going to get with this setup depends a lot on the machine you’ve got feeding it, of course, but in testing each of the inputs with different devices – and not just televisions – we’ve found the end product to be generally well balanced. If you’ve got a child sleeping in the room next to your television attached to a VIZIO S4251w 5.1 Sound Bar system, you may have trouble finding a balance between too quiet and too loud.

Adjusting for bass, moving the sound around to the system’s satellites, and taking a bit of time to optimize the sound for your chosen room will correct for this sort of situation. Also helping with this situation is DTS TruVolume – made specifically to provide a consistent volume no matter the media. Making sure you understand how to work with TruVolume as well as this system’s adjustment abilities is vital for a superior sound experience.

Wrap-up

This system delivers the best of what your HDTV, stereo, or any other sound-blasting device is capable of. The VIZIO S4251w 5.1 Sound Bar system delivers an immersive sound experience that’s not just good for the relatively inexpensive package it’s delivered to the market with: it’s worth more than it costs ($329.99 USD, if you’d like to know). It’s not often that we can say such a thing for a device here in an age when a product is replaced by a newer, more powerful version of itself in no time flat: VIZIO delivers a product you’ll be satisfied with for many years to come.

Sound quality is something you’re not going to want to skip when you’re aiming for a full home theater experience. VIZIO delivers a powerful solution in the S4251w 5.1 Sound Bar system, one that’s not to be overlooked.

Hardware

There are a couple of key form-factor elements you know you’re getting with a speaker-bar, though Sonos does try to put its own spin on the concept. They’re generally long and narrow, intended to go under or above your TV, and to separate the left and right speakers by as much as possible to broaden the sound stage.

So, the PLAYBAR Is a reasonably handsome slab of matte silver aluminum and black fabric, fairly heavy at 11.9lbs (though a single person can still lift it and move it around), and with holes on the back integrated into rubber feet for either wall or table positioning. It’s not as long as some speaker-bars we’ve seen, at 35.43 inches across, but it’s fairly broad at 3.35 x 5.51 inches. Physical controls are limited to the familiar cluster of Sonos buttons – mute, volume up, volume down; all flanking a white status LED – on one end of the bar.

On the back, in a recessed panel, are the ports: two ethernet connections, an optical audio input, and a power socket. Conspicuous by its absence is HDMI – Sonos tells us it views the TV itself as the hub for multimedia control, and so the PLAYBAR Is intended to focus solely on audio not source switching duties – as well as the aux-in analog input you get on the PLAY:5 speaker. In the box, Sonos includes a power cable, a flat ethernet cable, and an optical audio cable. All remote duties are handled by the usual Sonos apps.

Inside, there are a total of nine speakers, each with its own Class-D digital amplifier. Three 1-inch titanium dome tweeters are spread between the outer edges and the center, while six 3.15-inch aluminum cone midrange speakers fill the remaining space; there’s no onboard subwoofer, though you can wireless connect a Sonos SUB if you want more low-end.

That’s not the only cleverness inside, however. Sonos has fitted the PLAYBAR with an accelerometer so that it knows which way up it’s placed: that means it can automatically figure out if it’s on the wall – with the “top” facing out – or sitting flat, and adjust the equaliser settings automatically. There’s also a pass-through IR system, which repeats your TV remote’s commands in case the TV’s own IR receiver is blocked in some way. The PLAYBAR can also learn the volume commands from your existing remote, so that you don’t have to dig into the app just to tweak the audio when you’re in the middle of a film.

Setup and Use

Sonos has built a reputation around not only great audio quality but ease of setup, and the PLAYBAR is no different. You’ll need to be using the latest versions of the apps for iOS or Android since they add support for the PLAYBAR’s unique features, but otherwise adding it – whether to a new or an existing Sonos system – is a matter of hitting the mute and volume up buttons on the bar itself and waiting for the app to recognize it. That can be done over a WiFi connection (as straightforward as plugging in power and the TV audio cable, though you’ll need to have at least one Sonos speaker or BRIDGE hooked up to your router via ethernet) or with a wired connection to your router. The second ethernet port can be used to pass through the internet connection to another device.

Like a regular Sonos speaker, you can assign a name (such as “TV Room”) to the zone; however, there are also some new steps to the setup. Starting with the TV turned off, you can first optionally add a SUB to the PLAYBAR, and/or a pair of PLAY:3 units for use as rear surround speakers. If you choose to, they’ll still be available for regular music duty, only they’ll also be preset as the default home cinema set too.

After that it’s a case of turning on the TV and waiting for the PLAYBAR to start piping the audio through. Sonos recommends digging into your TV’s settings to disable its onboard speakers, and then guides you through registering the remote you’ll be using to adjust volume – probably the TV remote, but it could be for your Blu-ray player or cable box. In our test system, that was as simple as pressing the volume up button on the remote, and the PLAYBAR automatically recognized its volume and mute controls from that point on.

If your remote isn’t recognized, however, Sonos guides you through teaching the commands to the PLAYBAR, a process which takes about nine button presses. Cleverly, the speaker-bar’s new found skills aren’t kept to itself: it sends the new settings back to Sonos’ servers, where they’re bundled into the firmware catalog for future PLAYBAR units to choose from. That all happens transparently to the user, of course.

Just as setup is different, so there are some new options in the settings page once you’ve got your PLAYBAR hooked up. There are still bass and treble adjustment sliders, and a “loudness” switch, in the equalization page, but not the balance control you have on standalone PLAY zones; however, you do get a new audio delay control, which helps match up lip-syncing. We didn’t have to make any adjustments to that ourselves.

You can turn off the IR signal light and the IR repeater, if you prefer, as well as run through the remote control setup again. There’s also the autoplay options: whether the PLAYBAR will automatically switch over to the optical audio input when the TV starts making sounds (rather than continuing to play music) and, separately, whether the PLAYBAR automatically leaves whatever group you have it set to when autoplay happens.

Sonos has been clever with how it manages connectivity and shared use, given that the PLAYBAR will likely be relied upon both as a TV speaker but also as a music system. Inside, there’s not one but two wireless chips: one 2.4GHz chip for hooking up to the regular SONOSNet 2.0 peer-to-peer network joining all PLAY units together, and a second 5GHz radio for directly connecting with a SUB and/or PLAY:3 pair for home cinema duties (though not PLAY:5 speakers, since they lack the 5GHz support).

By including this second chip, Sonos avoids any latency introduced by piping rear audio or bass track data through your home network, as would normally be the case for multiple PLAY speakers. It’s vital when you’re dealing with multiple speakers playing the same content, since any lag will be instantly noticeable. We set up a pair of PLAY:3 speakers for use as the rear surround set, and could observe no delays in the soundtrack.

As long as autoplay is turned on, when you turn on your TV the PLAYBAR automatically switches over to that source. That includes leaving any group you have it currently playing music in. If you subsequently try to add the PLAYBAR to a PLAY speaker group, or add tracks to its playlist via the app, it will pop up a message warning that doing so will stop the TV audio in that zone, and ask if you actually want to do that. One small frustration was that the PLAYBAR didn’t subsequently rejoin the music group once we stopped using it with the TV; we had to manually add it back in.

Performance

Simple setup would be for naught if the PLAYBAR didn’t sound any good, but happily that’s not the case. Sonos has tuned the speaker-bar in two distinct ways, it says, for music and for TV/movies, and we were impressed by performance in both.

For music, the PLAYBAR offers much of the experience we’re familiar with from the PLAY:3 and PLAY:5, only with added grunt. The natural balance of treble and bass are very similar to those of the smaller PLAY units, which helps it slot neatly into a multi-speaker system, but there’s a healthy bump in power that meant the PLAYBAR could easily match a PLAY:3 set to roughly half volume, while the bar was dawdling down at less than 25-percent.

Midrange sounds have the warmth and breadth that we’re used to from the company’s kit, while trebles have an eager sparkle that makes vocal tracks shine. Complex instrumentals didn’t get lost, with the PLAYBAR’s dynamic EQ automatically keeping things spread across the bar in a way belies the all-in-one nature of the system. Even at high volume levels, there was no buzzing or rattling from the PLAYBAR itself, and there’s a welcome absence of distortion even up to neighbor-infuriating levels.

If there’s any criticism to be made, it’s one that most speaker-bars share: bass tends to come in third compared to treble and mids. That’s definitely not to say the PLAYBAR disappoints in the low-end – it’s tight and aggressive, and probably more than sufficient if you’re living in an apartment – but those looking for the full audio experience will probably be tempted to throw in a SUB, whereupon they’ll find great lashings of bass that manages both precision and exuberance.

It’s movies where that could be most useful, though the PLAYBAR does very well on its own for TV sound. The stereo separation and the 45-degree angle of the speakers means left and right audio is clearly distinguished, the PLAYBAR using a combination of positioning and EQ to bounce audio from the walls. In fact, the onboard computer is crunching 24m calculations a second, Sonos says, to figure out how each sound wave created by each of the nine cones interacts, adding and subtracting those waves to emphasize explosions, make musical soundtracks more enveloping, and allow speech to pierce through everything.

Throw in a couple of rear PLAY:3 speakers, meanwhile, and the experience is all the more impressive. The PLAYBAR is tremendously capable, turning its hand to a variety of movie styles. The rumbles and ominous groans of Prometheus were rich and hauntingly sonorous, while The Dark Knight and Transformers put the surround system through its paces and showed how precise the rear set could be. We noticed no issues with lag or delay.

All that DSP means Sonos can add a couple of new features you wouldn’t normally get on a PLAY speaker: Night Sound and Speech Enhancement. Toggled on or off through new buttons in the “Now Playing” section of the controller app, Night Sound aims to make the PLAYBAR more accommodating to those who like to watch movies while everyone else is asleep. In short, it compresses the audio, dampening louder sounds like explosions and gunfire, and enhancing quieter sounds like speech, so that all can be heard without forcing you to hover over the volume control like a hawk.

It works surprisingly well, though you’ll obviously miss out on some of the original zeal of the soundtrack. As for Speech Enhancement, that operates in a similar way, though leaves the louder sounds untouched. Instead, it simply emphasizes the frequency range of the human voice, lifting speech out of the rest of the audio.

Since it’s a Sonos system, there are some less obvious, but no less neat, things you can do. By grouping the PLAYBAR with one or more other PLAY speakers, for instance, you can pipe your TV’s audio around the home: useful if you want to keep an ear on the news or a concert you’ve been watching. Alternatively, you could start a slideshow on the TV, and accompany it with a playlist of Sonos-streamed audio, whether from your own collection, from internet radio stations, or from on-demand services like Spotify and Pandora.

Wrap-Up

Sonos took its time creating the PLAYBAR, and that consideration shows both in how it sounds and how easy it is to setup and use. Certainly, at $699/£599/€699 it’s expensive when compared to a regular speaker-bar. You can find those for a couple of hundred, after all, though their audio performance may not match up to the PLAYBAR’s beautifully balanced sound. Still, you’re not just getting one product, but two: a speaker-bar for your TV and another zone in your Sonos system, certainly more than equivalent to a $399 PLAY:5.

The magic of the PLAYBAR is how straightforward it is, and how few compromises it demands. You don’t need to be familiar with Sonos to actually use it: in fact, once you’ve set it up, you could feasibly never turn on the Sonos app again, and merely use your regular TV remote. The only messages in the app are concerned with pairing the PLAYBAR back in with music groups; TV playback takes priority. That makes it highly family-friendly, essential if you don’t want a less-technical partner to get frustrated.

Still, our own experience with Sonos is that its simplicity means that even the most gadget-averse soon come to recognize its charms, and the PLAYBAR has that appeal in spades. The audio performance for both music and movies is excellent, and even if you don’t pair it up with rear PLAY:3 speakers and a SUB (which can certainly get expensive, at nearly $2k to outfit a room with the whole set) you’re still getting excellent sound. Superlative performance, ease of use, and multi-room flexibility? Even at $699 it’s enough to make us fall in love with the Sonos PLAYBAR.

Hardware

Happily, while the Air 100 looks like a Sonos, it also has similarly high build quality. The speaker grill covers the entire bowed fascia, though the Air 100 does offer more on-device controls and connections than its Sonos counterpart. Up top there’s power and volume keys, along with buttons to switch between Bluetooth and aux-in sources, as well as five preset keys for internet radio stations. If you’ve ever been frustrated by having to reach for your phone or tablet to manage a Sonos stream, the direct controls on the Air 100 could save you some time.

On the back, there’s an AC power input, bass control knob to adjust the lower frequencies, a WPS button for easier pairing with compatible routers, an ethernet port, “service port” that Cambridge Audio warns shouldn’t be used by owners, a 3.5mm aux-in port, and L/R RCA inputs for a CD player or other analog source. The Air 100 comes with a compact remote which can be used to tweak volume and bass, as well as flip between sources and up to ten internet radio presets.

Inside there’s a 100W amplifier and two 4-inch balanced mode radiator drivers, along with a WiFi b/g radio and Bluetooth. The Air 100 also supports Apple’s AirPlay, for direct streaming from iPads, iPods, and Macs/PCs running iTunes, while the Bluetooth aptX, SBC, and AAC codecs are supported for higher-quality streaming from other phones and tablets.

What you don’t get is any sort of docking station. There’s no way to physically connect your iPhone or iPad to the Air 100 to recharge it, though that does mean that there’s no messing with different 30-pin/Lightning dock connector plates and cradle adapters.

Usability

The Sonos-esque looks are deceiving. There’s no grouped playback support from the Air 100; unlike, say, a collection of PLAY:3 units, you can’t hook them all together and syncronize playback of a single track. Instead, each Air 100 is controlled in turn, either from the local buttons, the bundled remote (which is on the flimsy side, but functional), or the free iPad, iPhone, and Android apps.

Setup is straightforward, initially requiring you to connect your computer to a WiFi network hosted by the Air 100 to access its browser-based settings page and punch in your usual wireless network credentials. Then, you can access it via its IP address from any browser on the network; alternatively, you can go for a wired ethernet connection direct to your router, or hit the WPS button if your router supports it.

Cambridge Audio stores ten default internet radio presets to get you going, but changing them is a matter of opening up the MinxAir app on your phone or tablet and browsing through the list. Stations are sorted by location or genre, or you can search, and there’s a list of recently played streams along with shortcuts to your phone’s music app and Shazam, the app that identifies what’s playing by its musical fingerprint. If you’ve a Spotify account then you can stream tracks from that, too.

It doesn’t have to be internet music sources, however. Hit the Bluetooth button and the Air 100 automatically goes into pairing model; then it’s just a case of choosing the speaker from the list on your mobile device, and then starting playback. AirPlay works in a similar way, with the Minx speaker showing up as an AirPlay device from the menu in iOS or iTunes. We were quickly able to funnel music over to it from an iMac and then from an iPad mini.

Finally, there’s the analog options. If your media player doesn’t have Bluetooth, then you can hook it up to the 3.5mm input with a regular cable; the RCA inputs are ideal for a set-top box or CD player. Pressing the analog button switches over to those sources, though the Air 100 will automatically flick over to AirPlay or Bluetooth if those connections become active.

Performance

There’s a surprising amount of sound that comes out of the Air 100, given its 13.9 x 7.2 x 4.6 inch dimensions. Cambridge Audio calls its speaker technology “Balanced Mode Radiator” (BMR) but the important thing is that there’s an impressively broad soundstage during playback, though as with all single-box options the Air 100 lacks in stereo separation.

You don’t get an active subwoofer (and there’s no support for plugging in an external sub), with the carry-handle doubling as the passive bass output. Still, with some judicious tweaking of the bass knob we were able to coax low level sounds out that matched what the mids and trebles were doing, and comfortably fill a room with music without encountering distortion. Up next to a PLAY:3 we noticed a lack of the top-end sparkle that the Sonos achieves with its dedicated tweeter, but the Air 100 managed a healthy mid section with some nice stabs of bass along the way.

Wrap-up

At £329, the Minx Air 100 finds itself more expensive than the £259 PLAY:3 but competitive against other AirPlay speakers. In the case of the Sonos, you trade the potential for multi-room support and the slickness of Sonos’ remote experience for Bluetooth and native AirPlay support (though it’s worth noting that Sonos enabled direct playback of local iOS music with a late-2012 controller app update). The PLAY:3 also lacks the analog inputs; you need to step up to the £349 PLAY:5 if you want that.

Against something like the Libratone Zipp (£329), however, the Air 100 looks very solid indeed. It lacks the battery support of the Zipp, but makes up for it by throwing in Bluetooth. That makes the Cambridge Audio speaker a lot more interesting for cross-platform users, who aren’t entirely committed to Apple. The Air 100 js also more powerful and delivers a more fulsome sound than the smaller Zipp.

Yes, we’d still head straight to Sonos if we had any ambitions to outfit multiple areas of a house with music, but for bringing audio to a single location – whether kitchen, bedroom, or office – the Minx speaker covers all the bases in a convenient way. The physical controls make it user-friendly for those uninterested in digging into a smartphone app, while the iOS and Android app compatibility, as well as the presence of Bluetooth, suits it to a platform-agnostic household. It’s that versatility which gives the Air 100 the edge over other AirPlay systems.

Design

Sony’s “monolithic design” tagline for the HX850 series isn’t exactly the catchiest of slogans, and it doesn’t really do the HDTV justice. It’s certainly pared back: a sheet of toughened Corning Gorilla Glass – ideal for those accidentally-hurled-Wiimote moments – with a few chromed highlights around the edge, but nothing that would distract you from the picture quality.

The default stand is a simple plastic affair, sturdy but uninspiring, though Sony also offers a premium stand which has integrated speakers and props the HX850 back at a slight angle. Alternatively, it can be wall-mounted, at which point the sleek lines begin to look even more appealing. Physical controls are limited to a single row of buttons hidden on the lower right side at the back: power, volume, channel, input, and menu.

Unlike Samsung’s twin remote bundle and advanced voice-control system, Sony’s remote control is an altogether more traditional affair. It’s on the compact side, though isn’t short on buttons, which means some of the keys are a little fiddly. They’re also not backlit, which is something else Samsung does right.

Features and Connectivity

In general, though, the HX850′s spec sheet leaves few boxes unticked. The edge-backlit LED display runs at 1080p resolution with a 240Hz refresh rate, and there’s active 3D support though oddly Sony doesn’t actually include any glasses in the box; instead you have to buy them yourself, from $49.99 apiece. Sony’s X-Reality Pro Engine technology is implemented, which promises to analyze each frame of the picture in real-time, and tweak it to remove noise, increase sharpness, and optimize the color and contrast. Then there’s Motionflow, which achieves that 240Hz refresh rate by calculating intermediary frames based on the likely color and movement of the source content frames either side of them.

Connectivity includes four HDMI ports – two on the side and two on the bottom), two composite video (one of which can double as component video) both on the rear, two USB 2.0 ports on the side, an RF antenna connection on the bottom, three analog audio inputs (two on the rear; one on the side), a PC input (D-Sub), and an ethernet port. There’s also an audio output on the side and a digital audio output on the bottom.

However, Sony has also equipped the HX850 with integrated WiFi b/g/n, meaning you can hook up to a network wirelessly and without having to plug in an external dongle as with some TVs. There’s also support for Skype, with an optional camera (RRP $149.99) plugging directly into the HX850 and allowing you to make and receive video calls. The camera wasn’t supplied for our review, however.

Smart TV

With both wireless and WiFi onboard, it comes as no surprise that the HX850 supports various streaming media features. If you have accounts with Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, or Sony’s own Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited services, then you’ll be able to stream TV shows and movies directly to the HX850 with no need for a computer in-between.

Aside from Skype, there’s also YouTube, Picasa, Slacker Radio, Facebook, and Twitter support, together with various Yahoo apps and widgets thanks to Sony’s partnership with the company. It’s also possible to push video directly from a laptop or mobile device via WiFi Direct, or you can plug in a USB drive – only FAT, not NTFS, formatted drives are supported, mind – and play video, audio, and picture content stored on there. Currently, the HX850 supports MPEG1/2/4, AVCHD, WMV, MP3, WMA, JPG, and BMP files.

It all works, but it lacks the finessed UI we’ve seen on other smart TVs, particularly Samsung’s. While we could do without Samsung’s gimmicky gesture-navigation system and even its voice control, though the latter works surprisingly well, its interface in general is far slicker and more attractive than that of the HX850. Functional, then, but hardly inspirational.

Performance

Happily, the Sony dragon awakes when it comes to picture quality. There are various modes, including several variants of gaming, sports, cinema, photos, and an auto setting that attempts to already pick between them, though we found the two cinema modes did the best job for most of our viewing. Brightness, contrast, sharpness, color, color temperature, hue, and noise reduction are easily accessed, and you can dig into the more advanced settings like gamma, white balance, control over local dimming, contrast and black correction, and whiteness enhancer, in a sub-menu.

Lots to play with, then, but even with the default settings for Cinema 1 mode we were impressed by what the HX850 could do. A little calibration work, however, and the HX850′s true skills became clear. Blacks are deep and crisp, though not quite to the same level as the Samsugn UN55ES8000 we reviewed back in July (albeit a TV with a $1,250 higher RRP), but the colors are particularly impressive – even across a broad viewing angle – and even when we took advantage of the set’s ability to upscale standard-definition content, it proved pleasingly free of artifacts.

Motionflow did its job well, and we saw no ghosting or frame untidiness even in fast-moving scenes, such as action movies or sports games. Sony had supplied some active 3D glasses, and the effect is solid though with the occasional glimpse of crosstalk during busier moments onscreen. Sharp delineation of color or contrast caused the most problems.

Wrap-Up

Beautiful colors, superlative connectivity, and discretely handsome style. The Sony HX850 may not shout about its skills when you first look at it, but its LED display is among the best we’ve seen. Contrast levels and some hiccups in 3D performance would be our main complaints over image quality, though they’re minor and – if you spend a little time finessing the settings – can mostly be ironed out.

Otherwise, it’s only the add-ons that prove disappointing: the underwhelming remote that doesn’t feel like it belongs with a TV that has an RRP of $2,600; the lackluster smart TV menus; and having to pay another $150 for the Skype camera (where Samsung builds in its webcam). With street pricing edging just under $2,000, however, we can be a little more accommodating of those flaws.

In the end, it’s the screen quality that helps the HX850 stand out. Invest some time working around the contrast issue, and you’ll be rewarded with a set that’s great for movies and gaming.

Design and Hardware

Samsung has been gradually paring back the design of its sets over the past generations, with particular success when it comes to the bezel. For the ES9000, that’s a slim, curved border with a rose gold tinted finish, just 0.31-inches thick. The only distractions are the (retractable) webcam on the top edge, and a simple, narrow stand underneath. That can, obviously, be detached and the TV wall-mounted; at 1.4-inches deep (12.9-inches on the stand) it’s impressively thin.

Despite the dimensions, Samsung manages to fit in a fair amount of hardware. There are two 15W speakers, downward-firing, and integrated WiFi for hooking up the ES9000 to the internet wire-free. Other connections include three HDMI ports, three USB 2.0 ports, an ethernet port, component and composite inputs, a digital audio output (optical), a 3.5mm analog audio output, a DVI audio input, aerial port, and a serial port for Samsung’s EX-LINK inter-device communication (with it, and the right accessories, you can have the TV trigger a motorized wall-mount or other add-ons).

Samsung includes four pairs of 3D glasses in the box along with its Smart Touch Remote, which has a trackpad for navigation and also works as a remote microphone for voice control. There’s a standard remote in the box too, along with an IR blaster which allows for third-party A/V kit to be controlled via the Samsung’s remote. A Smart View app for Android phones and tablets turns them into remotes too. You don’t get the wireless keyboard (VG-KBD1500) which the TV is compatible with, however; that’s a $100 add-on, and as well as full QWERTY includes a trackpad and works, via Bluetooth, with Samsung’s recent Android phones and tablets.

There’s also support for Samsung’s Evolution Kit, due sometime in 2013. TV development may run at a slower pace than, say, for smartphones, but it’s still frustrating to think that today’s flagship TV will be superseded at some point in the not-too-distant future. The Evolution Kit will go some way to addressing that, a slot-in module that will update the ES9000 with a new, faster processor than the current dual-core, more content support, extra smart TV features, and other enhancements.

Samsung isn’t saying exactly what the Evolution Kit will comprise of – after all, it’s hard to tell what will be standard on new flagships next year – nor how much it will cost, but it’s a reassurance that other manufacturers don’t offer. Obviously it can’t upgrade the ES9000′s display to 4K, but we’re happy to see TV companies thinking beyond the very first out-of-box experience.

Picture Technology

The ES9000 isn’t short on picture technology: Samsung has basically packed everything it can into the TV’s slender chassis. The Full HD display offers, according to Samsung, 30-percent more sharpness and a matching improvement in black levels, as well as being 60-percent brighter. That’s thanks to a cavalcade of processing technology, including the Micro Dimming Ultimate technology we saw on the ES8000 (SlashGear review), and the Precision Black Local Dimming and Cinema Black features (known as “Smart LED” in the settings) which we haven’t seen since 2011′s D8000 flagship.

All that dimming tech dynamically adjusts the backlighting on the ES9000 so as to improve contrast. For instance, the TV automatically identifies the black letterboxing bars above and below movies, and lowers the backlight behind those sections. It also monitors the rest of the picture, split into zones, and adjusts the backlighting according to what’s on-screen at any one time. The ES9000 uses edge-lit active dimming, where clever use of LEDs around the sides of the display can selectively adjust the backlighting of different portions across it; it’s a more compact system than full-array active dimming, which is relatively rare on TVs today.

Finally, there’s active 3D: put on one of the four pairs of bundled 3D glasses, and as long as you’ve got 3D content to watch, you can view it in 1080p. The ES9000 supports 2D to 3D upscaling, just like the rest of Samsung’s 3D TV range.

Smart TV

Whether it’s the occasional Netflix movie of full-on cord cutting, shifting TV watching from the traditional cable connection to streaming media is gaining momentum, and the ES9000 is ready for much of it out of the box. Samsung’s smart TV interface is a familiar sight by now, and though the option-packed menus can be a little intimidating initially, the flexibility Samsung offers more than makes up for it.

Netflix, YouTube, Hulu Plus, and Vimeo apps are all preloaded (some services require a subscription, of course) meaning no need for a separate set-top box for streaming. There are also Facebook and Twitter apps, along with a Skype client which supports voice and video calls, thanks to the pop-up webcam.

Other apps give access to music streaming services like Pandora and MOG Music, or to news content like ESPN ScoreCenter and USA Today. There’s a full browser for those sources yet to jump on the Samsung smart TV bandwagon, though it’s obviously going to be easier to use if you’ve got the optional keyboard; still, we had good results using voice recognition as long as background noise was minimal (and the URL was a straightforward word). You can save lists of approved sites to limit which your kids can access.

Those with Samsung phones and tablets can not only use the free app to turn their mobile device into a remote, but stream content directly to the ES9000 using AllShare Play. We were able to quickly push playback of a video from a Samsung Galaxy S III to the TV when both were connected to the same WiFi network, with no problems streaming 1080p Full HD clips. Content can also be loaded from a USB drive (max 2TB, in FAT16/32 or NTFS format) attached to one of the ES9000′s ports. We’d love to see a communal playlists system added, since this would be a great party media hub; even if your friends don’t have Samsung devices, the ES9000 supports generic DLNA for streaming.

Voice control isn’t the only navigation option. The camera on the top of the ES9000 can track gestures, like previous high-end Samsung smart TVs, first learning to recognize the slow movements of an outstretched palm side to side, and then allowing you to swipe around the UI, “grab” icons and controls to activate them, and point to letters on an onscreen keyboard. It’s not quite Kinect, but it works neatly with casual games like Angry Birds, and handled differentiating between multiple viewers (only one of which was controlling at any one time) well.

Samsung Signature Services is a new addition to Samsung’s smart TVs this year, with a curated area of games, edutainment, and age-appropriate TV shows for kids, along with an integrated rewards system that lets them build up an album of stickers for doing chores and taking part of learning games. The Fitness section offers the services of a virtual personal trainer, meanwhile: tell the ES9000 your fitness goals and it pieces together an exercise plan, showing video tutorials of each stage, and tracking progress with individual user reports. The TV can even use its camera to show you interacting with your virtual personal trainer, so that you know you’re doing the exercises correctly.

Finally, Family Story turns the TV into a digital pinboard. Pulling in schedules, photos, and messages from smartphones and tablets running the free Family Story app, it supports reminders and alarms for doctors appointments and birthdays, in addition to messaging while simultaneously watching a TV show. Samsung uses the cloud to synchronize the photos and video you’ve taken on your phone or tablet with your Smart TV, as well as helping you access them while you’re out and about.

Performance

Ten grand is a significant amount to spend on a TV, and even with the UN75ES9000′s street price edging under the $9,000 mark, you need to be a serious home entertainment junkie to consider buying any set of this size and value. The recommendation is to have it professionally calibrated to suit your room, since without that you’re not getting the very best of what the TV has to offer.

That would be a real shame, too, since the ES9000 is capable of some incredible pictures. Beautifully vivid colors and crisp details are what first grab you, but it’s the boosted black levels that are a particular gain. Samsung’s Cinema Black and Smart LED technology does an excellent job of making sure dark areas really are dark – blacks are black, not murky grey – while low-light content, such as moody films like “The Dark Knight Rises”, don’t lose all their detail in the process. Color accuracy is also slightly improved over the ES8000, with less of the slight blue tint that can make some content looker cooler than expected.

Viewing angles are another success story, both sufficiently broad to accommodate a widely spread audience across the room, but also supporting a good vertical range so that whether you’re standing or sitting you’ll see the same thing. It holds true for 3D content as well, and we saw minimal crosstalk. The ES9000′s brightness levels mean 3D viewing is almost as bright as 2D, and there’s no mangling of the colors either.

Finally, there’s the surprisingly effective speaker system. We’ve grown used to mediocre audio from integrated TV speakers, but whether it’s the extra space the ES9000′s 75-inch panel allows, or the speakers themselves, the big Samsung does a great job. Midrange audio doesn’t sound weedy, and the high-end is piping and clear rather than shrill. Even the bass end does okay, though as always a standalone subwoofer makes a world of difference for getting immersed in a movie. It’s hard to imagine an ES9000 buyer not pairing the TV with a surround sound system, but its onboard audio is certainly good enough for those times you don’t want to turn it all on.

Wrap-up

Samsung has been carving a niche for itself in the high-end TV market for some years now, and the UN75ES9000 follows in the well-esteemed footsteps of the D8000 and ES8000 before it. Smart TV features, clever add-ons like the fitness apps, Skype support, and browser, and media streaming all work well, but they’re sensibly built on the solid grounding of great picture quality. Whether you’re viewing in 2D or 3D, the ES9000 looks fantastic.

The specter on the horizon is 4K, though we’re still several years out from mainstream content providers supporting that resolution. In the meantime, the combination of excellent display quality today and the Expansion Kit for adding upgraded features tomorrow mean it’s hard to miss 4K. The ES9000 does great things with the content we’ll have for the foreseeable future. Throw in support for digital streaming, a panel which handles fast-paced console gaming very well, the convenience of internet browsing and casual gaming built-in, and a range of control options to suit most ages, and the UN75ES9000 makes an excellent case for its place at the pinnacle of Samsung’s range. Visit Samsung Smart TV for more details.

Inside the app you can also purchase the app with a link to the UltraViolet collection – once you’ve got it going, you can download the movie to hook up directly with the app as well as the rest of the features – also available for download. You have the option to either download everything for offline playing or you can stream till the cows come home. If you download everything – movie, Movie Touch content and all – you’ll have just a bit over 1.5GB of space taken up on your iPad. Then the fun begins.

What you’re seeing is a set of features including Cast data, Multi-Angle break-downs of scenes, Production Design, Scene Deconstructions, Photos and Illustrations, 360 Turnarounds of models, and Fun Facts – lore, in this case, direct from the Men in Black universe. You’ll also get to see videos showcasing Special Effects, this and several of the other video-based features showing clips direct from the folks at Sony Pictures Imageworks.

The user interface here could not possibly be more intuitive and watching the movie like this is rather interesting to say the least. If you’re thinking about picking up Men in Black 3 from the UltraViolet collection, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try this app out as well as it’ll be absolutely free to you. You can share clips from the movie via the app to Twitter and Facebook, you can stop and go throughout the movie with more information than you could possibly want about the movie, and it’s all synced up with the picture as it goes along.

And therein lies what’s easily the best feature of the system here – the entire feature collection rides along with you as you roll through the film. You get a timeline of features below the video display, each of them moving forward at a pace which sets the correct features in place when they’re relevant. Tap them at will, and devour them gleefully!

Hardware and Design

Libratone has been pushing its brand of quirky fabric-clad simplicity for a few years now, and the Zipp follows in the footsteps of the Beat we reviewed last year with more wool wrapping. A 10.2-inch tall, 4.8-inch diameter cylinder, the 4 pound Zipp has a whimsical leather handle and can be dressed up in one of eight different colors of outer sleeve.

These range from the sober – black or a pale grey – through to the more eye-catching, such as bright red or purple; each has a simple zip fastening running the length of the speaker. Libratone will offer individual Zipp models – in grey or red – at Apple Stores for $399/£329 apiece, or in three-pack boxes with either black/blue/red or black/pink/yellow covers and a single speaker for $449/£369. Additional covers are available from Libratone direct, priced at $49.95.

Under the Italian wool lurks the latest version of Libratone’s FullRoom sound technology, here paired with a single 4-inch bass driver and two 1-inch ribbon tweeters driven by 60W of digital amplification. Although that may sound like a 2.1 setup, Libratone insists on calling it “360-degree” audio, with no front/back or left/right, and the same quality of sound no matter where in the room you’re sitting.

That’s the same promise as the Libratone Beat, but whereas that model was stuck within cable range of a power socket, the Zipp can join you in the garden or on the go. An internal rechargeable battery means the Zipp can go entirely wireless, with Libratone claiming up to eight hours of runtime if you plug in your source direct, or half of that if you’re using AirPlay.

It’s not the smallest portable speaker, but it’s also not the most difficult to transport; certainly it’s easy to tote around the house, while we could see it getting packed into a rucksack with your next picnic too. The leather carry handle is a neat touch, and feels sturdy enough to swing the Zipp from; it also masks the majority of the ports and buttons on offer. While the power button and volume keys are on the top of the speaker, under the strap there’s a USB port, aux-in input, LEDs for battery and wireless status, a WiFi button, and a PlayDirect/Setup button.

PlayDirect

What’s PlayDirect, you ask? That’s Libratone’s alternative to AirPlay, based on Apple’s system’s little-discussed device-to-device WiFi support. Rather than demanding both iOS or OS X gadget and the Zipp be hooked up to the same wireless network, a direct connection can be established between the two. Unfortunately, because iOS doesn’t support simultaneous PlayDirect and WiFi internet access, using the out-of-the-box settings you’ll find your iPhone or iPad loses its data connection when you pair it straight to the Zipp.

That’s fine if you’re content to play back nothing but music stored locally on your phone, but an issue if you were hoping to stream music from Spotify, Pandora, or similar services. Libratone provides instructions to work around it (basically assigning a static IP address to the iPhone/iPad’s WiFi connection) but you can only then stream from internet services if your device has a 3G/4G connection. WiFi-only iPads are out of luck.

Of course, you can use AirPlay as normal, as long as there’s a WiFi router in-between to connect to – a distinct possibility in your home or garden; less likely when you’re at the beach – and hooking the Zipp up is straightforward. You can either plug in your iOS device via USB and have the Zipp suck the WiFi settings out, or you can navigate to the speaker in your computer’s browser and punch in the relevant details that way. Switching between AirPlay and PlayDirect is a simple matter of hitting each button on the Zipp, with it taking under a minute to reconnect; however, if you roam out of range of PlayDirect, it can take a power cycle of the speaker to get it paired up again.

It’s also possible to connect an iOS device via USB and play back music that way, and the aux-in port takes a stereo audio input from any external source – whether it’s your Android phone or an old Discman – you might have lying around. Still, the emphasis is most definitely on Apple’ ecosystem; you don’t get Bluetooth.

Performance

We used to have generally low expectations of portable speakers: battery powered generally meant mediocre sound. Since then, though, we’ve seen several attempts to supercharge mobile music, and so the Zipp has plenty to live up to. The most obvious rival is probably Jawbone’s BIG JAMBOX, though slightly smaller than the Libratone and eschewing AirPlay in favor of Bluetooth.

What the Zipp has as its main advantage is an active bass driver, rather than the passive bass radiators of the BIG JAMBOX. With that, the Libratone system sounds a whole lot more rounded and complete: trebles and mids are bright and broad, while the bottom end is enthusiastic but without the imprecision that can affect passive rivals.

Libratone is keen on its 360-degree sound concept, and it’s certainly less directional than traditional speakers. Where Sonos’ PLAY:3 works best when firing forward, into the body of the room, the Zipp can fill a space with less concern to its actual placement. On the flip side, though, there’s no way to pair two Zipp units together for actual stereo playback – as you can do with Sonos speakers – and the Zipp generally blurs the stereo channels together.

A companion iOS app allows for remote selection between seven different EQ presets – neutral, easy listening, soft, rock, jazz, movie, and live – with a separate setup tab for choosing between different placement positions. You can tell the Zipp whether it’s on a floor or a shelf, on a table, or outdoors, and even specify the distance from the walls and other more precise factors. Battery life came in at around the four hour promise from Libratone when we streamed from an iPad over PlayDirect.

Wrap-Up

Apple is pushing away from speaker docks and focusing on wireless audio, and the accessory industry is eager to oblige. Such systems have generally been more expensive than traditional, wired docks, but that’s also encouraged manufacturers to dress them up and make an altogether more “premium” experience.

On that front, the Libratone Zipp makes a convincing argument. The hardware is solid and distinctive, and the wool covers, though initially seeming gimmicky, make more sense when you think about being able to easily replace scuffed, ripped, or otherwise damaged sleeves that may get battered around while you’re on the move.

Most importantly, though, it sounds great. It may lack the simultaneous multi-room playback option of systems like Sonos, but it’s far more portable; that iOS doesn’t make coexisting PlayDirect and internet data connections straightforward is a blip on usability, but it’s one that will hopefully be addressed with new firmware. Unfortunately there’s no chance of adding in Bluetooth, which means the Zipp is unlikely to gain any great following among the Android faithful.

At $399 it’s a hundred bucks more than a BIG JAMBOX, but to our ears the audio performance is well worth the extra cash. Broad compatibility with Apple devices and appealing design make the Zipp a solid pairing to your iPhone or iPad, with the reassurance that it won’t be left behind when the next range of iOS devices appears.

Do you remember what it felt like to see The Dark Knight in the theater? If you didn’t see The Dark Knight (the one with the Joker in it, not “Rises” which just came out), you’ll have an idea of what this film did to me. I’ve seen some movies recently that were entertaining, to be sure – Total Recall was a fun adventure, Men in Black III was a great mix of comedy and relatively fun action – but none were movies I told even my co-workers that they had to see. LOOPER is a movie I’m telling my co-workers, friends, and family members that they have to see – in the theater, no less.

LOOPER is a movie that’s made for the movie theater. There are movies that are made to be watched a bunch of times. The Avengers was certainly made to be a hard-hitting big-screen entertainment force like no other, but made absolutely sure to be re-watchable in just about as big a way as any movie has been in the history of action films. The Amazing Spider-Man is another example – rather similar to The Avengers in that it’s comic book-based and made to keep the brand alive, to sell toys, and perhaps third most important, to present an engaging film experience for the sake of making a great movie in and of itself. LOOPER is a movie that’s made to be a great movie.

If you plan on seeing LOOPER, please do yourself a favor and see it in a movie theater. Don’t bother with the popcorn and the pop (or soda, if you’re not living up here in Minnesota), because you won’t need to pass the time by eating and drinking like you do with so many movies these days. It wont be an issue for you.

The plot of this film plays second fiddle to the execution, to the way the story is revealed – you can guess a lot of the answers to the questions the characters in the movie have before they do – and you won’t be disappointed when you do. What I mean is that this movie does not assume that you’re an idiot – this isn’t the kind of science fiction / action / horror movie where people scream because someone’s jumped out at them or because they’ve realized that their family has been ripped apart – no way. Instead, loud bangs, revelations, and visual jams on your eyes are used to astound your senses – and not always to make you say “oh wow.”

There’s also a bit of comedy in this production. LOOPER takes itself seriously until just before you’d normally say “oh come on, that’s stupid” in any other movie in which time travel is a plot element. For those of you wondering about the time travel bit in this movie, I recommend you see two things before you enter the theater.

1. SlashGear interviews Dr. Edward Farhi on LOOPER-esque time travel
2. 12 Monkeys

The movie 12 Monkeys has Bruce Willis and a time machine – and it’s generally regarded as rather absurd in how serious it takes itself, especially in the universe of time travel movies. It’s almost certainly because of that movie – along with the other surprisingly large amount of time travel movies that have made it into the main stream – that Joe (Willis) and Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) have a brief screaming match in a diner about how unimportant the details are. The details being how time travel works and what paradoxes are – in so many words.

This film takes beautiful futurescapes and conceptual industrial design that every Blade Runner lover can’t resist and cuts a giant hole from our present time directly into a future possibility of an environment. The ideas you see here outside the time travel concept are quite engaging, and interesting to see as each future vision film is, with those responsible for constructing this environment presenting the future they believe could very well be part of a timeline we’re on right this minute.

I believe it – for the most part.

There are some points at which you can tell that the creators of the film gave in to the now nearly cliche ideas of transparent smartphones with no border and the promise of flying motorbikes, but for the most part they serve their purposes in the story perfectly well.

The acting in the movie is up there in the great films each of the top actors and actresses in the movie have done, more or less. Bruce Willis is fresh, certainly making this film an effort that’s set to be a point in his career he can be proud of.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt took this movie to the bank, too, making an extraordinary character out of Young Joe, very much a young version of Willis – and executive producing the film as well.

I’m having difficulty finding anything negative to say about the movie, even when I make an effort to nitpick. You’ll find reviewers across the board saying this is a “must see” movie, must see for action lovers, for science fiction lovers, and of course for the lovers of both Gordon Levitt and Willis. They can be proud of this production, that’s for certain.

The intentions of the movie are relatively clear: to be the ultimate action flick by cramming in all those actors you used to like in all those movies you used to like decades ago, mixed in with a dash of more recent talent for good measure. The posters and marketing for the movie boldly proclaims who to expect (Willis! Schwarzenegger! Li!) and yet not a single frame of the movie shows all the actors together.

This movie does have a very loose and tired plot, but the plot is irrelevant, because you’re here to watch old people mow down entire armies with very large guns. Here’s the thing: it doesn’t really work. There are only really two big action set pieces in the movie – one at the beginning and one at the end, with brief flirtations in between - and thanks to janky editing and pacing, they feel rushed. The director is so intent to make sure he fits all his eye candy moments in that he doesn’t give the audience any time to savour the action, and the use of bad CGI ultimately that nothing has any impact.

Characters disappear and reappear at random. Jet Li is in the film for approximately four minutes at the beginning before leaving and never coming back, yet has third billing, according to IMDB. Chris Liam Hemsworth is set up to be a disgustingly likeable hero: he left the Army because they shot his dog (seriously), he can run up hills really fast, and he’s a pretty good sniper to boot. He’s dispatched during the first act in order to set up some sort of half baked revenge plot for Stallone. Some terrible dialogue is muttered at his funeral (“Why is it that the good people who deserve to live die, but the bad people who deserve to die live?”, or words to that effect.)

Crews and Couture have maybe one or two lines in the movie. They’re mainly there to shoot people. Chuck Norris shows up for around three minutes to shoot people too. He makes a Chuck Norris joke because he’s Chuck Norris, and we’re supposed to laugh, but we don’t, because that meme died years ago. Bruce and Arnold share a particularly cringe worthy exchange. At least they get to shoot people out of a moving SMART car for a couple of seconds.

The only two people who are having any fun in the movie are Lundgren and Van Damme. Van Damme is clearly enjoying playing the bad guy, hamming it up with insane body language and gestures while wearing wraparound sunglasses and a leather coat in just about every scene. Lundgren clearly realizes that this isn’t a movie to be taken seriously, and also recognizes that people think he’s a bit weird, playing to his strengths and getting a few laughs in the process.

All the other actors in the movie are unsure of how to play things out, resulting in a tone that’s neither worthy of a good or bad-good action movie. Stallone in particular looks fairly bored throughout the whole affair. His extremely dodgy mustache gives a great performance, at least. The only time he really lights up is during his exchanges with Statham, but let’s face it: they’re both going through the motions.

My expectations for the Expendables 2 were low, and yet I still left disappointed. Ultimately, the problem is that it has no charm. It’s a movie designed to tick all the boxes on a financial sheet (famous action stars,  explosions, more explosions), without any passion involved in the film making process by just about… well, anyone. I don’t want something of this calibre to be a good movie, but I do want it to be entertaining, and the film just doesn’t provide nearly enough entertainment.

The primary function of this beast is indeed playing vinyl records. You can break out your old collection of 33 1/3 platters or your 45s and you’ll have a fabulous time spinning all night long. You’ve got a detachable 45 converter, hardcore screw speed adjuster, and a switch for the different locked-in speeds you need. The arm on this player also can be lifted and lowered by a mechanical arm, there’s a lock for the player arm, and once your album is done playing, the arm does automatically return to its dock.

The 45 RPM adapter sits in the box solid if you don’t need to use it and is just as easy to utilize when you do need it as any built-in adapter I’ve ever used. And it’s got a sticker on it too, just incase you have no idea what it is.

The lid of the box has a latch that locks in place if you want to keep it open, and if you prefer to play a record with the top closed, you can do that too – it wont affect the sound quality at all.

On the left of the machine you’ve got a hideaway dock which has room to feature your smartphone or MP3 player – or media player, if you prefer. This dock has enough room for a standard smartphone, not quite enough room for a Galaxy Note. You can put an iPhone in there, an HTC smartphone, a Motorola device, or even a BlackBerry if you’re feeling strange. The only thing you need to connect to the device to get music out of it is a standard headphone jack.

From there you’ve only to head to the front of this beast to flip the Phono switch to “iPod/Aux in” as they’ve labeled it, and you’ll be good to go. Volume, Bass, and Balance (between the two built-in speakers) all work perfectly well as a good headphone-jack-utilizing device should.

Another item you might have noticed up front is the USB port (cable included with the set). With the correct drivers installed on your computer, you’re able to use this device to import sound. The wheels should be cranking in your cranium right about now, all you vinyl owners out there, because yes, yes indeed, you can use this player to import all your old albums into your computer so that you can push them (with your computer) to your other devices. It’s as simple as it gets without using one of those fancy vinyl-to-cd devices that audiophiles certainly aren’t the most fond of.

On the back of this beast you’ll find another AUX-in port for those of you that have speaker wires and don’t want to have to use the iPod dock to connect your larger devices. The back of the player also has a door behind which you can hide your power cord, the power cord required to make the whole player work. This isn’t quite a wireless record player – but it’s size and the fact that the switches up front are rather pointy should have made that clear well before now.

Wrap-Up

The sound quality on this machine is generous, but not perfect. You’re not going to purchase this beast for your friend who needs to hear every nuance and expect them to be happy with the speakers that exist on this machine. Then again, the average vinyl record lover isn’t in it for the high detail, they’re in it for the warm feeling of the media, which this device certainly does project.

The whole unit is covered with a faux snake sort of rubbery covering, there are bumpers on the bottom and the back so that if you do indeed need to transport it around, you’ll be covered for setting it down on the ground. The whole unit is solid, it certainly does what it sets out to do, and it’s worth what it costs for sure. Go out and grab one for $196.57 from Pyle Audio’s online store or your favorite online retailer right now! And hope to heck your parents didn’t toss out your KISS collection in the meantime.

Hardware

Handsome and imposing: Samsung’s 2012 design language involves plenty of silver metal and narrow bezels, allowing the LED LCD panel to speak for itself. The stand does away with the splayed legs of the last-gen model and replaces them with more discrete curving bars, though the ES8000 is no less stable for it.

The screen itself measures – on our review model – 55-inches and runs, unsurprisingly, at 1920 x 1080 Full HD resolution. Overall, the set is 1.2-inches thick, excluding the detachable stand (that’s 8.3-inches deep) and stands 30-inches tall and 48.4-inches wide.

Even those with multiple external sources to hook up should have no issues connecting the ES8000. The ports are arrayed in an L-shape along the lower left side of the rear of the set, emerging parallel to the back so as to keep things flat and slim. There are three HDMI, a VGA, component, two sets of composite, three USB 2.0, optical digital, DVI and PC audio, and RF inputs, along with ethernet and integrated WiFi. If we were being picky then we’d liked to have seen a fourth HDMI, preferably side-mounted for impromptu use. Samsung bundles four pairs of active shutter 3D glasses.

There’s also what Samsung refers to as its “Evolution Kit”, a new addition for 2012 models. In effect a – currently empty – expansion bay, the idea is that as Samsung releases new features it can retroactively upgrade its existing models with the use of plug-in boards. Of course, as a new idea it’s untested, and so we’ll have to wait to see if it addresses upgrade anxiety along the line.

For the best results, it’s still sensible to ignore the integrated speakers in any TV and rely on a proper surround sound system – or at the very least a solid 2.1 setup – if you want your ears to be as well-treated as your eyes. Still, the two 10W down-firing speakers on the ES8000 aren’t the worst we’ve heard. There’s also a webcam on the top edge, built into a discrete bump, and flanked by two microphones.

Remote Controls

Samsung includes not one but two remotes with the ES8000, along with a discrete joystick-nub on the right edge for controlling the set up-close. The regular remote is long and thin, encrusted with buttons for navigating menus and channels, controlling volume, attached DVD/Blu-ray/DVR boxes (via HDMI link) and is backlit for nighttime use.

The second “Smart Touch Remote Control” is far more interesting. Shorter than the regular model, it pares back the controls to the bare minimum: there are volume and channel scrolls; power, home, timer and source keys; back, voice control and number shortcuts; all around a trackpad surface. With it, you can swipe your way around menus, but thanks to its integrated microphone you can also give the TV voice commands. We’ve covered that comprehensively in our Samsung Smart TV hands-on.

There are also some non-standard options for those who want even more control. The free Android Smart View App runs on phones and tablets, and as long as your ES8000 is on the same network – either wired or wireless, since the TV has both options – you can control it from your touchscreen. There’s also a Samsung wireless keyboard, which gives you full-sized text input as well as media control buttons with a Bluetooth connection, though we did not have that as part of our review package.

Samsung Smart TV Voice Gesture and Face Recognition hands-on

Performance

Samsung’s 2011 D8000 impressed us with its panel quality, and we can see ourselves recycling the hyperbole for the 2012 ES8000. Brightness is generally even, though there’s a little bloom around the edges, but it’s the accuracy of the colors and the detail that particularly wow. The default settings tend toward the over-saturated, as usual, but after spending some time adjusting them we were very pleased with how accurate flesh tones and other hues appeared.

Samsung quotes a meaningless dynamic contrast ratio – 30,000,000:1, no less – but the D8000 handles itself with aplomb. Whites are clean and pure, while blacks are almost as inky and saturated as we’re used to from Samsung’s AMOLED phones. There was no blurring in fast-moving scenes or sports.

Obviously there’s 3D support as well, using Samsung’s preferred active-shutter technology. That rapidly obscures and opens each lens alternately, matching the TV’s own flicking between frames intended for each eye. It works well, and we were able to watch 3D movies back-to-back without the sort of eye-strain headaches that can often result from poorly-synchronized content. A nice touch is that Samsung charges just $19.99 for each subsequent pair of active-shutter glasses, a far cry from the early days of $50 or more.

Of course, few people rely solely on live TV and DVD/Blu-ray for their entertainment these days, and so Samsung has built in multiple options for the internet age. Scroll through the (somewhat busy and intimidating) menu and there are options for VUDU, Hulu Plus, Netflix, MLB.TV, Pandora, Ustream, CinemaNow, MTV Music Meter, YouTube and more, some of which require a subscription to access. You also get a web browser, Facebook and a “Fitness” app that replicates a little of the Wii Fit experience.

It’s a mixed bag of usefulness – we can see Netflix and Hulu Plus being of most use to most owners – though the navigation experience itself can be sluggish and frustrating at times. We particularly liked the Skype support, which turns the ES8000 into a huge video conferencing system. Audio quality from the microphones by the webcam proved surprisingly clear, even when we were sat across the room. Samsung offers numerous downloadable apps through its own app-store to augment the Smart TV experience, though as it’s the company’s own system rather than, say, Google TV, it’s questionable how many third-party companies will come onboard.

Wrap-Up

Samsung’s ES8000 is a worthy update to its predecessor, and the company demonstrates its edge over much of the competition with the Smart TV functionality. Is it worth the humongous RRP? That’s a null point, given retailers are already discounting it by more than $1,250. You’re still paying a lot for a TV, but it’s less than the D8000 was at roughly the same point in its lifecycle, and that strikes us as a comparative bargain. The more unusual control options are mixed in their usefulness, but the core range of streaming and on-demand content choices are hugely impressive and broaden the ES8000′s appeal beyond the usual TV, movies and gaming.

If you go to this film for no other reason than to see Jemaine Clement play the antagonist Boris The Animal, you will not be disappointed. This fellow is one half of the New Zealand rock comedy group Flight of the Conchords and has done his fair share of voice acting on everything from Rio to The Simpsons and was indeed part of a TV sketch comedy miniseries. Somewhere in there he became an amazing character / creature actor as well, as the only other person in the film that’s more engaging is, as expected, Will Smith’s Agent J. Expect to be wowed by Clement’s portail of a morphing murderous monster that lets his positively odd affinity for dark humor shine through without effort.

Boris the Animal is but one of a host of new aliens which are the bread and butter of the series, this third installment in the Men in Black franchise being no exception to the rule. While there are several “filler” aliens popping up in scenes like the fish restaurant so that they might easily be blasted to bits without too much regret, this film has some really great monster movie magic going on. Keep your eyes out for an ever-spookier Boris the Animal, a moose-sized koi fish, and the return of the Worm Guys – who each movie appear to be getting more or less real-looking, depending on how you see it.

You’ll get your fair share of reveals on this reality where celebrities such as Richard Branson (see if you can spot him!) appear as hinted aliens. You’ll find yourself once again immersed in the perfectly legitimate possibility that everyone and anyone could potentially be an alien when it comes down to it. You’ll dive deep into the idea that Josh Brolin is really, truly, a younger version of Tommy Lee Jones.

Each of these things you will be doing, and while you’re doing them, you will be having a great time. One top of everything being entertaining enough to engage a whole new generation of Men in Black fans, this film is made to treat those who’ve seen every film thus far to some visual and environmental candy. If you’re a Men in Black fanboy, you’ll have plenty to see in the background, and more than enough to keep you engaged enough to want to see more when the film is over.

What we heard from Ken Ralston and Jay Redd, two of the heads of the visual effects shots we see throughout the film with their company Imageworks, was that this was a film with an “onion” of reality, meaning that it’s “peeled back” as each scene unfolds. As you move through the film you realize that not only are the places and events your seeing not quite precisely accurate when compared to our own reality, but this idea is a plot device as well. Michael Stuhlbarg plays Griffin, a time-aware species of humanoid who reminds you quite a few times throughout the film that he is aware of several outcomes for each moment’s events. Notice the butterfly floating about in at least a couple of scenes and see if you can pick up the simple symbolism.

IMAX 3D

If you only see the film for one scene, let it be the scene that you’ve seen previews of in the trailers for this film – the one where Agent J does his first Time Jump. And let it be 3D IMAX as well. There’s nothing quite like seeing Will Smith plummet off the Crysler Building 66 stories through decades of events which eventually have him landing in 1969 – and you’ll never guess where he lands.

This scene takes the 3D and gigantism of the IMAX theater to a level where you’ll be glad you payed the extra few bucks to experience it. The third dimension is not essential to this film when it comes down to it, but it did add a level of fantastic to the experience and, as it’s mean to, made me glad I had the opportunity to see the film in the theater. That said, this movie will have a lot of staying power for the home theater as well, even if that is just a 14-inch television you’ve got in the corner.

Wrap-Up

Men in Black continues to impress with the simple effects/comedy formula that worked out perfectly in the first installment. This movie does have a bit of time travel as, again, was quite obvious in the trailers released up until the film’s release, but this is mostly just to allow us to meet the Brolin version of Tommy Lee Jones… I mean Agent K – and he does such a fabulous job at portraying K’s already cemented personality (with a twist) that you’ll have to remind yourself that this is actually Brolin, not a young Jones.

This film takes the awesome abilities of the effects industry (specifically Imageworks here) and actually tunes back to a degree that will have you forgetting that this franchise was built on the idea that we’d get to see unbelievable beings of all kinds. This is the happy kind of Science Fiction where even the murderous villains make jokes and strange beings of all sorts are lurking about in a world that’s supposed to be just as plain as the one we’re living in. This set of elements has this film made genuinely entertaining for audiences of all ages – just so long as they’re old enough not to have nightmares about the terrifying concept of a beast that is Boris.

NOTE: Don’t be too disappointed when you don’t see Flaco (from the trailer above) in the final cut of the film, as he’s simply not that essential. You’ll get plenty of 3D aliens in his place.

Fans of Star Wars know all too well the dangers of a director falling victim to the lure of “what’s possible”; thankfully, for the most part Prometheus escapes the same fate as befell George Lucas’ prequels. There’s certainly copious use of beautifully rendered landscapes and the sort of soaring scenes we know of Scott from Gladiator, though the scenes familiar from Alien inside the mysterious ship are as restrained as to pitch-perfectly match the mood and aesthetic of the first film. H.R. Giger’s involvement was again sought, though the Xenomorph creator’s distinctive style is more tempered than we’ve seen before.

The story opens with the question of who may have influenced the cave paintings and primitive art of ancient – and distinctly segregated – civilizations, and is quickly catapulted into faster-than-light travel as a group funded by the Weyland Industries seeks out the star system that each culture has used as a repeating theme.

Characterization falls for the typical tropes: there’s the rich, aging plutocrat, Peter Weyland played by a heavily made-up Guy Pearce, who bankrolls scientists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) in their part-empirical, part faith-based search to discover who or what, exactly, spawned human life on Earth. Swan and Holloway come across a little like the palaeontologists of Jurassic Park – in fact the sweeping landscape shots and soaring score of the opening scene had elements of Spielberg’s dino film too – with Rapace walking a fine line between scientific rigor and religious certainty, while Holloway quickly settles into brooding and petulance.

In among them go Charlize Theron, playing an ice-queen Weyland Industries exec whose taut skepticism of the search is bested only by the clinging tightness of her costumes, and a cackle of earthy crew and offbeat geologists and biologists who generally struggle to raise themselves above the level of meaty grist for the alien mill.

Best of all is David (Michael Fassbender), an artificial “synthetic” robot in the manner of the murderous Ash and redemption-seeking Bishop of the original films. Prometheus made excellent use of viral videos ahead of launch, and the “Happy Birthday David” synthetic clip was undoubtedly the finest of the bunch. Given plenty of scenes to steal in the two hour full feature, Fassbender’s knowing performance ramps up even further; his synthetic has the unflappable poise of Bishop and the creepy affectation of Ash, blended with David’s own back-story of tense servitude and ambiguous respect for his human creators. He’s also responsible for the few chuckle-out-loud points that stud the script.

The moments of shock and gore are limited to two or three key scenes reminiscent of some of the most discussed aspects of Alien and Aliens; think bursting, gynaecological monsters lunging at faceplates, and what’s probably the most memorable point likely to strike a chord with anybody who has felt a pregnancy shift under their hand and shuddered at the “otherness” of it. Scott’s warning that his goal is “to scare the sh*t out of you” manifests itself in a combination of growing tension and the expectation that the film’s key themes – where we came from, and how our perpetuity may not be a decision we as a species get to make – will be something audiences mull over and find suitably terrifying.

Scott & Co. have been resolute in positioning Prometheus as not a prequel but a piece in its own right that happens to occupy the same universe as the original quadrilogy. Nonetheless, the desire to wrap-up some lose ends in time for Alien has been too great to avoid, and so there are stabs at fleshing out the more discussed aspects on which its story hangs. It’s not a clean sweep, however; those truly dedicated fans of the series will be able to flag up the points where Prometheus almost – but not quite – paves the way for the opening set pieces in the first film.

Most contentious, perhaps, is Scott’s decision to use native 3D. It’s at its best during the moments of indulgent scenery and detailed space travel, though shrinks back when the characters begin to explore the buried depths of the alien craft. The stacked-photo fakeness of some 3D films – especially those converted from 2D to 3D in post-production – is absent, though at points with a particularly close foreground it can judder uncomfortably.

Prometheus is a film, if not begging for, then definitely made with an eye toward a sequel. Despite it paving the way for Alien it also leaves many of its own questions unanswered; while it may be over two hours long, the considerable amount of exposition means there’s huge scope for expanding on the themes. Whether that will actually happen presumably depends on reception, though with the growing hype over the past year it’s hard to imagine the the box office won’t be shuddering with ticket sales.

Compared to Alien – in fact to all of the original quadrilogy – Prometheus is a harder film to pigeon-hole. Its director presents it as a science-fiction horror front and center; its themes are pulled between straight-out gore and the sort of philosophizing perhaps foreign to blockbuster audiences. It’s distinctive and memorable, certainly, and while it won’t replace Alien on Scott’s CV as a groundbreaker, it’s inescapably entertaining and leaves us hopeful that it gets a sequel to explore its own, fresh tropes.

We’ll have more from the Prometheus World Premiere red carpet very soon!

Prometheus Red Carpet coverage!

The film Battleship was indeed conjured up by Hasbro as they own the rights to the timeless board game. Besides a couple of nods to the fact that the board game exists inside the film, there’s nothing to connect the two – save the battleship, of course. The visual effects in this film are second to none, and there are a handful of excellent or otherwise famous actors onboard, but know this right out of the gate: the most interesting character you’re going to meet is the USS Missouri. Keep that name in mind as we go through a quick summary of the film for context.

Plot Rundown

Take one part Air Force One, two parts Independence Day, and add in about 10 parts patriotic love for the Navy, and you’ve got an idea of what you’re in for in Battleship. One of several main protagonists in the film, Alex Hopper, (played by Taylor Kitsch) gets in a fight several years before the main bulk of the plot of the film, meets a girl, and is convinced to Join the Navy. At the same time in an unrelated event (also before the main plot line’s time) NASA sends a signal to a planet, the signal originating here on Earth in Hawaii.

Fast forward 7 years to the present, 2012, and both Alex and his brother Stone are stationed aboard Navy Destroyer ships sitting comfortably in Hawaii – the plot thickens! The girl from earlier in the plot, Samantha Shane (played by Brooklyn Decker,) is revealed as the daughter of COMPACFLT Admiral Shane (Liam Neeson,) the Admiral being a superior of both of the brothers. Alex is set up for a coming-of-age-type situation, there’s love in the air, and five alien ships plummet to the Earth.

The rest of the film takes place (for the most part) in battle sequences in both Hawaii and Hong Kong – where one of the five ships has made berth. Of course the Aliens want war, the humans want to kill the aliens, and everyone has an awesome time getting blown up. In comes the most interesting character in the whole film as the new improved Destroyer ships prove useless against the alien threat. In comes the USS Missouri, aka the Mighty Mo, aka one gigantic battleship which in real life acted as surrender site for the Japanese fleet in World War II.

This ship is so interesting, one of the viral ads for the movie was dedicated to it alone. Have a peek:

And all the bad guys get killed and all the good guys win in the end and it’s a great time had by all – as you should well expect.

Why you should see it

I can’t overemphasize the idea that this is an effects-driven film. If you want to be impressed by the level at which the film industry – specifically ILM here – is able to operate on here in 2012, jump right in on Battleship. In our chat with ILM Visual Effects Supervisor Pablo Helman, we got an early taste of what we were in for this past week:

“It’s a ride. The visual effects work looks great – it’s a popcorn movie – and in regards to how some people ask me: can I actually turn off that part of me that actually just enjoys the movie? It’s definitely something you want to do here, you want to sit back, turn yourself off, and just be surprised and wowed by the images.” – Helman

BONUS: The soundtrack is headed by Steve Jablonsky, perhaps known best for having this same role on the Transformers series. Jablonsky composed the music for this film’s soundtrack, these compositions featuring guitarist Tom Morello – best known as lead guitarist and activist from the band that once was Rage Against the Machine.

Why you might want to skip it

In contrast with several high-impact science fiction films, action films, and even straight up love stories released this summer, the plot line for this movie has not been put under guard basically whatsoever. You can read the ending to the film on Wikipedia, for crying out loud. As a result, you’re going to get exactly what you payed for: explosions, gunfire, aliens death, and lots and lots of robots. If you’re looking for all the visual effects with an added bonus of a storyline that’s truly engaging, head to the Avengers. Industrial Light and Magic made that film a visual masterpiece as well – double down for the summer!

Wrap-up

Battleship is a movie made for filmgoers looking to pick up some snacks, select their favorite theater seat, and tune out. This film is nearly pure entertainment, with just a hint of storyline twist and love interest to keep all parties attending the film from having a terrible time – that’s your action-hating date we’re talking about here. Make no mistake here though, of course, there is no having a terrible time at this film – it’s all fun and certainly brings on the big-money next-level action film power at right around an hour and a half long – in theaters right this second.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of our ever-expanding [Entertainment hub] for the biggest premieres of the summer and the hottest interviews with the people bringing you the futuristic technology these films need – now and into the future!

Hardware

Outwardly, the new Apple TV is identical to its predecessor: a compact black box that fits in the palm of your hand. Ports consist of HDMI, optical audio output, a 10/100 ethernet port and microUSB (the latter for service and support purposes, not customer use), while inside there’s WiFi a/b/g/n and a power supply that avoids an ugly wall-wart. Apple also includes an Apple Remote, a tactile little thing with basic navigation controls.

Inside, though, there have been some changes. Apple has replaced the A4 processor of the previous-gen model with a custom, single-core version of its A5, a change which is enough to add 1080p Full HD support to the Apple TV’s list of abilities.

1080p

Until now, Apple has offered 720p HD content as the highest resolution to purchase or rent. Coinciding with the new Apple TV is 1080p content, however, along with the option to choose it or 720p versions when you start watching. Existing purchases in your iTunes in the Cloud account – also upgraded to support movies – can be switched to 1080p versions once they’re available in that resolution.

Home-grown content and that from third-party services also gets 1080p support. Netflix and Vimeo lead the charge for external providers, with Full HD content in the catalog of each now supported on the Apple TV, while your own 1080p videos – whether filmed on an iPhone 4S, new iPad or something else – can also be streamed, either from the mobile device or from a PC or Mac on your network.

User Interface

Apple has flattened the Apple TV interface out, stripping away the old UI’s sub-menus and replacing them with an almost iPad-style grid of oversized icons accompanied by thumbnail movie previews. There’s less digging and less navigating to get between sections – a press or two on the Menu button has you back to the homescreen.

The core iTunes options – Movies, TV Shows and Music – live alongside third-party services like Netflix, Vimeo, YouTube and Flickr. Apple has also introduced the ability to sign up to services directly from the Apple TV, including billing the monthly subscription to your iTunes account. Netflix will be the first to support that functionality, but other services are likely to follow.

Thing is, you don’t need a new Apple TV in order to get the new UI. Owners of the previous model can upgrade their box and have the same streamlined interface. Still missing is App Store support, however, with Apple continuing to hold off from adding access to the ecosystem of third-party apps.

AirPlay

Apple’s screen-sharing system has ease-of-use in its favor, and casting what’s displayed on your iPhone or iPad to the new Apple TV is a matter of hitting the output button. Streaming picks up almost immediately, and over our WiFi 802.11n network we noticed no hiccups or stuttering at Full HD resolution.

It’s not just video, though; you can also use AirPlay for photos and apps, along with more sensible applications like Pages, Keynote and Numbers. If you’ve got a new iPad, GarageBand and iMovie both look incredible on an HDTV.

AirPlay Mirroring is supported at up to 720p resolution, though AirPlay video streaming is supported at up to 1080p from the new iPad. Second-gen Apple TV boxes running the new software can only handle 720p from the new iPad, though.

Wrap-up

We have to be blunt when it comes to the third-gen Apple TV: if you already have the second-generation model, you probably don’t need this new one. Apple releasing the new UI and other software tweaks as a free upgrade means the only real difference is the support for 1080p HD content.

If, though, you don’t already have an Apple TV, then there’s a bigger motivation to buy this new model. The combination of an easier interface and Full HD support means it’s easier than ever to access your content on the network, on your mobile iOS devices, and streaming from iTunes in the Cloud, and if you have a new iPad then the 1080p support makes them ideal companions. Apple TV may still be the company’s hobby, but at $99 it’s a great accessory to the third-gen tablet and a solid home entertainment platform in its own right.

Hardware

Small and simple, the HMP2000 has roughly the same footprint as the Apple TV but an angled rather than flat top. Connectivity is limited to just an HDMI port, a power input and a full-sized USB 2.0; inside there’s WiFi, but you don’t get an option for wired ethernet or alternative audio-out routes.

Philips includes a compact remote control with playback keys, a navigation pad and a dedicated Netflix shortcut. It’s functional, but the buttons feel cheap and overly clicky. Unfortunately there’s no HDMI cable in the box, which comes across as miserly.

Setup and Interface

With so few ports, once you’ve plugged in the mains and dug out a spare HDMI cable, you’re pretty much sorted for physical setup. Power on, and after a brief boot delay you land on the main menu, with options for Netflix, YouTube, USB, Internet Services and Setup. It’s possible to play USB media without having a WiFi network connected, but if you choose any of the other options you’re prompted to connect.

After punching in our WiFi passcode by navigating around an onscreen keyboard, we were up and running. The HMP2000 can store three different network profiles, useful if you connect to multiple WiFi connections, and once you’re online the Netflix and YouTube icons on the homescreen go from monochrome to color. You also get a weather icon up in the top right corner, showing the current forecast.

Choose Netflix, and you’re prompted to set up a new account or log in with your current one. The UI is the usual multi-lines of side-scrolling thumbnails; there’s Facebook integration for suggestions from your friends, along with a list of your recently viewed titles and all Netflix’s customary predictions. You can rate shows and search the catalog, though one frustrating UI hiccup is the behavior of the back button, which always wants to throw you right back to the HMP2000′s homescreen rather than stepping back a page in Netflix. Luckly there’s a pop-up “Are you sure you want to quit” warning first.

YouTube has a pared-down UI, starting playing instantly from a playlist of current content. Pressing up or down on the arrow keys allows you to search through videos, see other clips in the current playlist, or change categories. It’s functional but punching in search terms can get laborious.

Internet Services is where you find the weather app – if you don’t tell it your location, the weather icon on the homescreen assumes you’re in San Francisco – for multi-day forecasts, together with Facebook and Picasa access. Facebook support is more akin to a basic phone experience rather than, say, the advanced iPad app, though it’s enough in a pinch to see what your friends are saying. Picasa supports searching and browsing through galleries, together with automatic slideshow playback.

Finally, there’s USB media access, plugging in a thumb-drive or external HDD to access content stored on there. Philips’ list of supported media types is vast – MPEG 1/2/4 (MPEG 4 Part 2), H.264, VC-1, H.263, VP6 (640 x 480), DivX Plus HD, DivX 3/4/5/6, Xvid, RMVB 8/9/10, RM, WMV (V9), AVI, TS, M2TS, TP, TRP, ISO, VOB, DAT, MP4, MPEG, MPG, MOV(MPEG 4, H.264), ASF, FLV (640 x 480), MKV, M4V – and we had no problem playing a ripped DVD as well as various MPG and AVI clips we’d downloaded. You can also play music and photos stored on external drives.

Performance

Streaming performance will obviously depend largely on the speed of your broadband connection, but we had no problems with lag or audio/video sync when accessing Netflix. YouTube, too, was smooth and judder free.

One minor frustration was a moment’s delay in playing Netflix content, with the loading screen hanging around for two seconds or so when the show itself had already begun playing. No great issue if you’re at the start, when you’re unlikely to miss anything but a channel indent, but maybe more annoying if you’re resuming playback midway through.

As with other Netflix boxes, you can fast-forward and rewind through shows with thumbnail previews, though there was some lag before those previews actually populated.

Pricing and Value

The HMP2000 is £50 ($79) in the UK, the same price as the Roku LT and Roku 2 XS. Unfortunately, Philips is positioning the HMP2000 pretty much solely as a Netflix streamer: there’s no iPlayer or 4oD access, unless those channels’ content is available through Netflix itself, and none of the extra channels Roku owners can add to their boxes, such as Crackle UK.

Wrap-Up

There’s plenty to like about the Philips HMP2000: setup is straightforward, navigation is user-friendly, and it does what it promises without fuss. The potentially limiting factor is how onboard you are with streaming services, since if you harbor ambitions to use anything other than Netflix and YouTube you’re basically out of luck.

On the flip-side, if you’re looking to add Netflix support to an existing catalog of local content, the HMP2000′s ability to play HD files from external storage is something Roku’s boxes won’t do. On that front, the Philips is a success, but we think there’s still space for an even cheaper, Netflix-only version that drops the USB.

The recently announced P4 from AAXA is a big step up from previous models such as the AAXA P2, and many similar priced projectors from the competition. Offering extremely crisp colors, great brightness, and being fully portable with a built-in battery makes this a perfect companion for any business minded individual.

Hardware

While many competing projectors might have better battery life its the 80 lumens of brightness and array of options that sets the P4 apart from the pack. Being labeled the “worlds brightest pico projector” gives it some big shoes to fill — and it didn’t disappoint.

The AAXA P4 Pico Projector is powered by a 750 MHz Windows CE mobile processor, and is plenty bright too. It gets an 80 lumen high-contrast optical engine by way of Texas Instruments DLP. It features AAXA’s vibrant color technology and the LED should last for up to 20,000 hours. Some of the other specs that make the P4 special include: 2GB of built-in memory, 1280×800 VGA input, micro-SD slot for extra storage (up to 32GB), composite video input, 1-watt stereo speakers, 3.5mm headphone jack, and even 720p video support.

Included with the projector AAXA has provided a mini tripod as well as your usual charging and USB cables. The box also provides a mini to full-sized USB, VGA and AV input and more. The included remote (as seen in the video below) is a nice touch but is extremely cheap and gives off a bad impression.

The actual projector itself is very durable and feels great. It’s covered in a soft-coat matte black design and all the ports and buttons are extremely durable. Nothing feels cheap about this premium projector — and it shouldn’t for $399. The buttons on top make navigation easy and simple but the remote is a much better option. I would love to have a better included remote but that’s just me.

AAXA P4 Pico Projector unboxing

Software

Now the software side of things will be completely based on the buyers overall needs and usage. With Windows CE 6.0 on board we have plenty of options with mobile applications. With Office Mobile, Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, and tons of Windows CE based games the options are fairly open. With the P4 AAXA doesn’t recommend you enter Windows too much unless needed and has a basic overlay to keep things straightforward and simple.

Setup is basically non existent unless you need to use Windows CE apps. The standard media player for pictures, and video is simple to navigate — although is pretty bland. From the start screen you can stream any movies from internal or external storage within seconds, the input settings are easy to access and dead simple. Those needing to start presentations will need to launch Windows CE and that takes a bit longer with a warning you must agree to on every start-up seems extreme.

Performance

While I’ve only used a few cheaper and much dimmer projectors in the past, everything about this projector was impressive in terms of performance. The 80 lumen engine is extremely powerful and is by far the brightest portable projector I’ve seen to date. the 750 MHz processor churns out 720p video with ease and my demo shows some impressive output watching AVATAR on a good 40″ size. Fast forwarding through videos or presentations is extremely fluid and there seems to be zero stutter or lag. The only downside to the performance is only about 75 minutes of battery life. To make things worse there isn’t a notification or indicator and once the battery is up you get lights out — no warning.

I can explain performance but instead I’ll just let you all watch the hands-on video demonstration. I start off showing the basic UI in a fully lit room before turning out the lights. The 80 lumens keeps things bright enough that a dark room isn’t required — but sure makes it nice. You’ll be able to use in a lit room with zero problems should the situation present itself.

AAXA P4 video demonstration with light/dark room

As you can see from the video preview the output is extremely bright and impressive, even from a good 6 ft away from the wall. The manual focus makes things very easy for quick adjustments and changes. From the AVATAR scenes in the clip to my Modern Warfare 3 trailer screenshot below you can clearly see just how great the colors are. Thanks to AAXA’s vibrant color technology the colors are exactly that — vibrant.

Wrap-Up

I’ve seen this projector in action for over 2 weeks now. I used it to stream a few clips while visiting family for my extended holiday vacation and everyone was pleasantly surprised by the sound and image output. With 1 watt stereo sound its nothing special but gets the job done. You wouldn’t expect such an incredible bright and vivid picture from this small pocket-able unit — but it does impress.

Battery life is rated for 75 minutes of usage but while outputting 720p video that time dropped significantly and it lasted around 60 minutes for me. While that isn’t very long, completely battery powered is the key here. Being small and weighing under a pound, being fully portable and battery powered makes this perfect for business situations where a full fledged projector isn’t possible. To conduct a full presentation with this quality all on the go with no wires is what sets this apart from the others. For those needing a bigger, longer lasting device for those weekly earnings reports AAXA also has some larger micro projectors to suite all needs.

For a fun toy the pricing is a bit steep but for the on-the-go businessman or professional it should find a place easily in your laptop bag of gear.

The AAXA P4 Pico Projector runs for a pretty penny at around $399 but it’s currently on sale for $339 for a limited time. Get your own today by clicking here.

So here’s what you do – you open the box, you take the base station and you plug the upright USB stick into it. You plug that base station in with the cord that powers it up, connect it to a power socket that is, then you connect it to your TV with the HDMI cord that’s included with the package. Next you pop the CD from the box in your Windows PC, and click through the installation process which takes less than 5 minutes, and you plug in the other USB stick and hit “OK” for all the drivers which instantly get installed without trouble. From here you click which mode you’d like to be in (I like extended display mode), and BAM. You’re in business.

Now all you’ve got to do is pull that window with Thor playing in it to the extra large and awesome display you’ve got in your HDTV, and you can have a great time continuing to browse your Thor-loving forums in the meantime from your couch. I’ve really truly been looking for such a simple solution to this first world problem of having to get up click a mouse each time I want a new file to play ever since I first got into the wild world of media centers. This means having a computer of some sort control what’s displayed on your television rather than using the cable and a remote control. Take command of your programming!

What you’ve got now is full access to anything you can pick up from the internet, displayed instead on your gigantic television, all controlled from your laptop. Or if you prefer, your PC sitting across the room. Think about this situation: you’ve got a couple of kids that want to watch a new YouTube video every time the last one has ended, but you want your PC to yourself. All you’ve got to do here is move your mouse out to the second display (your TV) and hit the play button instead of having to turn your display around and around per Johnny and Sally’s request. Freedom at last!

Have a peek at all the components above and below and pick the device up right this second (or grab it for your fun-loving PC owner friend or relative for the holidays, they’ll love you for it.) You can purchase the StreamHD at Warpia online for just $159.99 right now!

Hardware

The FH009 system consists of three parts, though it’s the bass speaker/amp section that’s particularly new this time around. The two horns iterate on Ferguson’s previous designs, consisting of clear-cast perspex speakers each with an 8 Ohm cone. Meanwhile, the bass unit is a Class A/B amplifier giving 64W to the horns and 64W split between the two 13cm, 8 Ohm bass drivers.

Inputs include two sets of RCA Phone analog sockets, a 3.5mm line-in input and a front-mounted USB port. There’s an RCA Phono output for an external subwoofer (not supplied) and a pair of outputs for the horns. Ferguson includes a compact IR remote, complete with controls for standby, volume, mute, cycling through the input options and adjusting bass levels. There are also play/pause, track skip and stop buttons for controlling music on a USB drive or MP3 player. Physical controls on the amp unit itself are limited to a standby button (with a physical power switch on the back) and there’s a one-line LCD display to show volume, input and – if your MP3 files have ID3 tags – track name.

Design

You can’t call the FH009 system discrete. Ferguson suggests the transparent acrylic cones help the speakers blend into the background, minimizing the traditional bulk of a music system. While that’s partially true, we imagine most people will opt for the FH009 system because the cones are so distinctive; they also catch the light nicely. The solid circular base sections screw into either one or two lengths of metal rod, allowing the cones to be at the right height for either floor or table use; they’re hollow, allowing you to thread the speaker cable discretely down.

As for the amp unit, it’s both large and heavy: Ferguson says it uses more than 4lbs of copper in the design, and we certainly recommend lifting with your knees. Black or white finishes are on offer, with matching bass cones, and each is a real fingerprint magnet; Ferguson even includes a pair of cotton gloves so you can avoid obvious smudges during setup. The LCD display is housed in a disc of aluminum on the fascia.

Ferguson optionally sell wall-mounting brackets for the speaker horns. Other systems from the company include larger and smaller horns, some as big as 1.65m high.

Performance

Setup and use is straightforward, with screwing the speaker stands together taking longer than wiring up a few sources. Aside from the USB port – which uses its own internal DAC – the FH009 amp is all analog; Ferguson includes a regular stereo phono cable along with a phono-to-3.5mm-plug cable (both on the short side), UK and European power cables, and two lengths of stereo speaker wire. However, if you want to use the 3.5mm line-in input with your laptop or cellphone, you’ll need to supply your own cable.

Sound quality is dramatic from the start. There’s a sense of occasion, certainly, when you sit in front of the speakers, and since they’re quite directional in their sound it’s generally a good idea to give yourself the best seat in the house directly in their sweet-spot.

Vocal music, along with orchestral and acoustic tracks are the FH009′s real forte. After some running-in, the top end opened up and trebles sparkled: singers are distortion-free and smooth, flutes and violins tinkle and thrum with real clarity. Mids have similar depth, guitars getting plenty of space to resonate. Jazz sounds rich and the FH009′s handle complexity reasonably well, though can muddy somewhat as things get busier.

If there’s anything lacking, it’s the solid stamp of bass to round out the package. It’s not that the twin bass speakers lack strength, but that they fall short when it comes to that stab of sound that keeps dance and rap music so punchy. Of course you can plug in a subwoofer to deliver just that.

Ferguson Hill’s previous systems have been music-centric; the FH009 has its sights on your home cinema setup too. It’s a pseudo 2.1-channel system, lacking a specific sub, but it still proved capable of holding up to the TV and movies we threw at it. Sci-fi garnered a wriggling, sinuous bass as intergalactic rivals squared up their star destroyers, while speech in dramas proved clear and piping.

As for the USB port, the FH009 had no problems recognizing 320kbps MP3s stored on a 4GB or 8GB memory stick, though a 16GB stick refused to mount. One frustration using external storage was the minimum volume, which is set higher than we’d like: there’s a considerable step between mute and the lowest audible setting.

Wrap-Up

It’s difficult, when you’re best known for your outlandish, high-end music system, to translate that down to a more affordable price point without diluting what made it special in the first place. Ferguson Hill is off to a good start with its eye-catching perspex horns, but the FH009 follows up with engaging audio skills too.

As is so often the case, the FH009 leans toward certain musical styles, namely vocal, jazz and the lighter, fizzier end of the pop spectrum. That’s not to say it can’t handle other genres, but the absence of a dedicated sub means that all-important punch can be somewhat absent. Happily TV and film performance is also strong, the only blip being the rudimentary USB media support.

At £795/€895 ($,1253) the Ferguson Hill FH009 isn’t cheap, but it’s a solid core system that looks great and is very capable. The style may split opinion, but the transparency of the sound on offer is well worth auditioning.

Hardware

Given soundbars are meant to be discrete ways of adding speakers to your home entertainment setup, you can’t really fault the T12v3 for its simple appearance. A 605mm long, gloss-finish black bar, it has a magnetically clipped speaker mesh up front – hiding six speaker cones and a blue status LED – with a discrete Orbitsound logo, and a non-removable speaker grill at each end. Up top is an iPod/iPod touch dock, with four different inserts supplied to suit different versions. No iPad dock, which Orbitsound tells us is because it wouldn’t suit the under-TV positioning expected of the T12v3.

Connectivity is handled around the back, with a DC power socket, optical and coaxial digital inputs, 3.5mm stereo audio and RCA analog inputs, and two RCA composite video outputs (which mirror the same video-out signal from an iPod). There are also connections for the included subwoofer, a 460 x 230 x 230 mm gloss-finish block. A volume knob and power switch complete the controls; on our pre-production review sample there’s also a “Stereo Width” switch, which flicks the stereo affect from off to “normal” or “wide” but which won’t be present on retail units.

The new speaker cones consist of two 1-inch drivers and four 2.5-inch drivers, along with a 2-inch full-range driver at each end. The sub has a single 6.5-inch woofer. Inside the main unit there are two 45W stereo channels and a separate 90W subwoofer channel. Orbitsound quote standby power consumption of 2.3W and idle consumption of 5.6W.

Admirably, Orbitsound includes all the cables you might need in the box. As well as a 1m optical digital cable there’s a length of subwoofer wire, phono (RCA) and 3.5mm cables. A remote control allows tweaking of the volume, treble and bass, as well as flicking between inputs and controlling playback of any docked iPod or iPhone.

Performance

Soundbars have generally worked in one of two ways so far: either you have regular stereo speakers spread out at either end of a single, long bar (usually at the cheaper end of the market) or a complex speaker array that uses upward of 20 drivers and special processing technology to bounce sound around the room (at the more expensive end).

Orbitsound’s patented system is different. It uses a system whereby the common sound from the left and right stereo channels is isolated from the mix and pushed out of the mono array running across the front of the bar. Meanwhile, the side-drivers – which fire in phase, so both cones move left or right in relation to the soundbar at the same time – push out a specially calculated noise that modifies that mono sound into something our ears hear as stereo.

If it all sounds fiendishly complex, that’s because it is. Product manager Daniel Fletcher – son of Ted Fletcher, the audio engineer who came up with the spatial stereo technology system – explained it as the reverse of Mid-Side stereo recording, often used in studios to capture sound. What it isn’t is simply two stereo side speakers firing off the regular left and right channels to bounce against the walls.

So, complicated enough to warrant a clutch of patents, but does the T12v3 work? There’s certainly a noticeable difference between switching the system off and turning spatial stereo on, a broader, fuller sound within which we could hear differences between the left and right sides. What’s really noticeable is the ubiquity of the sweet-spot, however. Regular speaker setups usually have a certain point at which the balance of the sound is ideal: if your chair is in that position then you get the best experience, whereas everyone else around you hears a somewhat unbalanced mix depending on which speaker they’re closer to.

What Orbitsound has managed to do is extend that sweet-spot so that it basically fills the room. No matter whether we stood in the center, off to one side or anywhere else, the experience was pretty much the same. For a room full of people watching the same movie or TV show, that means equal sound for all; we also found that we could listen at a lower volume and still pick out the detail.

Previous iterations of the T12 were criticized for their sound quality, something Orbitsound has moved to address in this v3 model. The speaker drivers are all new and have shed any lingering muddiness in the mid-range, while the sub has also been tweaked for tighter bass response. Treated to high-bitrate tracks from an iPod, the T12v3 is now a solid music system as well as a good TV soundbar, though the subwoofer can lack a little of the immediacy of powered-subs we’ve tried.

Wrap-Up

Outfitting your lounge or home entertainment room for audio always comes with compromises. 5.1 or 7.1 speaker systems invariably offer a more involving sound, though demand you live with multiple often expensive boxes and all the cabling required to hook them up. Soundbars are easier to install and less intrusive, but generally produce 2.1 sound rather than true surround and can often do a poor job even at that.

The Orbitsound T12v3 is still 2.1 only, but you’re getting impressive sound for your money. We’re still not entirely sure how the spatial stereo technology works, but it certainly makes a difference. TV and movies have a broadness and impact that belies the compact size of the soundbar itself, while music is a similar treat. Considering the £299.99 price tag the T12v3 will carry when it goes on sale in September, that’s might impressive stuff.

Next step, Orbitsound tells us, is wireless streaming, with the company auditioning several technologies for inclusion in future products. Although AirPlay is still under consideration, Fletcher expressed concerns that users might find its reliance on iTunes limiting. We don’t think Orbitsound is looking to take on Sonos quite yet – this looks to be point-to-point streaming rather than distributed whole-house audio – but with the right lossless or near-lossless technology we can see it being highly usable all the same. Why have a separate speaker system for music when the soundbar under your TV has a room-wide stereo sweetspot?

Beyond that there are ongoing talks with laptop manufacturers – apparently cautiously interested – to put Orbitsound into future notebooks, as well as compact systems that could even fit into a cellphone. For now, however, the T12v3 is the Orbitsound flagship, and it’s certainly one that deserves your audition.

Background

Pogoplug started off with a basic Marvell Plug Computer design back in 2009, offering a simple way to share a USB hard-drive over the internet. The second-gen model boosted the number of ports to four, and subsequent updates threw in cloud printing support, WiFi and a sober business version dressed all in black.

The company’s premise was straightforward: a sixty second setup experience, made ultra-streamlined with automatic network discovery, sensible default sharing options and a convenient web interface. Mobile apps for iOS and Android meant you could access files and multimedia from home rather than store them locally.

In fact, the only real hurdle was the price: $99 for the magic box itself. Now, with Pogoplug Software, the company is taking on Dropbox and others with a hybrid of the web-accessible cloud model, using local storage and a browser/app-based interface.

Setup and Usability

Rather than plugging in a physical Pogoplug box there’s an app to be downloaded instead, available for both PC (roughly 36MB) and Mac (roughly 16MB). That walks you through setting up a new (free) Pogoplug account or logging into your existing one; multiple Pogoplug boxes and app installs can be linked to the same account. Next there’s the option to share various preset folders – for instance Movies, Pictures, Desktop and Documents on OS X – and then a quick seven pane tour of the main features.

Finally, there’s a link to the my.pogoplug.com site, which pops up in your browser already logged in and showing what folders you’ve shared from your computer. As well as the software client, Pogoplug has updated the web interface and it’s much cleaner than before. Any Pogoplug connections – hardware or software – show up in the left hand column, with tabs for basic file manager view, a Jukebox of music files, Gallery for images, Cinema for video, Sharing for any files or folders you’ve enabled third-party access to, and Backup for automatically copying folders between drives.

Active Copy isn’t new to Pogoplug – the company has offered it on its hardware devices before now – but it gets a whole lot more affordable with the software app. Previously, you’d need a separate Pogoplug device if, say, you wanted to keep an offsite backup of certain files on your computer; now, all you need is the free Pogoplug app.

You don’t have to access files via the website; the Pogoplug app also adds a folder to your computer through which you can easily see any files that have been shared with you. Sharing was one of the easier elements of the Pogoplug experience, and that’s carried forward with the new software. Hit the share button, choose the folder(s) you want to grant access to and then enter one or more email addresses and, optionally, a personal message.

The recipient of a sharing email can, depending on how you’ve set up the invite, be prompted to create a (free) Pogoplug account or, alternatively, access the files simply by clicking on the link. It’s all browser-based, and galleries are automatically animated into neat, parent-friendly slideshows.

You can also automatically add a link to the folder on your Facebook friends’ walls, by logging in with your account details and then choosing their names. Alternatively, you can publish a public link to Twitter or MySpace, or indeed open up the folder completely and even create an RSS feed so that people can keep up to date in their reader app.

There are plenty of neat touches. “One View” automatically hides duplicated files from your various Pogoplug drives (physical or software) to make browsing more straightforward, while you can also share folders by simply right-clicking on them, as long as the local settings app is running. That app also allows you to turn on and off remote access, add folders to Pogoplug, choose to share locally-attached printers, manage the Active Copy backup, and set other Pogoplug units to show up as local drives on your current computer.

Streaming and Apps

Although Pogoplug allows you to access files in any folder, it can also stream directly to a mobile device. The company offers an iPad app, an iPhone/iPod touch app and an Android app, from which you can browse your folders as normal or stream photos, music and video without having to store them on your phone or tablet.

Photo streaming is included in the free package, but there’s a one-time, $29 fee if you want to stream music and video. That’s per Pogoplug account, not per computer, so you can feasibly install the app on multiple PCs and Macs and only pay the fee once. Physical Pogoplug units include music and video streaming in the purchase price, incidentally.

It has to be said, the iOS apps show more polish than the Android app. The latter is very list-based, and we had a couple of forced-closes during testing. In contrast, the iOS app looks great and makes it very easy to navigate through files and streaming media. There’s the choice to share files directly from the app itself, and thumbnails are loaded progressively so as not to slow the whole experience down unnecessarily.

Usability and Security

Pogoplug’s usefulness has always been constrained by the size of your pipe. That is, the upload speed your home or office connection has, since you’re basically hosting your own cloud. It’s fine for documents and photos, but videos and music and be a stretch. Streaming quality it automatically adjusted depending on what upload and download speeds are available, but you definitely won’t get the same 1080p experience remotely accessing Full HD video files as if they were stored locally. Similarly, opening up several folders for sharing can, if multiple people take you up on the invite, clog up your connection.

The recent DropBox security debacle has left many wary of cloud-based storage and who might inadvertently gain access to their files. While Pogoplug leaves all your content stored locally, rather than putting it into the cloud, the web-based login does mean that it’s potentially vulnerable to hacks and similar. Still, if the worst happens, you can always deauthorize your computer with a single click.

Wrap-Up

Back when we reviewed the second-gen Pogoplug, we praised its ease of use but bemoaned the speed bottlenecks of home network connections and USB 2.0 drives. The new Pogoplug Software carried forward that easy setup and remote access, and while the network limitations are still present, the external drive speed issue isn’t necessarily a problem any more.

The obvious competitor is Dropbox, and each service has its compromises. With Dropbox, once you’ve uploaded files any subsequent downloads are reliant on the service’s own fat internet pipe; however, you’re also either stuck with a relatively small amount of free space, or paying a monthly fee for a bigger virtual drive. The Pogoplug app gives you as much space as you have local drives, but the limit shifts to being your broadband upload speeds.

Both offer free starter options, though, and as such there’s nothing stopping you from using each of them as the situation demands. If you’re looking for a straightforward way to remotely access your files and don’t want the cloud in-between, then the Pogoplug software is a great way of doing it. Just make sure you have the upload bandwidth before you pay for the $29 audio and video streaming upgrade.

Want to save $29 and get a free premium upgrade? Pogoplug has offered 200 SlashGear readers a free upgrade: click this link for more details. Be quick, though – once they’re gone, they’re gone! Update: All of the free upgrades have been snapped up, but Pogoplug is offering a $10 discount for SlashGear readers. Click the link to get premium service for just $19!

Hardware

At 55-inches, the UN55D8000 isn’t exactly going to blend into the background unless you live in an aircraft hanger. Still, Samsung has done some solid work producing one of the more attractively minimal designs we’ve seen to-date. The brushed stainless steel bezel is a scant 0.2-inches thick, and the splay-legged “Quad Stand” looks like melted metal that has poured from under the screen. The panel section itself is a mere 1.2-inches thick, though you should probably arrange for some help to position it as, at 41 lbs with the stand attached, it’s not exactly lightweight.

Of course, what’s really important is the LCD panel itself, a huge slab of 1080p Full HD capable LCD TFT with a 240Hz refreshes rate, 3D support, and Samsung’s Micro Dimming Plus technology. The latter is a compromise between traditional edge-lit displays and true local-dimming backlighting (where different sections of the backlight array can be turned on or off independently behind different areas of the screen), using LED lighting along the sides which can, Samsung claims, be more localized than normal. That allows for the Cinema Black feature, which automatically spots any letter-box bars and dims the backlighting behind them, so as to make them less obvious.

There’s also LED Motion Plus and Auto Motion Plus, which combine together to phase the backlighting in horizontal bars that parallel the LCD refresh scanning. In fact, the D8000′s menus are full of options to tweak the picture, including Shadow Detail – which decreases the global dimming to improve black levels in low-light areas – and various 3D-related settings to reduce ghosting and cross-talk.

Connectivity includes four HDMI inputs, three USB ports, component and composite inputs, a D-sub PC input, 3.5mm audio input, optical digital output and a 3.5mm headphone socket. Networking is catered for with both ethernet and integrated WiFi. There’s obviously an ATSC/Clear QAM tuner, too. Because of the skinniness of the set, Samsung hasn’t had room to fit side-mounted inputs, so plugging in USB drives or camcorders is a little more tedious than it could be.

Samsung throws two pairs of its new 2011 series SSG-3100GB active-shutter 3D glasses into the box which shift the battery from the hinge sections to the tips of the arms for better balance (additional glasses are $49.99).

More interesting is the remote control, a double-sided affair that has regular controls on one side and a QWERTY keypad on the other. There’s even a tiny, single-line monochrome display so that you can type without needing to look up at the D8000. If you have other Samsung A/V kit (and assuming it’s fairly recent) you can use the company’s Anynet+ technology to control everything HDMI linked with that one, single remote.

Software

It may seem strange to have a software section for a TV, but as a smart TV the D8000 does plenty more than just show you what your TiVo is playing. Samsung has opted for its own, in-house Smart Hub system – rather than, say, Google TV – which has seen a fair few iterative updates since it first debuted a few years back. Now, Smart Hub includes Samsung Apps, with more than 200 paid and free apps to download direct to the TV; Your Video, which can make VOD recommendations based on your viewing history; Search, which uses the QWERTY remote to search Google, Facebook, YouTube, Samsung Apps and other sources; and a Web Browser for full internet access.

There’s also AllShare DLNA streaming support, just as we’ve seen on Samsung’s recent Galaxy range of tablets and smartphones, and Skype support with the optional Smart TV CY-STC1100 camera. That promises 720p HD 30fps video chat, though it was not included with our review system. If you have a Galaxy device, Samsung offers a remote control app in its own download store, which turns the phone or slate into a replacement remote control complete with QWERTY text input (that takes advantage of Android’s voice recognition and text auto-correction, too). An imminent update will add the ability to stream video from the D8000 to the Galaxy device; right now, you can use AllShare to browse content stored on the Galaxy from the TV.

Samsung Smart Hub can be pretty confusing at first glance, with a screen full of icons. Up top is the search bar along with Samsung Apps and recommended titles, while underneath is a side-scrolling menu of links to Favorites, channels, the program guide, videos/photos/music, AllShare, the browser, Twitter and more. It’s reasonably intuitive to control, though it would’ve been useful to have a motion-sensing remote like some LG TVs offer.

Performance is reasonably swift, though there can be lag when you search or access network features. The included remote is generally faster than using a Galaxy tablet – sometimes we hit the back button twice, thinking it hadn’t been recognized the first time, only to be thrown out of the menu we were using – though on the plus side you do get a trackpad-style control on the slate for the browser mouse pointer. Sites render pretty much as you’d expect from a computer.

Content can be streamed from Netflix, Blockbuster, Hulu Plus and other sources – assuming you have the right subscriptions – while there’s Pandora streaming music too. The DLNA worked well, as long as it liked the formats our content was encoded in; hooking up a USB drive direct gave broader compatibility. Samsung also includes copies of Megamind 3D, Shrek 3D, Shrek 2 3D, Shrek the Third 3D and Shrek Forever After 3D, all on Blu-ray, as part of its 3D starter kit.

Performance

With a list price of $3,600, you’d expect the D8000 to put in a good showing when it comes to picture quality. Happily the Samsung doesn’t disappoint. 2D content is crisp, clean and beautiful, with inky blacks and vivid, well-saturated colors. Although Samsung’s various processing settings tempt playing with the video, we found most of the time things looked better when left relatively untampered. The quality of your source media makes a big difference too; standard definition content could end up looking over-processed with plenty of artifacts after Motion Plus had done its best to keep things smooth. There’s some blurring with the very fastest of sports, but less than we’ve seen on many other LCD TVs.

3D, meanwhile, is eye-opening in its clarity. With Samsung’s new lightweight glasses the images pop and there’s little blurring to be seen. Samsung gives easy access to the depth perception settings with the 3D Viewpoint option in the main menu, though there’s still a little crosstalk evident. Color can sometimes get lost in the 3D process, but not so on the D8000, and brightness was still strong despite the active-shutter technology. This is some of the best 3D TV we’ve seen, and Samsung’s lightweight glasses certainly help for longer-term comfort in extended viewing.

Audio is catered for with two 15W speakers that are mounted at the lower back of the D8000. Unsurprisingly – given the size constraints – they’re not exactly going to blow the Samsung off its stand, though they’re fair for general TV playback. Frankly, however, buying a high-end 3D TV like the D8000 and not hooking it up to a decent A/V system – preferably with surround sound – would be a crime.

Wrap-Up

There’s no doubting that $3,500 is a lot to pay for a TV. Samsung has at least attempted to sweeten the deal as much as possible by making the UN55D8000 more than just a dumb screen. The Smart Hub functionality is genuinely useful in places, and while we can’t really see ourselves Tweeting from our TV, the YouTube and other streaming service access works well. The integration with Samsung’s Galaxy range of smartphones and tablets is also clever, and when the updated app arrives with streaming support from the D8000 that will be particularly useful.

Even so, we couldn’t recommend the D8000 if it didn’t deliver on picture quality, and thankfully the Samsung is one of the best screens around today. Neither 2D or 3D mode feels like an afterthought, and even if you’re not convinced by the third-dimension today, you’re getting a brilliant 2D 1080p set for your money. Take into account that the D8000′s street price is near $650 under list, and that’s a whole lot of high-performance pixels for what seems like an increasingly competitive figure. If your wallet can accommodate it, the Samsung UN55D8000 is unlikely to disappoint.

Samsung UN55D8000 55-Inch 1080p 240Hz 3D LED Smart TV hands-on walkthrough

Hardware

Considering there are no internal speakers, the iXtreamer is a pretty imposing slab. Measuring 242.1 x 251.3 x 65.7 mm, it’s finished in silver and black plastic with chromed highlights. Physical controls are limited to a power/standby button on the front. On top is the docking connector, with a suitably broad cut-out so that an iPad can slot in; a piece of plastic roughly the size of a PCMCIA card pulls out the side of the iXtreamer and slots in behind the iPad, giving it a rubber-padded place to lean against. Alternatively, there’s an included dock adapter for your iPhone. A sliding panel can cover up the dock if you’re not using it.

On the right side is a door hiding the 3.5-inch SATA drive bay (and the only less-than-solid part of the unit’s construction); some iXtreamer SKUs include a preloaded drive, but the basic model comes empty for you to fit your own. A pair of drive rails and the necessary screws are supplied, and up to 3TB HDDs are supported (with the current latest firmware, v2.6.0). It’s worth noting that you don’t actually need an internal HDD in place in order to use the iXtreamer; you can also stream content across a network instead.

That’s courtesy of the 10/100 ethernet port, which shares a crowded rear panel with two USB 2.0 Host ports, a single USB 2.0 Device port (for hooking up the iXtreamer to a computer and accessing its internal drive), HDMI, composite and component audio/video, and optical/coaxial digital audio outputs. No integrated wireless, but Xtreamer does offer a USB WiFi b/g/n adapter separately.

On the bottom is a 50mm fan, which generally remained relatively quiet. Xtreamer offer an optional IceCube passive cooler kit in case the fan noise is still too frustrating, and which basically slots in instead. The IceCube was not supplied with our review unit.

As well as the iXtreamer, there’s an HDMI cable, composite video cable (though not component), the drive mounting kit, iPhone dock adapter, a USB cable for mounting the iXtreamer as an external drive, and the PSU (which came with a European power cord, despite this being a UK unit). There’s also a comprehensive remote (including batteries) which is a big improvement over the tiny credit-card sized zappers most iPod docks get. It’s not exactly handsome but it’s full-featured, and the buttons glow in the dark; you can even use it to turn off the LED indicator light on the iXtreamer itself.

Software

Unlike most iPod docks, the iXtreamer is really several products bundled into one. At its most basic, it’s offers access to audio, video and photos stored on the iOS device docked on top, but there’s also a separate streaming, internet video and multimedia jukebox component, Xtreamer, with its own firmware.

The basic functionality is straightforward: dock your iPod, iPhone or iPad and it starts charging; hit the iPod Mode button on the remote (or choose Dock from the main menu) and you can choose from audio, video or images. The former work as you’d expect, offering a regular list of what titles you have stored on the iOS device, and you can also load playlists (including Genius playlists).

Photos are less successful. For a start, you can’t simply browse the various albums on your device; instead, you have to choose a slideshow, get it playing, and then the images will display on your TV. Once it’s running, you can pause it or skip forward or back through the images, and background music can also be heard; however, if you want to change album, you need to go back to the iPad display and do it there. We’re also unimpressed with the resolution the iXtreamer shows images: while the system UI is smooth and jag-free in 1080p mode, the slideshow images look to be shown in the same resolution that the iPad displays rather than their full quality, meaning it’s jagged and uninspiring.

The Xtreamer software, meanwhile, is a whole lot more complex. Our review unit came running v2.5.0 but that had already seen at least two incremental updates at Xtreamer’s site. We had a few headaches dealing with the firmware update process; the automatic on-device updater wouldn’t recognize a network connection, so we turned to the manual download of v2.6.0 instead. Unfortunately, unzip the file on a Mac and splits it into multiple separate files, which the iXtreamer can’t handle. Instead, we had to use a PC to unzip as a single .IXTR file.

The basic homescreen has six options, Favorites, Media Library, Dock, Xtreamering, File Manager and Settings. Along the bottom of the display, the IP address (assuming you have a network connection) and status icons are shown, illuminating when there are USB drives attached, network shares, an internal HDD, network connectivity and other system elements. The settings page is comprehensive, though all we needed to tweak initially was the output resolution (which sensibly defaults to the 480p lowest common denominator) to suit our TV. However, there are options for subtitles (with user-assignable fonts), slideshow transitions, aspect ratio, brightness/contrast/hue/saturation, Dynamic Noise Reduction and more, including a choice of DTS/Dolby TrueHD/Dolby D+ audio, DTS/Dolby D 2.1CH audio, or AAC/FLAC/OGG 5.1CH audio. You can also toggle on or off the NAS, UPnP streaming, web server and FTP server functionality.

Favorites is populated by your own shortcuts to most-accessed sources, along with your recently viewed media. Media Library, meanwhile, offers the full range of sources, depending on what you have hooked up or shared to the iXtreamer. As well as USB and internal HDD access, there are network shares, internet content, UPnP streamed media, content on Xtreamer’s own eTRAYz NAS, iRadio and DVD playback, the latter assuming you have a USB DVD player plugged in.

We were successfully able to play content both from a plugged in USB drive, an internal drive in the iXtreamer’s HDD bay, and across a wired network connection (we didn’t have the official USB adapter). The company’s main selling point is the range of codecs and formats it supports, at up to 1080p Full HD resolution and with various audio codecs to match:

Video containers:

MPEG1/2/4 Elementary (M1V, M2V, M4V)
MPEG1/2 PS (M2P, MPG)
MPEG2 Transport Stream (TS, TP, TRP, M2T, M2TS, MTS)
VOB
AVI, ASF, WMV
Matroska (MKV) (H.264)
AVC HD
MOV (H.264), MP4, RMP4
FLV – Flash Video
VP6 Codec h.264 Streaming FLV
Video codecs:
Audio containers:
AAC, M4A
MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA)
WAV
WMA
FLAC
OGG
RMP4
FLC
PCM
PLSX

Audio codecs:

Audio Down Mix : DTS, DTS-HD MA, DTS-HD HR
Audio Passthrough 5.1 CH : DTS, DTS-HD MA, DTS-HD HR 5.1 CH -
Audio Passthrough 7.1CH – Dolby TrueHD , DTS HD-MA
Photo formats : JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, HD JPEG
Other formats: ISO, IFO, FLV, RM, RA, RAM
Subtitle formats : SRT, SMI, SUB, SSA, IDX
Streaming formats : RTSP, FLV, FLV HD (VP6)

We had no issues with ISOs, HD MKV files, AVI and MP4 clips we’d downloaded or ripped, all playing back smoothly and offering full fast-forward/slow-motion control (down to half-speed or up to 32x in various increments). The quality was on a par with what we’ve seen from a regular DVD or Blu-ray player, or indeed an HTPC hooked up via HDMI. Best of all, even with HD footage the fan was relatively quiet and unobtrusive.

Xtreamering is actually made up of multiple apps, many of which are developed by the Xtreamer community. By default some come uninstalled, too, which led to a few hiccups from the off; each can be loaded individually, and while some downloaded with no problems, others were unable to find the required installation files and threw up network errors. A global install option failed, despite other apps finding the network connection with no problems. After each (successful) installation the box restarts.

Of those that worked, the experience was generally good. The News app has content from BBC, CNN and others, pulling in text-only stories (with a thumbnail image) which can be browsed first by headline and then the full story shown (albeit with an intervening “summary” stage which seems to serve no real purpose). The YouTube player, like we’ve seen from smartphone YouTube apps, allows for searches, browsing the recently added, most watched and most highly-rated clips.

YouTube isn’t the only streaming video, however. There’s also content from IPTV feeds like the TED talks and from MAKE, as well as a “Golden Oldies” channel that promises full length classic movies. The problem again is that this unofficial content has a habit of disappearing after it’s been uploaded; some movies worked, others didn’t, but none had thumbnails in the gallery, instead leaving you to navigate by the tiny text at the bottom of the screen. Without search functionality, you’re left paging through a few hundred screens, hitting play and hoping the stream will work. A Netflix option at the bottom of the page got us excited, but all it says is “Comming [sic] Soon.”

Wrap-Up

The iXtreamer is an interesting mixture of hardware and software, some elements more successful than others. Although it’s billed primarily as an iPhone/iPod/iPad dock, that functionality lacks the simplicity of more dedicated rivals; viewing photos from an iPad seemed particularly inelegant. Still, it works, and iPad-compatible docks are still relatively rare compared to their iPod/iPhone brethren. Xtreamer hope to add iOS app support, but all that depends on Apple and we can’t see that it’s especially likely at this stage.

The Xtreamering software also feels like a work in progress, perhaps because it actually is. As with any community-led media player environment, it can be broken and over-ambitious in places, together with functional and useful in others. The YouTube viewer is straightforward to use, while the news app is surprisingly good; frustrating installation processes threaten to sour the overall experience, however. If you view it as an added extra, on top of the solid media playback base, then it’s an interesting project worth keeping an eye on, but we wouldn’t buy the iXtreamer solely for the Xtreamering functionality.

That leads up nicely to the iXtreamer’s real strength: its abilities as an HTPC replacement. There’s no live TV, nor Netflix, Hulu, iPlayer or 4oD, but you do get a huge range of codec support that should handle just about any media file, disc or stream you can throw at it. The internal hard-drive bay – which handles up to 3TB with the latest firmware – is a great option, and given you can also stream content locally and as an FTP server from files hosted on the iXtreamer, it makes for an excellent media NAS too. A BitTorrent download client would be a nice touch.

Xtreamer has plenty of ideas for where the iXtreamer might develop – there’s apparently an Opera browser port in the works, complete with Flash support – and seem prompt in their release of new firmware versions, addressing bugs and adding features as they go. Even if you don’t need the iPad/iPhone functionality, you can get the same core hardware and software in other units, like a DVD player or a standalone streaming box. As with most HTPC-style media players, this isn’t for the faint of heart, and there are easier ways to view the most common files (on your computer, on your iPod or on an external drive) with your HDTV, but they generally lack the iXtreamer’s huge flexibility and upgrade potential. If you’ve the patience to work around the half-baked elements, and a demanding media library to play, at £159 ($258) the iXtreamer is a whole lot more affordable than a dedicated media PC.

Thanks to Advanced MP3 Players for the loan of the iXtreamer

Hardware

The Beat is certainly distinctive: a 47cm high tower, triangular in cross-section, predominantly clad in slate grey Italian wool. On the back there’s a slice of satin chrome which arches out into a handle for easier transportation. Build quality is very high, but our review unit was already showing some fluffiness around the edges of the wool where it had obviously been rubbed. Nothing some pruning with nail-scissors wouldn’t take care of, but we’re not really used to having to trim our home audio equipment.

Ports on the Beat are minimal, with a 3.5mm stereo input intended for legacy use, but Libratone expecting users to opt for one of the two bundled wireless adapters. There’s a USB adapter – a tiny, angled USB dongle that shows up in Windows or OS X as another sound output – together with an Apple-friendly transmitter that plugs into the dock connector of your iPhone, iPod or iPad. As a rather slick consideration, Libratone also throw in a custom USB cable which can dock with the iPod adapter, allowing you to recharge and sync the iOS device while also streaming wirelessly. The only thing you don’t get is a 3.5mm audio cable for use with a non-Apple PMP.

The streaming part of the Libratone Beat may be wireless, but the speaker itself doesn’t cut all of the cords. Despite the weight, there’s no internal battery for standalone use, and so you’ll need to find a plug to power the Beat up. A dedicated power switch on the back is one of two physical controls; the other is an illuminated multifunction button in the top right hand corner of the speaker’s fascia. It’s a single less-than-solid point on the Beat, being a little wobbly to the touch.

Pressing the button once switches between the wireless transmitters – that way you can leave the USB and iPod dongles plugged in, and switch between them from the speaker itself – while pressing twice triggers a scan for any new nearby transmitters. Three times mutes the speaker – actual volume control is via the transmitting device itself – and six times clears everything. The button’s backlighting switches from red when in standby, to yellow when searching/connecting, and then to white while it’s playing.

Performance

Libratone is particularly proud of the audio tech slotted inside the Beat, with a 50W bass amplifier and 2x25W tweeter/midrange amps driving a 5-inch bass speaker, two 3-inch midrange and two 1-inch ribbon-based tweeters. Rather than all pointing out the front of the Beat, they’re spread around the three edges; Libratone calls this FullRoom, and suggests the speaker sounds best if you position it 20cm away from a wall so that the rear-facing cones can reflect sound off of it. Corners, apparently, aren’t so helpful to the stereo effect.

The promise is 360-degree audio from a single source, something plenty of other companies have offered before, and as is usually the case it’s a mixed bag in practice. The Beat certainly doesn’t lack bass – in fact at times we wished we could tweak the low-end down somewhat, something you have to do via whatever EQ options are on your audio source, since there’s no way of doing it on the Libratone speaker itself – with the weighty unit getting the floor shivering with the amount of sound it can pump out, while the trebles are bright and clear. The mid-range gets somewhat lost in the process, however, taking its toll on guitars and acoustic music especially.

It’s also hard to identify the promised stereo effect, and while we tried the Beat in various different positions in different rooms, there’s really no way it can live up to a proper set of stereo speakers. That might not be an issue if your wireless speaker requirements run to a simple way to take music around the house with you, or out into the garden, but then the Beat’s high price tag and AC demands rear their heads.

What you do get is convenience. Libratone promise that those with more than one Beat unit can have them all active and paired simultaneously, with the speakers automatically starting playback when you come into range. If you’ve ever wanted a bubble of whole-house audio that follows you around, the Beat can deliver that, assuming you’ve the depth of wallet to accommodate. Unfortunately Libratone only supplied a single unit, so we were unable to test the multi-speaker functionality. Still, it’s worth noting that, even if you have two units set up, there’s no way to assign one to the left stereo channel and the other to the right. You merely get a louder version of the proprietary FullRoom effect.

Wireless range is quoted at up to 10m for the iPod adapter and up to 30m for the USB adapter. In practice, we had no trouble roaming throughout the apartment while maintaining a connection, with walls in-between.

Wrap-Up

There’s a lot to like about the Libratone Beat. The styling has the minimalist sparkle we’ve grown to expect from the Danes, and the focus on high-quality materials – multifunction button wobbles aside – adds up to a speaker that’s distinctive even when it’s turned off. If Italian wool isn’t luxe enough for you, Libratone will sell you a Beat clad in Italian cashmere instead; this is a speaker that dresses better than we do.

The wireless setup is super-simple as well; Windows and the iOS devices we tested automatically switched over to the Libratone adapters, while a quick click in the OS X settings page had our MacBook singing through the Beat. Subsequent plug-ins of the transmitters triggered an automatic switchover, the Beat automatically pairing and hardly a skipped note in the transition between onboard speakers and the Libratone monolith.

Unfortunately, that convenience and quality comes at a price, and it’s both on your wallet and your ears. At £549 for the wool and £599 for the cashmere versions, the Beat is tremendously expensive for an iPod speaker, and the audio output simply isn’t as precise as a traditional stereo speaker pair. In its favor there’s the convenience of its portability, but the absence of a battery option – and the sheer weight of the unit itself – somewhat undermines the flexibility on offer.

Nonetheless, there’s something appealing about the Beat. The ease of use and obvious consideration behind the design decisions are excellent, and we love the styling. If it were cheaper, we could probably describe the sound as playful and be thankful for the lashings of bass from a relatively small cabinet. At its current pricing, however, it’s hard to recommend the Libratone Beat to those who prioritize audio quality.

Hardware

The MP-1 itself is a small plastic disc 3.28-inches across, about the size of a drinks coaster, with a rubberized base and an Orb logo on the top inside an illuminated status ring. Ports and controls are minimal: a miniUSB is used for initial setup and then power, while a 3.5mm stereo output is the only way to hook up speakers; meanwhile the only hardware button is a recessed reset nub on the bottom of the unit.

Inside there’s WiFi b/g/n, and in the box Orb include an AC USB power supply, a USB to miniUSB cable and a 3.5mm stereo audio cable. There’s also a brief “Getting Started” sheet and the warranty information.

Software

Orb rely on two different software components, each available to download rather than included in the retail box. First up is Orb Caster, the music “server” side of the system and which is currently available for Windows and Mac. It’s this app that pulls together your multimedia and squirts it out to the MP-1, and it means you’ll need to have a computer running full-time if you want to use the Orb system; there’s no standalone component. You can index local and network-shared media, including an iTunes library, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, 4), AAC, Lossless, WMA and WAV files are supported.

Second is the Orb Controller app, which is available for iPhone/iPod touch, iPad (as a native app) and Android. This is the free remote control, and the useful thing is that you can download it to as many devices as you own: if you’ve got an iPad in the lounge and then an Android smartphone, you can have Orb Controller running on each.

Setup proved trickier than it should, with neither our PC or Mac able to see the MP-1. After some head-scratching, that was tracked down to a bent pin in the supplied USB cable, which meant the Orb Music was powered but not connected for data. There’s no way of knowing whether we bent the pin ourselves or if Orb supplied a broken cable.

Once plugged in with a working cable, the Orb Caster app quickly recognized the MP-1 and allowed us to select the default WiFi network for it to connect to. After that, when powered up it showed up in the Orb Devices list – on all the Orb Caster installs, not just the one that set it up initially – after twenty seconds or so of network registration. The Orb logo on the MP-1 flashes orange while it’s finding the WiFi connection, double-flashes if it can’t find the Orb Caster server, and then lights green when it’s ready.

As for the Orb Controller app, that’s available in the Apple App Store or the Android Market, and is free in each. Loaded up, and it automatically finds whatever Orb Caster servers are running; you can then choose which one you want to control, based on the server name you set during installation. The homescreen offers the core audio library along with any playlists, together with Pandora and Sirius if you have access to them, internet radio (sorted by country, genre and favourites), any internet radio you’ve recorded using Orb Caster, and the settings page. The latter allows you to reset the controller and, remotely, Orb Caster, together with triggering a rescan of the media library.

Media itself can be browsed by artist, album, genre, composer, song or folder, or alternatively you can search for a specific track. Album art is supported, though not downloaded on-demand. Using the bar at the top of the screen you can see all the MP-1 units on your network and their current activity, including pausing or stopping playback on all of them. Tapping the first track plays it; tapping subsequent tracks allows you to choose between playing them immediately, playing them next or appending them to the end of the current ad-hoc playlist. If you have two or more Orb Controllers running simultaneously, they can each control a single MP-1: you can see track changes and even volume adjustments, synchronized across all of the controllers.

Performance

Audio quality is highly dependent on the speakers you plug in, and as long as those you choose have a 3.5mm input, you’ll have no problems hooking up the MP-1. With only analog audio to choose from, rather than some sort of digital output, the Orb Music won’t be quite as good as a Sonos system with a top-notch HiFi, but that sort of setup is obviously expensive and also demands that your digital music collection is encoded at suitably high bitrates. All that considered, we had no issues with the MP-1′s audio performance.

Overall responsiveness of the Orb system is, as you’d imagine, dependent on every stage the music has to pass through; the speed is only as good as the weakest link in the chain. With the Orb Caster app pulling tracks locally and from a USB hard-drive, linked via WiFi b/g to the MP-1, playback started after a second or two of delay. Streaming music from a NAS, meanwhile, added an extra second or two into the process.

As for the Orb Controller apps, the iOS version seems more polished than its Android counterpart. On the iPad it updated quickly and moved swiftly between pages, only encountering minor delays when getting long lists of albums, artists or tracks from the server. The Android app was a little more buggy, occasionally freezing and sometimes causing the device to slow down and become unresponsive altogether. These were intermittent issues, but we noticed them on both a Samsung Galaxy Tab and a Google Nexus One.

Wrap-Up

Viewed against Sonos’, Raumfeld’s or Logitech’s systems, the Orb Music has some obvious omissions. Its remote app is more sluggish – and demands that you have an Android or iOS device to run it – and it lacks connectivity options like digital audio outputs and wired ethernet. On the flip side, a single MP-1 is $69; assuming you already have a suitable device to act as the remote, that means you can be up and running with a single-room wireless audio streaming system for a fraction of the cost of a Sonos setup.

Adding an extra room is another $69, and Orb’s recent Orb TV VP-1 adapter – at $99 – promises to do for video and photos (along with music) what the MP-1 does for audio, all running from the same Orb Caster server. Yes, you’ll need a computer turned on all the time, but the same is true with SqueezeBox, and if you’re buying into Sonos then you’re basically getting a standalone PC in their units. We’d like to see a NAS plugin, as with SqueezeBoz, to run Orb Caster from a network-attached storage device, but the target audience for the Orb Music is probably going to be able to work around leaving a computer switched on 24/7.

Orb still has work to do finessing the Orb Controller app, particularly the Android version, and we’d like to see Rhapsody support (which the company says it is working on) in the US and Spotify in the UK. An open API for third-party developers would be grand, too. The company does say a wired ethernet version of the MP-1 is also under consideration, if there’s enough user demand. Still, on balance this is an affordable and flexible way to stream music without installing huge lengths of cable or spending massively on proprietary remotes and other hardware. What shortcomings there are pale considerably when you take into account the Orb Music MP-1′s bargain price.

Hardware

As STBs go, the Revue is relatively inoffensive in its design. A reasonably compact 247 x 171 x 36 mm box, it’s finished in matte and gloss black plastic with a couple of indicator LEDs up front but no display or channel indicator, as you might find on a cable or satellite tuner. On the back there’s an HDMI input and an HDMI output, two IR blaster ports for using the optional IR wand Logitech includes, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, ethernet and S/PDIF, together with a power port. The Revue’s PSU is an external, laptop-style block.

Inside, meanwhile, is Intel’s CE4100 SoC, a combination of the company’s 1.2GHz Atom CPU and an HD-capable GPU. Most other STBs – like the Apple TV – use low-power ARM based chipsets, which often require no active cooling, but the Revue gets a ducted fan. It’s not obtrusively loud in operation, however.

Also in the box is Logitech’s standard Google TV controller, a wireless keyboard with integrated trackpad and multimedia buttons. It’s a sturdy, reasonably tactile device, but it’s certainly not discrete, and if you find regular button-encrusted remotes off-putting then the Revue’s ‘board will likely smack a little too much of the home office. As you’d expect from a peripheral manufacturer, the keys are solid for typing and we had no problems with connectivity, though we’d prefer it if there had been key backlighting for easier nighttime use. Logitech offer a separate mini keyboard, priced at a hefty $130, which is better scaled to the living room, but we can’t help but look at the Boxee Box remote – with its simple controls on one face and a scaled down QWERTY thumbboard on the reverse – and wish Logitech had done something similar.

Alternatively, Logitech offer smartphone apps for iOS and Android, so you can turn your cellphone into a Revue controller. Given the popularity of both platforms it’s a sensible decision, and the apps are functional if lacking in some user-friendliness, but they’re also relatively basic. Despite the Harmony branding – as with Logitech’s range of multi-function remotes – they’ll only control the Revue and there’s no overall macro support for things like turning on the TV, powering up your surround sound amp and getting Google TV going all from a single button press. The apps also use Bluetooth to hook up, rather than WiFi, which limits their potential for whole-house controllers (say, if you’re piping your Google TV output through some sort of wireless extender to a second set in the bedroom). The official controllers use Logitech’s own 2.4GHz Unifying wireless system.

Hooking up your existing A/V kit is relatively straightforward, as long as you have the right ports to choose from. All Logitech includes is a single HDMI cable, so that you can slot the Revue in-between your cable/satellite STB and your TV. If you’ve been using anything other than HDMI then you’re out of luck; Sony’s Google TV Blu-ray player supports component inputs/outputs as well as HDMI, but Logitech’s does not. The only real option is the S/PDIF output, useful if you use a separate A/V receiver for audio. Network connectivity, meanwhile, is either via 10/100 ethernet or integrated WiFi a/b/g/n.

Since the Revue can control whichever STB it’s plugged into, the IR blasters are particularly important. Happily they work well, and since Google TV is only designed to control a single STB source (rather than, say, your cable box, amplifier, and various other sources) we had no issues getting things positioned effectively. DISH Network subscribers get even greater integration, as long as they have a VIP 622, 722 or 722K DVR and are willing to pay $4 extra per month as an “integration fee.” Then, the two devices communicate over your home network, rather than using the IR blasters.

Google TV supports video calls, though Logitech’s package doesn’t come with all the necessary hardware as standard. Instead, you’ll need the TV Cam webcam, an expensive $149 addition that plugs into one of the USB 2.0 ports on the back of the Revue (we’d like to have seen a front-panel port as well). Regular USB webcams won’t work, unfortunately, since the TV Cam has its own 720p hardware encoding kit inside, though video calls can be held with anyone using Logitech’s free Vid HD software, available for PC and Mac.

Software

DISH DVRs aside, Google TV attempts to be as flexible as possible in what STB kit it works with. The flip side of that flexibility is a nebulous, lengthy setup process that is likely to instantly sour the experience of any less-than-confident users. Various stages for setting up the WiFi or network connection (though not accommodating fixed IPs, unfortunately) together with picking your STB from a list, choosing which channels you do and don’t get, a four-stage process of adjusting screen scaling to suit your display, and generally tweaking the Google TV experience – all punctuated with several restarts along the way – means the Revue really is not plug-and-play.

Although Android is the underlying OS, the UI is very different from an Android smartphone. As with most TV GUIs, Google TV’s floats semi-transparent over the current show, app or browser window. It’s made up of a list of general categories down the left hand side – such as bookmarks, most viewed content and, if you have access, Amazon Video On Demand – with thumbnails on the right. The “What’s On” option gives a list of currently showing programs on broadcast TV, though there’s no full EPG (electronic program guide) – instead you have to flick over to your STB’s guide and navigate from there.

In fact, the experience as a whole feels more suited to immediate viewing than planning ahead. Unless you have one of the compatible DVR boxes, there’s no easy way to schedule recordings from the Google TV UI: instead you get a pop-up box telling you to flip over to your DVR and set up the recording from there. If you’ve a DISH box, the Revue can schedule recordings itself.

Google is known for search, and so unsurprisingly Google TV makes heavy use of its search bar. Hit the dedicated button on the remote, and you can search through current and upcoming programs, channels, web content and online video. It’s fast and it works, for general navigation, surprisingly well. Since Google TV knows what’s showing on the channels you receive, you can type in a show name or a suitably notable detail – a team name for a sports game, for instance – and it will automatically flick over using the IR blaster. If you’ve a DISH DVR it will also pull up any recordings on that STB as well.

Unfortunately, the Revue’s flexibility can lead to some confusion with searches, primarily when it’s unclear whether you’re running a generic query or an in-app search. Some software, such as the pre-loaded Twitter client, default to an in-app search and there doesn’t appear to be a way to change it. On more than one occasion we found ourselves hitting the search key, typing in a term and then having to go back to the homescreen and re-search once we realized the active app had been hogging the search functionality. Adding even more confusion is the fact that, as on Android phones, the search bar also functions as the address bar in the Google TV browser (more on which in a moment).

Although searches through broadcast content work well, online media is generally less successful. Google’s system can pull up streaming video results from YouTube and TV network sites, as well as Amazon Video On Demand and Netflix (if you have an account). When it works, it’s great – you get both paid and free options, depending on what’s available, and Netflix worked just as it does with a regular Roku box – but unfortunately much of the time the results were surprisingly patchy. Even high-profile titles often failed to show up, even though we knew they were available through at least one streaming service, and we also found that it would sometimes show us content that we actually could not watch through the Revue.

This last point is a tricky one, since it’s not entirely Google’s fault. While on the Internet the “everything is freely accessible” paradigm has been good to the search company, the TV industry is less willing to share its bounty without taking some sort of tithe. Since Google TV’s launch, several high-profile networks have blocked access to devices like the Revue; meaning users can’t stream their shows with Google’s system. Right now that includes ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and Viacom, as well as providers such as Hulu. Confusingly – for users, at least – those same sites (and their content) is watchable via a regular desktop browser, so hooking up a netbook or similar to your HDTV might actually net you a better range of viewing options than the dedicated Revue.

When it works, streaming video is opened in a custom build of Google’s Chrome browser, complete with Flash Player 10.1 support for 1080p-accelerated video. You can obviously use this browser to view regular sites as well, though we found text could often be unpleasantly small and we spent much of our time hitting the zoom button to toggle font sizes. The Flash support is only for video, too, so Flash games are out. We were disappointed by the sometimes-jerky performance, which falls short of browsing on an Android-based smartphone or tablet.

Multiple Chrome windows are supported, and holding the Home button the keyboard brings up thumbnails of every tab together with the homescreen and the bare TV view. It’s straightforward to navigate through them using the arrow keys. There’s also DualView, a browser/TV picture-in-picture, which puts the currently showing TV feed in a small box in the bottom right hand corner. Useful, but not as much as if you could resize the window, move it elsewhere in the screen, or indeed – as you can usually do with PiP on regular TVs – switch the two views around. Bizarrely, you can’t open DualView from within the browser, even though there’s a dedicated button on the remote. Instead, you have to be watching TV initially, and then hit the button to shrink down the video and open up the browser.

Google preload a small selection of applications onto Google TV, though the flexibility of this will extend considerably once the Google TV Marketplace arrives sometime in 2011. As it stands, there are Netflix, CNBC, Napster, Pandora, Picasa, Twitter and NBA apps currently available, with varying degrees of complexity. Unlike Netflix on other platforms, for instance, you can access your Instant Queue but not add titles to it from the app itself (since the Netflix site is available from within Chrome, you can always add titles there and then jump back over to the app). They work, but it’ll take third-party investment to make it all worthwhile, and by the time that happens it’s possible that Apple will have already brought the weight of its App Store to the Apple TV.

Wrap-Up

There’s no denying that Google TV – and the Logitech Revue – has potential. Unfortunately, much of that potential is currently only part delivered on. The downside to Google TV’s all-encompassing compatibility is that it can feel decidedly average across the board, rather than a close-knit experience with just a few devices. DISH Network support is, right now, the pinnacle of Revue integration, and even that feels half-hearted. Temperamental browsing is not what we expect from a device which positions the search experience as its core strength, and nor are patchy search results.

Hardware and software shortcomings are just one aspect of the story, however, and it’s content, which is somewhat outside Google’s control. When the Revue’s streaming works, it works well; sadly the networks don’t seem all too keen on allowing Google TV a free ride on their online media. The list of blocked sites looks only likely to get longer, and at that point someone – Google, users, or both – will have to reach into their pockets and pay up for access. Whether that model fits in with Google’s long-term plans for Google TV, or indeed sits comfortably with a $300 STB, remains to be seen. You pay $99 for an Apple TV with the understanding that content costs a few dollars a time; do you feel as comfortable when the Revue is three times that amount and the content landscape is so changeable?

As we’ve seen with Android on smartphones, once Google starts with its iterative updates there’s little stopping it. Unfortunately, it also means that early adopters suffer the pain of v1.0 hardware and software, and a user experience that can end up only vaguely resembling the original promise as service and content providers alike find their feet. The Logitech Revue is certainly not ready for primetime, but give Google TV a few more rehearsals and there are glimpses of star potential.

There’s no missing the SFQ-01A, a slab-sided chunk of high-gloss black plastic with a narrow control pad and discrete orange side lighting. At £199.99/$199.99 it’s not an inexpensive dock, and we wish some of that had shown up in more expensive plastics; it’s not exactly lightweight, but then neither does it have the heft of some similarly-priced units. It’s also a dust and fingerprint magnet. In the box, SoundFreaq include the SFQ-01A itself, a small IR remote, two interchangeable dock adapters (for the original iPhone and iPhone 3G), an AC adapter (and, with our unit at least, both UK and Continental Europe power cables) and a 3.5mm stereo audio cable. There’s also some easy to follow documentation, printed on too-big-to-miss sheets of cardboard.

Controls are limited to the lower front panel, with three silver knobs on the far left – for controlling treble, bass and SoundFreaq’s own UQ3 audio processing system. On the right, there’s an array of concave, touch-sensitive buttons for source, track skip, play/pause, volume, mute, power and Bluetooth pairing, underneath a small, orange LCD display. In-between there’s the dock itself, with a plastic cover if you’re not planning to actually slot in your iPhone or iPod touch. On the back there’s the power port and a 3.5mm aux-in input, while on the right side is a small door to hide the remote (a magnet keeps it in place).

Hitting the source button cycles through the three options: iPod (for a docked model), Bluetooth (for wireless streaming, such as from an iPad) and Aux-In, for any other external source. The remote basically duplicates the panel buttons. SoundFreaq’s Bluetooth doesn’t just work with the iPad: any A2DP-compliant Bluetooth device – whether your notebook, smartphone or otherwise – should be able to pair with it and treat it as an external source, though since there’s no microphone it won’t work as a speakerphone. We’d have liked to have seen an FM radio, at least (WiFi radio would’ve been even better), as SoundFreaq said there would be back at IFA (Update: According to SoundFreaq, the US version of the SFQ-01A will have an FM radio, while the European model will not). When more than one device has paired via Bluetooth, it’s first-come, first-serve as to who gets to stream. There’s no multipoint support for simultaneous connections.

The iPad’s standard music app will happily stream to the SFQ-01A wirelessly, though while the play/pause button on the dock’s control panel worked as expected, the track-skip buttons did not. However, there’s also the special SoundFreaq app in the App Store; this is a basic media player with full interaction between the SFQ-01A buttons and the app UI. You can queue up tracks from your music catalog into custom playlists, though the UI itself feels a little cramped: the navigation box shows just 7 tracks at a time, despite the amount of screen the iPad has to offer. Still, you can view tracks by artist, song and album, among other things, as well as import playlists from elsewhere.

Audio quality is decent, particularly when the UQ3 system is turned off. Without it, even with some diligent treble/bass tweaking, audio sounded relatively anaemic, especially when streamed via Bluetooth. With it, music is fuller and more rounded, and the SFQ-01A can be cranked up to reasonable levels before distorting. With no separate subwoofer this obviously isn’t the speaker-dock for dedicated bass lovers, but it still manages to sound reasonably impressive.

The SFQ-01A certainly does what it promises to, but we can’t help but feel that SoundFreaq has missed an opportunity with its custom iPad app. Some sort of internet radio streaming would’ve given it a real edge over rival speaker docks; as it stands, the only thing you gain over Apple’s own Music app is support for the SFQ-01A’s buttons, but you give up Genius playlists and background playback (exit the SoundFreaq app and the music stops, though we imagine the company will address that when iOS 4.2 arrives with its multitasking support).

Still, given the more readily-modified nature of software, that’s something SoundFreaq could well add in future iterations of their app. The iPod speaker dock market is a crowded one, and while the SFQ-01A’s looks certainly help distinguish it, the unique selling points aren’t quite mature enough to push the SoundFreaq conclusively ahead of the pack. If the company can deliver on software updates then that would go a long way to differentiate the SFQ-01A and make it a recommended buy.

As with Sonos, the Raumfeld setup consists of multiple, wirelessly-connected zones that can be controlled with a single remote (though of course more than one remote can be added if you so wish). Raumfeld currently offer four main types of component – Base, Controller, Connector and Speaker – which can be bought individually or as a pre-bundled system. The company sent us a custom bundle for review that’s suitable for distributing audio to three rooms.

The Raumfeld Base is the heart of the system, a router-sized black and silver box with twin WiFi antenna and three LEDs. Not only is it responsible for creating the WiFi b/g network that each Raumfeld component links to – unlike Sonos, the German firm use regular WiFi rather than a proprietary mesh network – it has a 160GB hard-drive inside that can be used to serve up audio without your PC or Mac being switched on. On the back there are two ethernet ports – one for your router, another a simple pass-through – a serial port (for debugging), two USB 2.0 ports which can be used to add external hard-drives and thus boost storage, and a setup button (which we’ll come back to).

The Raumfeld Controller is a chunky, weighty touchscreen device with a capacitive panel and a large volume dial. Beyond the power button that’s the only physical control; everything else is managed via the touchscreen. On the top, under hinged rubber flaps, are a USB port (for manual firmware updates) and a power connector; however the remote comes with a charging station that the Controller sits in horizontally. The display is a bright 480 x 272 resolution panel, while inside there’s a motion sensor – which wakes the remote when picked up – and a WiFi b/g radio.

Raumfeld’s equivalent of the Sonos ZonePlayers are their Connector and Speaker components. The Connector is roughly the size of a hardback book and has analog and digital S/PDIF outputs, an ethernet port if you’re not using the WiFi, and an analog audio input. The latter allows you to hook up an external source – such as a CD player or turntable – and play that not only through the local Connector but through any zone in the Raumfeld system. There’s also a USB port, but that’s only used for system recovery; you can’t add a hard-drive as you can with the Base.

Finally, the Raumfeld Speakers, of which there are currently two sizes. Both the Raumfeld Speaker S and Speaker M systems integrate the networking and amplification into one of the units themselves: all you need is a single power connection (and wired ethernet if you’re not using the WiFi) and you’re running. Sonos’ S5 is the closest comparison, though of course that bundles both left and right channels into the same housing, whereas with the Raumfelds you can stretch the soundstage as far as your room (and speaker cable) allows. Sonos will allow you to pair two S5′s wirelessly and designate one to each stereo channel, but that’s an expensive proposition.

The Speaker S pair get a Cirrus Logic 24-bit DAC and output 2 x 15W RMS via 0.75-inch tweeters and 4-inch woofers. The larger Speaker M pair upgrade the amplification with an ADAM Audio unit, and output 2 x 30W via ART tweeters and 5.5-inch Rohacell woofers. As with the Connector, both sets of speakers have an analog audio input for piping an external source through the Raumfeld system, but they can also use that as a source in standalone mode (i.e. playing media locally); Raumfeld offer them in black or white finishes. A neat touch is that, during setup, you can choose which speaker handles which stereo channel, useful for working around unhelpfully placed AC sockets.

So far, so good, and the Raumfeld kit certainly feels well put together. The Base and Connector are a little on the plasticky side – similar in feel to a router, in fact – but are neither creaky nor cheap to the touch, while the speakers are heavy, solid and – with their brushed aluminum bezels and volume controls – pleasing to the touch.

If the setup process was a headache, all that flexibility would be for naught; happily that’s not the case. On the back of each unit is a setup button which basically triggers the component announcing itself to the network. When the Controller is first powered on, it walks you through connecting to the Base – a case of holding the setup button on the Base down for a few seconds, and allowing the system to pair them together – and after that registering each Speaker pair or Connector unit is a case of choosing “Add Room” from the Controller’s settings and hitting the setup button on the back.

During that process, each room can be named using an on-screen keyboard, and those names are then used for zone management. Like with Sonos, you can have separate content playing in each zone, or group multiple zones together and synchronize the media across them all. It’s a straightforward process, too: tapping Connect All from the zone management pane links every available room, or you can hit the plus buttons next to the individual zone listings to group or ungroup them. At the bottom of the Controller display are three persistent controls – Home, Zones and Media – and you can pin your favorite sources to the homescreen.

Those sources can be pretty varied, too. As well as the 160GB hard-drive in the Raumfeld Base – which shows up as a standard shared drive to PCs and Macs on the network – there’s internet radio support (split into categories and locations, and with station artwork), the analog inputs on each Connector/Speaker, and any shared media on PCs, Macs, or network-attached storage. There’s plenty of format support, too, with the Raumfeld handling MP3, WAV, Flac, Ogg Vorbid, ASF, WMA, M4A, AAC and Apple Lossless at standard or variable nitrates, while it can also load WPL, M3U, PLS and iTunes playlists. There’s also RadioTime, Napster and Last.fm streaming integration, if you have accounts with those services. If you want to access your iTunes library, you can either copy it across to the Raumfeld Base or share the relevant folder on your computer. Finally, there’s UPnP support.

It’s certainly flexible, and could easily get overwhelming if the UI wasn’t so straightforward. Start off with a few tracks saved to the Base, and it’s easy to get to grips with the system. Tracks on the Base began playing almost instantly, while those in shared folders would sometimes take a little longer to begin; still, nothing approaching frustrating. Audio quality from the Connector is of course dependent on the amplifier and speakers you’ve hooked up.

As for the Raumfeld Speakers, unsurprisingly the Speaker M set is the more impressive of the two pairs. The Speaker S are clear but do suffer from distortion when cranked up – either by the local volume control or the dial on the Controller – and are short on bass for particularly thumping tracks. It’s not a criticism we’d level at the Speaker M pair, however, which are bright, powerful and clean even at high volumes. Not short on bass, they also do a great job on vocal-heavy audio, with great separation.

Nonetheless, the system isn’t perfect and it’s not hard to pinpoint what Raumfeld need to do in order to catch up with Sonos. The biggest shortcoming is the reliance on the Controller. Sonos offer their own hardware remotes, but also provide users with free software remotes for iOS, Android and PC/Mac. Right now, you can assign audio via UPnP to a Raumfeld zone using Windows Media Player, but there’s no way to control the system from your smartphone or even from your desktop browser. We’d like to see a web interface running on the Raumfeld Base, but failing that a simple software client that replicated the Controller would suffice.

Sonos also has the advantage with their wireless system, which is more flexible than the regular WiFi the Raumfeld Base uses. In short, each Raumfeld component – Controller, Connector and Speakers – links directly to the Base, just as with a normal WiFi router. That means the range is limited to whatever wireless strength the Base itself can muster. In contrast, each Sonos component acts as a node in one large mesh, extending the range in P2P fashion. If you want to extend your Raumfeld system’s wireless range, the company suggests you use a WiFi repeater.

How, then, do the two systems compare in cost? We’re working from UK pricing for both stores, here, since Raumfeld doesn’t currently have US pricing. The Raumfeld Controller is £349 while the Sonos Controller 200 is £279; both the Raumfeld Connector and the Sonos ZonePlayer 90 are also £279. Raumfeld’s speakers – which integrated wireless and amps – are £349 for the Speaker S and £699 for the Speaker M. The obvious Sonos comparison is the ZonePlayer S5, which is £349 but combines both channels into a single unit; you can pair two wirelessly, but obviously that costs £698. Alternatively, you can pick up an amplified ZonePlayer 120 for £399 and add your own speakers.

There’s no real Sonos equivalent to the Raumfeld Base (£299); the £79 ZoneBridge links a regular network to the Sonos mesh network, but lacks the integrated storage. Both systems can pull music from networked computers and NAS. The 3Raumfeld system – which includes one each of the Controller, Connector and Base, and two sets of Speaker S – is £1,381 (saving £244 from if you bought them separately); a 2Raumfeld system, with just one set of speakers, is £1,149.

Making comparisons on price is tricky, given the two systems aren’t like-for-like comparable. You could also argue that there are far cheaper ways to enable streaming audio; the Orb MP-1, for instance, is a $69 WiFi b/g/n audio dongle that works with the company’s free software and does, at its core, what the Raumfeld Connector and Sonos ZonePlayer 90 do. It’s likely to require more technical knowledge, however, and the straightforward setup Raumfeld offers is a real boon.

In the end, Raumfeld’s system shows real promise. Although it’s just as easy as Sonos to set up, there’s a sense that it’s also got more geek flexibility: the USB ports on the Base, for instance, and the UPnP support. Whether Raumfeld develop that potential is what remains to be seen – they need, after all, to differentiate themselves from Sonos, and they’re obviously not choosing the “easy” route and doing it on price alone. An obvious path would’ve been throwing in video and photo streaming, though whether WiFi-g could handle Full HD content is a good question. What we can’t knock is the simplicity and audio quality of the current Raumfeld system, particularly the Speaker M’s, and when fed with high-quality files it adds up to multi-room audio that shines. Sonos may be the knee-jerk option in distributed music, but Raumfeld definitely deserves consideration.

The Sling family resemblance is obvious, and in fact you’d be hard pressed – from the outside at least – to tell the difference between this new PRO-HD and the two year old original.  A squat trapezoid measuring 13.25 x 5.75 x 2.25 inches and finished in high-quality matte black and silver plastic, it has minimal hardware controls (a reset button is the only physical control) and just three LED indicators: red network and power lights in the bottom right hand corner on the fascia, and a larger inverted-U that pulses and cycles during streaming.

It’s on the back that the action happens, with the whole rear panel covered in connections.  The number of ports is actually deceptive, since most are actually pairs: one set of inputs and then another set of matching outputs so that you can slot the PRO-HD in-between the source and the local TV.  From left to right there’s the reset button, power input and ethernet, an unused USB host port, then the SD inputs (L/R audio, video and S-Video), the HD inputs (L/R audio, S/PDIF and component video), the IR blaster port and then coaxial input/outputs.  Notably missing is HDMI and any sort of integrated wireless; both would have been helpful additions, given that they’re increasingly common A/V and networking standards.

Setup is reasonably straightforward.  Sling supply a set of cables for each type of connection, so that you can connect up the Slingbox and then route it back to your TV, though of course you may not use all of them.  There are also four IR blasters, L-shaped self-adhesive plastic sticks which can be used to control sources like satellite TV boxes via the virtual remote control in the SlingPlayer software.

To start, we hooked up a regular TV antenna and went to the online setup page.  After registering an account (and installing a plugin which required restarting the browser) we encountered the first problem.  On our test Mac, Sling only supports Safari in 32-bit mode (rather than the default 64-bit); you can force the browser to load in 32-bit mode, but you may then have some issues with performance or other plugins.  Chrome – on either PC or Mac – is not yet supported, which leaves Firefox (on both platforms) or Internet Explorer.

After that hiccup, we told the Sling setup wizard that it was connected via the coaxial port (it was unable to locate the input automatically) and it tuned in the available Freeview stations.  From that point we had a simple video window – which could be resized or made full-screen – and an optional on-screen remote control panel.  The latter was a decidedly simple affair, just numeric keys, a last-channel button and channel up/down controls, plus a numerical display to show channel number.

That led us to the biggest issue with the new PRO-HD: the lack of a Freeview programming guide.  On a regular Freeview box you can call up a multi-day EPG of what’s showing now and what’s on next; that’s missing from the new Slingbox.  With 87 channels tuned in (some of which are radio stations, others which require subscriptions that aren’t compatible with the PRO-HD), it proved frustrating not knowing what was showing on each, indeed not knowing – beyond the number – which channel we were currently watching.

It’s obviously not an issue when you plug in external sources, since any guide they output is sent over the Sling link.  We hooked up a basic Freeview tuner (with EPG) and had no problems viewing the content and navigating the menus and guide using the on-screen remote.  Similarly, a DVD player worked with no issues.  The Slingbox PRO-HD supports up to three devices (one SD, one HD and one via the coax input) connected simultaneously, and either 720p or 1080i HD; if your DVR or Blu-ray player outputs 1080p you’ll need to manually limit it to 720p/1080i if you want the Slingbox to work with it.

As always, the limiting factor to quality is the strength of your internet connection.  With a 1Mb uplink we were able to get smooth playback on an Android phone running the SlingPlayer app over a 3G connection (no surprise, given the small screen).  The SlingPlayer client will automatically adjust bitrate according to network capacity.

Sling has also launched Slingbox.com with an in-browser viewer, avoiding the need to install a PC or Mac app to view the streamed content.  This, they reckon, makes it easier to access your SlingPlayer on a friend’s computer or a public machine; however, on each browser we tried, we needed to install a plugin before we could watch the stream, so its flexibility will depend on how locked down the computer actually is.  No plugin, no Sling.  It’s also worth noting that Slingbox.com won’t stream to an iOS browser, so you’ll still have to buy the company’s iPhone/iPod touch app (or the upcoming iPad version) if you want to use an Apple mobile device.

Those points aside, we’re still fans of the Slingbox PRO-HD.  The company says they’ve been surprised with the number of users who rely on their Slingbox not for travel access but simply for shifting media around the home: roughly 70-percent of buyers, in fact.  For that, it works exceptionally well, and the addition of the Freeview tuner means one person can be watching the satellite or cable tuner in the living room while someone else accesses free-to-air digital TV elsewhere in the house.  Our minor issues with setup could readily be bypassed by using a different browser (or making a tweak to Safari), leaving only the absent EPG as the biggest stumbling block.

You can work around it, certainly – there are plenty of online Freeview guides – but it’s a gap in what otherwise is a very user-friendly device.  Still, at £249.99 it’s hard to think of another device that does exactly what the Slingbox PRO-HD can, and most users will likely be relying on it to shift content from a hard-drive equipped DVR or other source and may never even consider the Freeview tuner.  Just don’t forget to budget an extra £18-20 for each mobile version of the SlingPlayer app if you want it on your smartphone or iPad.

Outwardly it’s not exactly the most eye-catching of devices, a gloss-finish black plastic box roughly the size of a book. Up front is a hinged door hiding the GoFlex drive bay, on the side a single USB 2.0 port, and along the back are power, component and composite outputs (both requiring the included adapter cables), digital S/PDIF, an HDMI 1.3 port, a 10/100 ethernet port and another USB 2.0 port. Seagate also bundle an infrared remote control and an ethernet cable, though there’s no integrated storage.

That’s because the GoFlex TV HD is intended to be used with your existing GoFlex HDDs, or at least that’s what Seagate are hoping. It’s certainly the slickest solution: open the bay, push in the HDD and the SATA connector hooks up and leaves you navigating the drive’s content via the on-screen UI and the remote. If you haven’t bought into Seagate’s interchangeable-connector platform, or you want to augment it with other drives, thumb-drives or even plug in your digital camera, you can use either of the USB 2.0 ports.

If you’ve plugged in a DVD player or cable box you shouldn’t have much trouble with the GoFlex TV HD. Easiest is HDMI – a single cable carrying video and data – but the bundled composite and component adapters are straightforward too. If you’ve a separate A/V receiver then you can hook up the Seagate’s S/PDIF digital audio output; it supports Dolby Digital among other formats. An ethernet connection isn’t necessary, but it does add some useful internet-based functionality – more on which in a moment – and Seagate will also sell you a USB WiFi adapter which takes up one of the ports but does mean you can avoid another trailing cable.

The GoFlex TV HD’s UI is straightforward and not especially glamorous, though it gets the job done. The main menu has options for movies, pictures (up to 20-megapixel shots supported), music, internet and “browse”, the latter of which isn’t a web browser but a more simple file manager view of the drive’s contents. Underneath are shortcuts to internet services, like Flickr, YouTube, Picasa and others, while at the bottom are shortcuts to connected devices like TVs or media streamers hooked up over the network using UPnP. The remote has basic controls – navigation, playback, volume and menu – and feels reasonably responsive, though there’s a little slow-down on drives that are packed full of content.

For basic local media playback it’s a matter of choosing the content type and hitting play – the GoFlex TV HD supports a broad range of video codecs (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (VOB/ISO), MPEG-4 (Xvid), DivX®, DivX HD, Xvid HD, AVI, MOV, MKV, RMVB Real Media, AVC HD, H.264, WMV9, VC-1, M2TS, TS/TP/M2T) at up to 1080p HD resolution, audio codecs (AAC, MP3, Dolby® Digital, DTS, ASF, FLAC, WMA, WMA Pro, LPCM, ADPCM, WAV, OGG) and photo types (JPEG, MJPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIFF) – and the quality is decent, presuming your original file is up to scratch. Viewing content over the network is a little trickier, predominantly because file size and network capacity enter the equation. With nothing else hooked up we managed to stream a 1080p Full HD video via the Seagate’s 10/100 ethernet port, but as soon as we connected anything else to the network we started seeing dropped frames. Lower-bitrate files were more resilient, though we still wish Seagate had opted for a gigabit ethernet port.

As for internet-based content, its usefulness depends on what online services you use. The GoFlex TV HD supports Netflix, YouTube, Paramount, vTuner, Mediafly, Picasa and Flickr, as well as offering video and text RSS feed support and custom finance and weather widgets. You can’t do anything as complex as add Netflix titles to your Instant View queue, or upload a video to YouTube from a connected camcorder (or, indeed, photos to Flickr from a connected camera) but it’s a simple way of watching video and galleries on your biggest screen.

So, gigabit ethernet aside, where else is there room for improvement? Well, with Seagate’s emphasis on port flexibility in the GoFlex range, we’d have liked to have seen an eSATA and/or a FireWire port on the TV HD, or perhaps even USB 3.0. Of course the company’s own modular drives slot right in, but third-party drives are limited to USB 2.0. A USB Host port would be useful, too, to quickly load content onto a GoFlex HDD without having to eject it, plug in a cable and hook it up to a computer separately.

Still, there’s plenty to like about the Seagate GoFlex TV HD, and while it doesn’t necessarily do anything – barring the internal HDD bay – that we’ve not seen in other media players, as a part of the company’s new ecosystem it’s a consumer-friendly way of viewing digital content on a bigger display. If you’re opting for GoFlex for your external storage then, at $129.99, the GoFlex TV HD seems a reasonable addition. If you’re content with your regular drives then we’d suggest shopping around: there’s no shortage of internet-connected HD media players out there right now, offering more ports than just USB 2.0.

In the box, as you can see from our unboxing video below, Q-London provide the headset itself, a rubber light-shield and alternative nose-pad, an in-line control box and the Nokia-type rechargeable battery that powers it, and an IR remote control.  There’s also a cluster of adapter cables, supporting standard composite input and the type of 3.5mm A/V you see on some cellphones and gaming devices.  Finally, a USB charging cable and printed user guide round out the well-packaged set; if you want iPod/iPhone compatibility you’ll need your own adapter.

Compared to the Vuzix system we reviewed several months back, we prefer the rechargeable battery used by Q-London.  The company themselves don’t quote specific usage times, but we found a full charge was good for a film or two, depending on brightness settings.  The remote control is an interesting idea – allowing tweaking of 2D/3D viewing, PAL/NTSC/SECAM video formats, contrast/brightness and other settings – but given there’s no tactile difference between the buttons you’ll still have to peer outside the Eyewear’s viewfinder to make sure you’re hitting the right key. 

In terms of comfort, the headset is relatively lightweight at 59g, though the bendy rubber arms grip the sides of your head more tightly than we liked.  Being able to quickly unplug the standard headphones and use your own (plugging straight into the in-line control box) is a neat touch, and something we’d recommend you do as the supplied earphones are nothing special.  The rubber light-shield fits easily into place and does a decent job of cutting out extra light, though it does make looking outside the Eyewear to see the remote a little trickier.  Despite Q-London’s suggestion that the setup has a “trendy design”, you’ll still stand out when wearing it and it’s not necessarily a “good look”.

Aesthetics aside, our biggest complaint about the 3D 80-inch Eyewear is the absence of eye focus adjustment.  The Vuzix set had two small wheels that could be used to individually adjust the focus of each eye-display; with the Q-London system you’re stuck using the standard settings.  This is particularly frustrating if you wear glasses, since with the Vuzix you could fudge a passable setup to avoid wearing your spectacles.  No such luck with Q-London, and the combined weight and bulk of spectacles, light-shield and Eyewear make it an uncomfortable prospect for anything but the shortest viewing session, or headache-inspiring if you attempt a film without your specs.

That’s a real shame, as the 640 x 480 920k-pixel LCD displays Q-London have used easily beat the Vuzix OLED panels for resolution and picture quality.  We’re always dubious of “like an 80-inch set from 2m away” claims, but the Q-London Eyewear is certainly pleasant to watch and offers enough detail to make subtitles and on-screen text crisp.  Unfortunately no VGA adapter cable was supplied, but we expect the Q-London system could make for an interesting head-up display from a netbook or notebook.  With the right source you can also use the Eyewear as a 3D headset, something we were unable to try.

Other minor niggles include a bizarre choice of female A/V plugs on the composite adapter, which are unlikely to fit the outputs of most DVD players or other sources without an intermediary cable, and Q-London’s decision not to include a mains charger in the box.  If you’re out and about with just your portable DVD player, cellphone or iPod, you’re unlikely to have a spare USB port to recharge the Eyewear with.

That said, for those with decent eyesight and wanting reasonable resolution, we’d recommend the Q-London 3D 80-inch Video Eyewear over the Vuzix iWear AV230XL.  The extra pixels on offer do make a difference to viewing enjoyment, especially when it comes to text, though you pay more for the privilege.  In the UK the Q-London set are priced at £199.99 ($310 for US buyers), compared to around £130/$200 for the Vuzix system.  For the money, we can’t help thinking that an AC adapter and iPod/iPhone cables really should be included.

Q-London 3D 80″ Video Eyewear unboxing:

Right out the box, the lightweight pico-projector doesn’t look like much – a clean, piano-finish hard plastic that tips the scales at a mere 6 ounces, with optics offset to the side and protected with a handy rubber cover. There’s also a focus knob for the lens, ventilation along the side panels and an exhaust fan next to the lens. Unfortunately there’s no tripod thread on the back or base of the projector, unlike the BeamBox.

Physically, though, if it wasn’t for the chassis and finish, one can hardly tell the AAXA P1 and BeamBox Evolution R1 apart. Both are close in size, weight and feature-sets. Like the Beambox, the AAXA is a natively 4:3 VGA pixel-resolution pico projector, built upon a LCoS-based microdisplay with a single white LED light source — courtesy of CREE LED technology — that can last up to 30,000 hours over the course of its working life.

An integrated PMP chipset allows for media playback of various video, music and picture formats, with 1GB of onboard storage. There’s also a built-in speaker, small but enough to deliver adequate sound output or music in a quiet and small-sized room. If 1GB isn’t enough for you, there’s a microSD card slot for extended storage, and it has the usual I/O connectivity from Mini USB (to access the internal memory), a 3.5mm composite A/V jack, 3.5mm stereo headphone jack and an AC power connector; AAXA included an optional accessories adaptor, for hooking up your iPhone/iPod iTouch/PSP, and they also offer a VGA convertor for linking your computer to the projector.

The main differences between the two projectors are the contrast and lumen outputs. The AAXA boosts a whooping 1,000:1 contrast ratio, at the expense of lower luminous intensity – it’s only rated at 12-lumen, as opposed to 30 from the Beambox. However the latter only offers a 200:1 contrast ratio.

Power is courtesy of a 1,900mah, 3.7v rechargeable battery, meaning you can use the P1 with or without the AC adaptor. The battery/charger indicator could be more informative though, unfortunately: it lights green whenever the AC adaptor is connected and turns red when the unit runs off the battery, and that’s all there is to it. There’s no easy way to check charge status. According to AAXA, a full charge should take about one hour depending on how drained the battery is. From our own experience, a single charge was enough for around 110 minutes of mp4 video looped on continuous playback and with onboard sound playing, surpassing the manufacture’s claim of 45-60 minutes by around twice as much! But wait, there’s more: it will run even longer if the sound is off.

Operation and GUI are no different than the Beambox – pressing and holding the play/pause button turns on the GUI, offering a simple interface with a choice of Music, Video, Photo, eBook, Explorer and Settings which allow the user to browse multimedia files, each of which are arranged vertically in a folder and split across onboard or microSD storage. Audio can be played in the background while you navigate though the menus. As for music, the app displays song details along with a real-time 14-band equalizer. Pictures, meanwhile, provides basic JPEG, BMP and GIF format support, with slideshow and zoom features, while Video supports basic controls such as fast-forward, rewind and pause.

In our tests, the P1 projected a standard size 60-inch (48” x 36”) diagonal picture from a distance of approximately 78-inches. Unlike a conventional projector, the mechanical lens of the pico-projector doesn’t incorporate a zoom, so the throw ratio is fixed at approximately 0.77x.

A common business-class projector provides somewhere around 1500-2000 lumens, boasting enough light to view a presentation in strong ambient lighting conditions. A home theater unit, on the other hand, requires only 300-500 lumens in a dim and light-controlled media room (after the D65 standard calibration). A perfect picture output is a balance of optimized contrast and brightness with accurate color reproduction. So how does a 1000:1 contrast ratio and 12-lumen pico-projector fit into the equation?

After viewing a few video clips and images on a Draper M2500 2.1 gain angular reflective screen, we shifted to a neutral matte white screen surface to ensure the overly contrasty images weren’t the result of the high-contrast off-white Draper material. Video color temperature looks cool, definitely above D65 standard. We didn’t put our light calibration tool into good use here, since the unit doesn’t provide custom settings for the picture, nor has it picture presets for alternate viewing materials.

The video is dim but tolerable in a dark room, enough to keep kids in their seats, but it wouldn’t endure any light present. Photo display is slightly out of whack, with too much contrast for my preference. Audio levels are muted for normal movie playback, even turned up to their at maximum level, but sound from the headphone output leveled out just right. Movie clips might need to be recorded or re-processed with higher sound levels to get the best out of the tiny mono 0.5-watt speaker. Unsurprisingly, then, it’s not much use for business presentations; furthermore, with 25db of high-pitched fan noise, we don’t really see how this device could be useful for playing music.

Using the supplied 3.5mm cable, we were able to get our iPhone hooked up to the P1. Once connected, the plug-n-play setup shut off all activity on the iPhone’s display, and displayed content directly to the external projector, without having to go though any troublesome setup or menus. In video playback, we noticed panning jerk was present in mp4 material, but we’re told the AAXA engineers are working on a solution to address some of these playback issues. An option in the P1′s settings menu allows you to update the firmware, which has to first be loaded into the pico-projector’s internal storage.

If jerkiness wasn’t frustrating enough, there’s also evidence of discoloration at the edged of the picture. LCD projector users will likely be familiar with the polarizer elements that tend to wear out with age and excessive heat exposure — a tint color overlays the edge of projected image. The P1 image looked a little like that; however the LCoS-based technology is more resistant to those shades of discoloration. The image edge distortion, according to the manufacturer, is “normal for the current generation of LCoS-based pico projectors due to the output lens being shrunken to the smallest possible size. The LCoS panel is slightly oversized for the optics and results in slight distortions at the extreme edges/corners.”

It’s an exciting technology but not practical. It lacks the essential – adequate lumen output — to fulfill either mobile professionals’ business applications or living room entertainment. It’s quite a disappointment and that’s how I feel about pico-projectors in general, not particularly toward the AAXA. I can’t get past the feeling that the technology is not ready for prime time — I doubt I would sit still for a minute looking at a muted picture, trade in my iPod for an MP3 player with a high-RPM fan and, most certainly, decline to showcase my media portfolio on any display with imprecise color settings. On a cheerful note, the battery power is inspiring, but there’s a lot of work to go before pico-projectors generally live up to their promise.

The AAXA P1 pico projector is available now to order online for the discounted price of $239. (As of 4/28/2009)

AAXA P1 Pico Projector Spec.

1. VGA (640×480), 4:3 Aspect Ratio
2. 12 ANSI-Lumens
3. 1000:1 Contrast Ratio
4. 25dB Noise level
5. 7 ~ 50 inch project-image
6. Single Chip White LED Lamp with 30,000hrs Lifespan
7. 50° Projection Angle
8. Onboard 0.5w speaker
9. Stereo speaker/headphone mini-jack
10. 105 x 58 x 26mm Dimension
11. 180g in Weight
12. Power Consumption 0.9-1.5 watts
13. Power Supply: DC 1900 mAh battery
14. AC100~240V(Free Voltage), 50Hz/60Hz
15. Supported Formats: MP4/MP3/WMA/OGG/WAV/AVI/WMV/SMV/ BMP/JPG/GIF/TXT
16. Video In: Composite A/V (3.5mm Jack)
17. Audio Out: 3.5mm Stereo Headphone Jack
18. USB: 5 Pin Mini USB

The theory behind the Vuzix headsets is simple.  Rather than sitting several feet from a large screen, why not put far smaller screens up close to your eyes.  Since one screen couldn’t get close enough to your face without making you cross-eyed, they give each eye its own panel: in the case of the AV230XL, it’s the first in Vuzix’s range to use OLED panels.  These measure roughly a centimeter square, and since they’re showing the same image the brain recognises the two pictures as one.

As a glasses-wearer, I had a second motive for trying out the iWear system: how flexible were its individual eye adjustments, or would I be forced to try to wear both my glasses and the headset?

In the box, you get the Vuzix headset itself, with two attached earbuds and a tethered remote unit, a drawstring bag to carry them in, a set of foam earbud covers, a replacement nose-grip, a neck strap and a range of A/V adapters.  These adapters are what let you use the AV230XL with a variety of media sources: Vuzix sent us a general 3.5mm AV cable suitable for smartphones with A/V output, an adapter for use with a video-capable iPod, and an RCA adapter.

The remote unit is a little longer and broader than the single AA battery that powers the headset, with four buttons – power, plus, minus, exit – and an LED.  On one end there’s a 3.5mm socket into which the different A/V adapters plug in.  Vuzix claim you’ll get up to 7hrs runtime from a standard alkaline AA battery, or switch to a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery for up to 17hrs playback.  That’s in no small part thanks to the power-sipping nature of OLED displays; similar LCD-based headsets from the company manage just 70-percent of the runtime.

Setup is straightforward.  Choose from the two nose-bridges – one perches, the other grips – plug in a source and turn on.  To my surprise, the AV230XL fits quite comfortably even if you’re already wearing glasses, unless you have a tendency to perch your specs on the very tip of your nose.  Without glasses it’s even easier to find a comfortable position, thanks to the dual-hinged arms which both open, as normal, and pivot slightly up and down.  Basic brightness and contrast tweaks are made from the remote.

A rotary dial underneath each lens adjusts the focus, with a diopter range of +2 to -5.  My eyes are perhaps the ideal test subject for the AV230XL: one is very short-sighted, the other has an astigmatism.  In practice, I found I could get a very clear picture for the short-sighted eye, and a slightly less distorted one for the astigmatic eye; that’s no surprise, given the lack of barrel lens adjustment.  Still, picture quality without my glasses was good, and while long-term use left my eyes strained, it was certainly watchable for a 30 minute TV show. 

This is partly down to the relatively low resolution of the OLED displays themselves.  Each is a mere 320 x 240 panel, which means that all but the most basic of video ends up at least slightly fuzzy.  If you expected the virtual 44-inch TV you’d be watching from nine feet away to be 1080p, you’ll be sorely disappointed.  Similarly, if you’re hoping to use the AV230XL as a heads-up display with your laptop, think again; the only text we’d suffer with the iWear is subtitles.

For the sort of videos you might be usually watching on your iPod or cellphone, though, it’s unlikely to be a problem.  Audio quality from the included earbuds is nothing special – think cheap inclusion with a PMP rather than anything approaching audiophile – but they can at least be detached and your own headphones used instead.

We had mixed reactions to the Vuzix viewing experience: some liked the open space above and below the headset, which allows you to see what’s going on around your head, while others found it distracting and would prefer total enclosure.  The company does sell a rubber attachment that reduces peripheral vision, but we’ve a feeling that will only make the AV230XL all the more noticeable.

To be honest, it’s the fact that they are so noticeable that gives us the most pause for thought with the iWear headset.  Over the course of a 90 minute film you might forget you’re wearing it, but those around you certainly won’t: expect plenty of Geordi La Forge jokes.  Vuzix haven’t really done themselves any favors with the shiny, chunky plastic casing, either.

Still, get past the geeky look and give up on the idea of high-quality visuals, and the iWear AV230XL shows some promise.  It’s undoubtedly better than watching video on a small PMP or cellphone display, and the flexibility even for glasses-wearers counts as a surprise bonus.  At $199.95 (or £129.99 in the UK) it’s at the cheaper end of Vuzix’s range – more money gets you better resolution and a widescreen picture – but those regularly making long train or bus journeys will find plenty to entertain them.  We just hope that Vuzix tone down the in-your-face styling for the next generation.

Compared to my NEC MultiSync 2690 LCD, the Sony VGC-RT150Y with a similar screen size has a much larger shipping package and it weighs a ton! That is to be expected for an all-in-one oversized PC. My first impressions after removing it from its packaging and setting it up on my test bench were pure amazement. I know it’s huge but looks bigger in person, heavy and not easy to move around for display that’s weighs about 41lb. Despite its massive footprint and chunky dimension, it sits sturdy and solid on a small footprint base. Like most big displays, this one ships with the base attached.

The gun-metal finish VAIO offers an ergonomic stand that can be swiveled about 80 degrees, 40 to each side. Tilting is only allowed at small degrees (we’d estimate no more than 5 degrees) in either backward or forward directions, and the monitor can be raised by up to 2.36-inches. Adjustment and panning of the screen are very smooth and the movements are frictionless. The VAIO RT is easily one of the best big displays when it comes to ergonomics and appearance.

If desired, the unit can be wall mounted with the base removed. I should point out the awkward location of the TV tuners, directly behind the stand. One would need to use an angled RG6 coaxial cable, otherwise the presence of coaxial connection would prevent the monitor from tilting downward. Also, it’s fairly frustrating to hook up a stiff, screw-type RG6 coaxial cable in such a tight space.

Boiled down, the RT is like a supersized laptop with depth twice that of a regular LCD monitor. Ventilation slots are located on bottom but concentrated mainly on top where the video card breathes.

The rear panel supplies the TV tuner connections for analog and digital ATSC signals and has number of cable holders designed to tie and route the power cable on the back of the unit. User-accessible replacement parts are limited to the hard drive and memory from the back panel. Removing the back panel revealed a ported-design subwoofer sitting above the tuners.

The extra-thick side panels do not go unused; a green light built into the power button rests on side of the panel, followed by a display off/on switch and HDD activity light. On top of a Blu-ray/CD/DVD burner there’s abundant multimedia connectivity arranged conveniently on the sides: five USB ports, an ExpressCard/34 slot, network port, mini Firewire jack, eSATA port, WiFi on/off switch, auxiliary audio, headphone and mic inputs and last but not least, a multimedia card reader compatible with CF, SD and Sony’s own Memory Stick format.

VGC-RT150Y as PC

Beneath the cover there’s an Intel P43 Express chipset, 2.66-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 processor, a pair of half-terrabyte hard-drives in a RAID 0 configured array, 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics card and 8GB of 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; OS is the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate. The 25.5-inch WUXGA screen is matte finished, great for combating glares, reflections and fingerprints, but lacks depth and paunchiness for viewing images or movies.

Like most VAIOs, the RT is Bluetooth enabled with A2DP technology protocol to enable stereo music playback wirelessly via a compatible headset or speakers. The WiFi on/off switch on the side panel triggers an integrated Intel WiFi Link 5100AGN compatible with 802.11a/b/g/n networks.

With a flip of the switch, WiFi setup worked right out the box for the set of wireless keyboard and mouse. The low profile keyboard offers a full-size standard key layout and touchpad along with media controls and battery indicator in a sleek, low-profile design. The key movement has good feel, thus typing is smooth and pleasing. The included mouse is ergonomic and elegantly designed to be comfortable and productive. Despite its relatively diminutive size, it is a full-fledged five-button wheel mouse.

Fired up, the VAIO from a cold boot sounds like a jet engine just spooled up. The initial boot was loud but slowly calmed down after start-up, the whole process took about 2 minutes and 40 seconds before a complete boot to “my desktop”. Fear not, the VAIO allows a very robust sleep mode with a single click on the power button. The resume and temporary shut off are one of the most responsive in any system I’ve ever tested. You’ll quickly learn to love it; it’s like the RT is an HDTV, not a PC. There is also a display on/off button beneath the power button; as the name suggests it toggles the display on and off for both the PC and video sources from HDMI or S-Video.

Like most built-to-order systems, the VAIO comes preinstalled with a few usual suspects. Thankfully, though, Sony kept the bloatware at a minimum. There are more useful apps such as Sony’s In-house multimedia burner and player, together with full versions of entry level video and image editors like Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 and Premiere Elements 4.0. These two should let you take advantage of the RT150Y’s quad-core processing power and huge chunk of 8GB memory. We kept those untouched but proceed to remove the AOL junk and Windows Live Onecare before getting on with the multimedia and benchmarking.

Last, but not least, a Matshita (Panasonic) UJ230AS Multi-burner takes care of reading and writing CD, DVD and Blu-Ray content. The Bundled Blu-ray software player, InterVideo WinDVD leverages the power of NVIDIA PureVideo HD hardware acceleration capabilities to deliver highly efficient hardware decoding for playback of HD content, thus freeing up the CPU to perform other tasks.

The Sony XBRITE’s full-HD and Blu-ray version of the John Woo masterpiece The Battle of Red Cliff is a deadly combination, with jaw-dropping image presentation. To throw in some irony, my obsolete HD-DVD – although covered in dust – looked just as good on the Sony XBRITE; seriously, though, Ann is irresistible in any format. Sadly there’s no glass or gloss front panel, as that would put it over the top for HD image viewing.

Moving on to the TV recording functionality, as mentioned the RT comes equipped with two tuners, one for analog and the other for digital ATSC (HDTV)/NTSC TV. Setting up live and recording TV shows requires Windows Media Center to stream and store captured media file directly onto the VAIO, but you’ll need a ATSC antenna to get the party started. After setting up a RadioShack amplified antenna and allowing Vista MCE to scan though available QAM channels, we were able to pickup local OTA as well as unencrypted cable channels in HD. Recording and live TV works as advertised though the included MCE remote could be a little more responsive.

Benchmarking

As expected, the laptop-grade GPU doesn’t exactly excel in the OpenGL subsystem 3D and graphic intensive SPECViewPerf benchmarks, despite having 512MB of memory, but it still scores a healthy 21.25 FPS on PCmark Gaming 1-GPU Gaming with Overall Gaming accumulated to 4587.

The RT150Y also makes a good run on video transcoding and playback, with the PCmark Vantage score from TV and Movies Suite at 3057 nearly twice as much compared to a quad core Q9650 system we reviewed last week. MPEG-2 Blu-Ray playback also achieves 23.48 FPS. The system, however, botched on HDD suite, posting a rather disappointing score for a RAID-0 array. Two questionable tests were HDD5 at 8.44 MB/s (video editing using Windows Movie) and HDD6 at 16.59mb/s (Windows Media Center ). Those two were the responsible parties for the low overall number. We also ran HD tune to ensure the 7200.11 series Seagate (ST3500320AS) hard drive array worked as advertised. Same result, the burst rate of 77.8 MB/s is clearly not up of the speed for a stripped array, high density dual-platter drives with 32MB of cache.

All the PC guts do not make up for a $4,000 price tag, is the RT a serious contender as a standalone HDTV display? To find out the answer, we put the Sony’s XBRITE fullHD screen on workbench for more in depth calibrations.

Speakers and Design

The first thing I noticed when unpacking the Micropod SE Active’ was the size of the speaker. They are small and not as weighty as I expected them to be. Housings are constructed from solid ABS material with exceptional high gloss finishes. The sealed cabinet features a 2 way design with a 3/4-inch dome tweeter sitting on a pod beneath a 3.2-inch Kevlar midrange/bass driver with no cheesy foam surrounds on woofers.

Being an active-speaker, the right speaker includes an integrated 10 watt amplifier. The back of the speaker sports an auxiliary-input audio jack, subwoofer output with a volume/power knob and terminals for the audio cable to the left speaker. There’s a pair of five-way speaker terminal mounts on the right speaker with an unusual push spring locking type on the other. Unlike most speakers, the unit stands on three detachable aluminum spiked feet. The feet are easy to remove and secure with little effort. Overall design is very well thought with excellent build quality for $299.

Setup and Sound Quality

Setup was a breeze, I paired up the Micropod with Oppo DV-980H using an Integer preamp via a set of overpriced Cardas mini Plugs to dual RCA. My first instinct was checking for speaker hum or hiss and I’m happy to report that there were neither during the test. After securing the direct DSD bitstream using my preamp, I fired up the Micropod with a Mobile Fidelity Re-mastered SACD, Nightclub from Patricia Barber and The Look of Love from Diana Krall. Next up was Pilhofer Jazz Quartet’s Full Circle to test the speakers’ response to instrumental material.

Don’t let the palm-sized lifestyle speakers fool you, they sang and sound loud! I was able to turn the volume up with plenty of room left for listening in a room sized 15.5 x 10 feet, with no sign of fatigue or distortion. Make no mistake; it’s more than adequate for desktop or work desk application. The pair did a good job of sounding natural on vocals and instruments. Stereo imaging and mid range clarity were impressive for the size; with a good sound stage, tight upper bass and mid range at the expense of extended bass response. Matching these satellite type Micropods with podspeaker’s Minibass, you’ll have yourself a uniquely stylish audio system with brilliant sound quality.

Summary

Some may blanch at the $299/each price tag, but for a distinctively designed speaker system with superb construction that looks and sounds this good, it’s money well spent. The only complaint I have is the low quality speaker cables that comes with the unit. The Scandyna Micropod SE Active is available in six colors – white, black, silver, blue, yellow, and red.

[rating:4.0/5]

Mitsubishi have obviously saved the inches for the LCD panel itself, and there’s a full catalog of buzzwords to go along with it. SimplayHD, X.v.Color, Deep Color, Plush1080p, PerfectColor, Full Spectrum Color and Tru1080p Processing all get a mention, but the one they seem most proud of is Smooth120Hz Film Motion. More on that later, but it basically promises to remove jitter from fast camera moves and speedily scrolling text.

Inputs are almost as comprehensive as you might expect from a high-end HDTV, including four HDMI 1.3, two S-Video, one composite video/audio, three component video, three stereo audio and a single USB port. There’s also a set of composite video/audio outputs and a coaxial digital audio output. Since the LT-46148 has two built-in NTSC/ATSC/Clear QAM tuners, you can hook up your cable TV connection directly to either of the RF antenna inputs and it will happily tune to any unscrambled channels.

When we say “almost as comprehensive”, the two obvious omissions are VGA and ethernet. Both are surprising absences, the former as it’s generally a mainstay of flat-panel displays given that many users choose to hook up their PC, and the latter because the HDTV company the LT-46148 keeps generally has the ability to get online. Functionality varies – from basic news and weather headlines to streaming content – but with the Mitsubishi the only digital media provision is viewing JPEG photos from an attached USB memory key. The menu system is basic and there are few slideshow settings.

Of course, if your computer has an HDMI port (or you have a DVI port and use an HDMI/DVI adapter cable) you can connect it to one of the LT-46148′s four HDMI inputs. Maximum supported PC resolution is 1920 x 1080.

What the Mitsubishi has that many don’t, however, is the NetCommand Home Network Control System. That’s a convoluted way of saying infrared remote control, but it doesn’t mean the system is any less useful. Plug the IR cable into the appropriate port and, with the emitters sitting in front of any connected DVD, PVR or Blu-ray box, the supplied learning remote will control them all. That way, all that needs to be on show is the HDTV itself; everything else can be hidden away in a cabinet. Factor in some time to teach the backlit remote control all of the appropriate commands; unlike, say, some of the more recent universal remotes there’s no quick way to bypass teaching individual button presses.

Connected up, there’s a wide degree of tweaking possible to get the LT-46148′s picture exactly as you want it. From the ‘Video’ menu there are contrast, brightness, color, tint, sharpness, color temperature (‘High’ or ‘Low’) and backlight settings, together with factory presets (Brilliant, Game, Bright and Natural). PerfectColor, which you might remember from the swathe of buzzwords earlier, offers six sliders for individual color adjustments (magenta, red, yellow, green, cyan and blue).

One thing you won’t find in the Mitsubishi is anything like Samsung’s SmartLighting (found on its recent high-end HDTVs) which can selectively shut off or boost areas of backlighting independently. That allows pixels to show deeper blacks or, alternatively, brighter areas, effectively boosting the contrast range. Blacks on the LT-46148, like with many LCDs, are more dark grey, although there’s happily only a little of the greenish tint that sometimes affects low-light pictures.

Mitsubishi’s much-vaunted Smooth120Hz Film Motion system promises to iron out the jutter you might get watching footage at 60Hz, and in practice it’s something of a mixed bag. Preloaded onto the HDTV is a split-screen demo, comparing scrolling text at 120Hz and 60Hz, and watching that example could make anyone a believer: the slower pane is painfully jumpy, the faster pane effortlessly smooth.

In real-world use, while fast camera pans can be glossed over (we found text seldom scrolls fast enough to cause a problem in the first place, even on the most chaotic of news channels) the flip-side is that Smooth120Hz can introduce artifacts of its own. They’re relatively rare, but enough for us to leave the setting switched off unless media particularly demanded it (and it seldom did). Frankly the Mitsubishi was sufficiently blur free without it.

In action, then, the LT-46148 performs strikingly well, the combination of panel size and a broad, rich and accurate palatte of colors adding up to very watchable high-definition video. A copy of Shrek was almost too vivid until we tweaked the brightness and saturation down, while the Mitsubishi made a good attempt with the gloom of Batman Begins.

Standard definition is, of course, less satisfying. Several of the Mitsubishi buzzwords describe the LT-46148′s attempt to upscale non-HD footage to as high a resolution as possible, and while they do a fairly reasonable job you’re never going to mistake it for 1080p (or even 720p).

Similarly anaemic are the speakers, a simple stereo pair with a total 20W output. Mitsubishi obviously expect buyers to slot the LT-46148 into at least a 2.1 channel amplified setup (better still, full surround sound) and, after spending this amount of money on a 46-inch screen, you’d be crazy not to. Anything primarily talk-based – the news, then, or spoken-word documentary – is passable, but we were far happier with standalone speakers added.

Budget for that, though, and most are unlikely to be disappointed with the performance on offer from the LT-46148. It’s a capable and visually pleasing HDTV, with rich (and highly tweakable) colors together with a discrete, non-distracting design. If you primarily watch dark and gloomy films then you might do better waiting for a set with LED backlighting that, as with the Samsung SmartLighting, promises deeper blacks. Anybody else, looking for a decent HDTV without too many fripperies, should have the Mitsubishi LT-46148 on their shortlist.

When you first get these out of the box you notice one thing, they are heavy. I’ve always been told that you can tell how good your equipment is by how much it weighs. Naturally, I was eager to get them hooked up. My first thought was to just hook them up to my PC. I admit that with their size, they didn’t exactly look the best sitting on my desk. However, once I turned on some music, I was perfectly content to have them there.

I’ve said before that I’m no audiophile, however, the moment I pulled up some music, I could immediately notice a huge difference between my old Logitech setup. Every note that came out was crystal clear. The speakers have a nice bass boost button on the back that really give it an extra punch. Gaming with these was intense, everything just sounded more realistic coming through these. Granted, my $50 set of 2.1 Logitech speakers never had a chance against these. It wasn’t until some friends dropped by that I found the perfect place for these.

A couple of friends stopped by with their (plastic) guitars in tow ready to rock out. I showed them the new speakers which they loved, and we got the idea to take them downstairs and hook them up to my TV. I’ve played Guitar Hero on a lot of different setups, however, I’ve never enjoyed it so much as when I play it through these speakers. They are considered studio monitors, so they were built with music in mind. The guitar parts sounded so crisp that it felt like I was playing the real thing. I’m not sure I could go back to playing without them.

Overall, I couldn’t be more impressed with a pair of speakers. The only downfall is their size, which they more than make up for in quality. I’m going to give these 4.5 out of 5 gears.

[rating: 4.5/5]

My experience with it was great and I have to say it in the spirit of the golden arches that I’m lov’n it. I am more the typical mp3 hording, iPod toting individual and not an extreme decked out audiophile, and so I feel unqualified to really judge the sound quality. But to my untrained ears, I found the sound quality to be superb.
The system is incredibly simple and flexible, consisting of three basic components: Sonos Controller (CR100), Sonos ZonePlayer 80 (ZP80), and Sonos ZonePlayer 100 (ZP100).The difference between the ZP80 and ZP100, besides the price, is that the ZP80 must connect to a stereo or some other intermediary amplifying audio device that powers a set of speakers, while the ZP100 can directly power a set of speakers and has a built-in amplifier. These components work like modules that can be added or subtracted to fit your needs.

For reviewing purposes, the folks at Sonos were so kind to provide a ZP80 Bundle that consisted of one controller with charging cradle and two ZP80s. This was enough to setup a basic two-room system. One of the ZP80s must be connected directly to a home network such as a cable or DSL modem via an ethernet connection, while the other ZP80 is free to be placed in some other room. Both ZP80s must then be connected to a stereo or amplifying receiver (not included) via the supplied RCA cable.

The ZonePlayer 80

The ZonePlayer 80s have a sleek and clean design that fits nicely with most décor and coexist well with any home theater or stereo system. They sit quite well atop my old-school-ish black stereo systems, pictures of which you’ll see later. On the front are a mute button, a LED light, and a volume control button, while on the back are two ethernet jacks, optical and coaxial digital outputs, analog input/outputs, and a power supply jack. The overall dimensions measure about 5-inch-wide by 5-inch-deep by 3-inch-high. The package comes with a manual, a system setup software disc, and four cables.

The Controller and Cradle

The controller has a very simple and clean iPod-ish feel. Most notable similarity is the touch-sensitive scroll-wheel and the minimal array of buttons. The charging dock or cradle can be placed on your table top or mounted on a wall. The power adapter plug can be removed from the cradle and plugged directly into the controller if you should wish to do so.

Setup and Installation

Since I don’t have an incredibly large and impressive collection of MP3s I opted for my first test run to do the super quick and easy, PC-free setup. There was no need to turn on my computer or install any software whatsoever. And in exactly 5 minutes, the beautiful melodies of chart topping tracks began flowing through my speakers courtesy of the included 30-day free trial of Rhapsody music service. The setup and music access was so easy that I was tempted to just sit back and enjoy the next 30 days. But, instead I repeated the process to take some pictures to prove to you folks just how easy it was.

Before I went about setting up the ZP80s, I made sure to plug in the controller and cradle for charging up.

Then, I setup one ZP80 in my home office next to my cable modem and wireless router. Any router would do, but I happened to have a wireless one. Having to connect one of the ZPs to the router via an ethernet cable was probably the only annoying limitation for me since I had a wireless router that I usually kept in a storage room. Now I had to pull it out and put it in my office next to my stereo. But nonetheless, I hooked it all up in no time. Power supply in, RCA cable in, and ethernet in. Done.

Next, I setup the second ZP80 in my living room. And this setup is even easier. Power supply in. RCA cable in. Done. No need for the ethernet connection on this one, as this ZP communicates wirelessly with the other ZP already connected to the router.

So, then it was time to tinker a bit with the controller. It was still charging in its cradle but that didn’t matter as it’s usable even while charging. Following the prompts on the screen, I setup the two zones as “Office” and “Living Room.” Since my system was already registered, I got a free 30-day Rhapsody Trial at my fingertips. I pressed the Music button, selected the Rhapsody Music Guide and with a few more scrolls and clicks I was on my way to home audio bliss.