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UK govt looking into national digital grid

Gordon Brown says it's "a very important thing"

Sunday at 11:34 GMT | Reader comments (0)

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Will the UK finally get a national digital grid?

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There's been debate in the UK for 20 years about installing fibre optic cables into all UK homes, taking care of the so-called 'last mile problem' and giving the UK a broadband infrastructure capable of delivering advanced online services like those in South Korea.

And a comment contained in an interview with the Prime Minister Gordon Brown in today's Observer, suggests the UK Government might be finally thinking about it.

In the interview, he says, "When we talk about the roads and the bridges and the railways that were built in previous times - and those were anti-recession measures taken to help people through difficult times - you could [by comparison] talk about the digital infrastructure and that form of communications revolution at a period when we want to stimulate the economy. It's a very important thing."

He also says,"I don't buy the argument that the beneficiaries of the next age of globalisation are only the Asian countries," he says. "These [British goods] are the products that the world will want to buy. I don't see us muddling through a difficult set of economic events. I see us as equipping ourselves to meet the big challenges of the future."

But can the UK afford it? And who will pay for it? The difficult questions start now.

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2008 was a knock-out year for AV - will 2009 be?

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What a year it's been for the world of the home cinema enthusiast. The shady goings-on in the broadcast industry has meant that more often than not, the technology stories to hit the front page have been AV based.

Whether it's Sky falling out with Virgin Media, Freesat snapping up ex-satellite subscribers, or iTunes muscling in on the world of movie downloads, never have so many companies got down and dirty in the fight for viewing figures.

So with this in mind and with the end of 2008 approaching fast, we thought it best to take a look back at a year that started with a format war and ended in another dimension…

January

The year began with a bang with Warner deciding to show its allegiance to one HD format and backing Blu-ray. This meant that Toshiba's HD DVD press conference in CES was a little bit, er, frantic.

While all this was happening, Apple announced its latest version of AppleTV and unveiled its plans for movie domination, with the launch of its iTunes Movie Store.

February

HD DVD officially dies – Blu-ray is championed victor of the rather short-lived format war.

March

7Digital announces that it is to sell its Warner Music back catalogue completely free of DRM.

Panasonic decides to update its Viera line, with the rather impressive TX-LZD800. The plasma screen came in 32 and 37-inch sizes and boasted something called 100Hz Motion Picture Pro 2.

Not to be outdone, Loewe announced its Connect 37 DR+ LCD TV which came with built-in media streaming. Nice.

April

Tesco announces it is to launch a DRM-free music website, but can't quite get all the major music labels on board.

Pioneer and Panasonic shake hands in plasma deal, which sees the two companies share and share alike when it comes to TV technology.

Sony announces that it is to offer TVs with built-in Blu-ray players. So far, they still haven't materialised.

May

Freesat officially launches to much fanfare. Essentially the company is boasting that you can have free satellite, hence the Ronseal-esque name. All you need is a dish – which confuses a lot of consumers.

Sony's PlayTV is announced. Turn your PS3 into a PVR. No, we weren't excited either.

We were excited about super hi-vision, which debuted in Japan. Who said 1080p is the future? It looks positively opaque in comparison to super hi-vision.

Pioneer announces it's to release LCD TVs. Which doesn't sound that exciting, but it's a major step for a company who have always been seen to favour plasma technology.

June

The UK's iTunes Store gets movie downloads. Thanks for that Mr Jobs, it only took you, er, five months to sort out.

It was also a packed month for new TV tech. Philips announced its new range of 7603D Ambilight TVs. The range is so beautiful, that you'll spend more time looking at the frame than what's showing on the screen.

Mitsubishi also wowed the AV world with the launch of its first 3D TV.

July

Pioneer creates 400GB Blu-ray disc. This news is so important, so ground-breaking that it gets its own special slot in July.

Okay, we admit it, July was a stupidly slow month for AV news. It's bigger Blu-ray discs and that's your lot.

August

Moving swiftly to August, Sony launched its Bravia Z4500, EX1 and ZX1 tellies, but it was Toshiba who grabbed the biggest headline with the world's first upscaling HD TV. Well, it's not the world's first as all HD sets upscale, but the TV does boast about upscaling SD footage to near-HD quality. Nice.

September

September was the month of IFA 2008, this was where Samsung debuted something called UltraHD. The question remains, though, can our humble eyes take such clarity?

After being announced way back in May, PlayTV finally launched, which allows you to turn your PS3 into a… ah, we're bored just typing it.

September also saw the Freeview HD trials finish, with BBC successfully pushing HD content over DVB-T2. The results of which we should see in 2009.

In music download news 7Digital went completely DRM-free and RealDVD announces legal DVD ripping – only for it to be ripped away from them again.

October

Nintendo Wii got full-screen iPlayer access in October. This was a tad better than what Sky subscribers got – their iPlayer access turned out to be a rubbish hyperlink. Not that there's anything wrong with hyperlinking, as this marvellous article proves!

Panasonic sold its 300 millionth TV set and Sony announced the Blu-ray friendly Vaio TT-Series.

Not to be outdone Steve Jobs calls Blu-ray "a bag of hurt". This probably means that we won't see a blu-ray drive in a Mac any time soon.

November

Sky choose the wintry month of November to launch/re-launch its Sky Player service, which now includes live streaming. Theoretically it also means Sky for all, as you don't need a dish to watch Sky through the internet. You do have to pay, though – about the same as you would if you had a dish. Go figure.

YouTube also decided to go widescreen. There's not much else we can say about that.

December

Ex-Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq became the face of Blu-ray in December, offering slightly condescending advice to us all.

Denon announced that it is to sell a Blu-ray machine costing over £3,000, at the same time Woolworths went into meltdown (completely unrelated, of course.)

The UK also saw its first Digital IMAX launch, and a select few journalists were allowed to see into the future of AV, and that future is 3D. Sky 3D in fact. Funny that the future of AV is reliant on technology almost 80 years old, but there you go.

And finally, the good ol' workhorse that was the VHS finally died, after a slow and rather fuzzy death.

All that's left to say after that is: roll on 2009…

2008 on the Internet: A Digg special

"Every time you Digg a TechRadar story a bunny dies"

December 24th 2008 | Reader comments (0)

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An ode to a Digg comment

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It's a Christmas special on TechRadar.com's seven days on the internet and as it's the time of year for appreciating ones friends and giving a little back, we decided that we should dedicate this column to the Digg community.

Now, despite the overuse of the word 'zeitgeist' by anyone associated with it, Digg serves to give people a large slice of what's got the internet community buzzing.

So it really cheers us all up in the TechRadar offices when occasionally we find ourselves flying high on the front page, or more usually tucked away in the technology section which, apparently, used to be what Digg was all about before 'certain diggers' spoiled it for everyone by putting entertainment stories in (pffft!).

Some of our favourite Digg hits of 2008

Obama gets elected

Even over here in the UK we were glued to our TVs or live streams as the US elected its first ever black president. TechRadar covered the news by asking Digg founder Kevin Rose what he thought of the newly tech-focused campaigns, looking at the Obama iPhone app and enjoying the fact that the new president elect seemed to know his way around a BlackBerry.

Ninja cat comes closer without moving

Not only was this video our favourite YouTube viral of the year, it was also the most Dugg. YouTube has had an interesting last 12 months, with the service finally going widescreen, showing full length movies and going live for the first time.

Why every guy should buy his girlfriend Wii Fit

Not only did this YouTube video of one of the year's biggest gaming hits get no end of approval from the internet audience, it also provided one of our favourite Digg comments of the year (see below).

Why you should download Firefox 3 right now

Apparently it broke the record for the most downloads when it made it an appearance, and Firefox 3 has played a big part in getting Mozilla a 20 per cent share of the market.

Motivational posters

We didn't even cover this, but we loved 'Envy' and 'Ninja' so darn much it would have been criminal not to include it.

Our favourite 3 Digg comments of the year

In response to: Why every guy should buy his girlfriend Wii Fit
Chaos Professor
Step 1. Get hot Girlfriend in underwear.
Step 2. Get Wii fit and have her play
Step 3. ........
Step 4. PROFIT!

In response to: Everything you need to know about Windows 7
Flickr
Every time you Digg a TechRadar story a bunny dies…please stop.

In response to: Why people write first in comments
Traductus
First

The five most Dugg TechRadar stories of 2008

8 Hacks to make Firefox ridiculously fast
12 reasons PC gaming is better than consoles
YouTube quietly switched to widescreen
Spam gets one response for every 12,500,000 emails
10 Xbox 360 tricks Microsoft doesn't tell you

Five TechRadar articles about Digg

12 FireFox Add-ons for hardcore Diggers
Kevin Rose: My scariest moment at Digg
Rose wants key Diggers to keep influence
Digg users: Kevin is cooler than Alex
Digg recommendation engine launched

Five most Dugg stories ever

1. Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
2. Digg this if you voted for Obama
3. Barack Obama wins the 2008 Presidential election
4. Digg's April Fool's joke?
5. Digg this if you are sick of scientologists burying articles

Merry Christmas Diggers (and all) from the team at TechRadar. If anyone is at CES keep an eye out for the TechRadar T-Shirts and go and say hello.

2008: the year's gaming news highlights

From the death of HD DVD through to those PSP 2 rumours

December 23rd 2008 | Reader comments (1)

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Rockstar's GTA IV is, for many, the runaway success of 2008

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As 2008 draws to a close it is now the time to look back on a year in gaming – remembering the highs, the lows and the most important videogame industry and hardware news of the year just gone.

For many, including us, the biggest surprise of the year has been the sheer number of quality triple-A games released by both the three first parties - Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft - and their numerous third-party publishing partners. Just check out the line-up of gaming goodness that adorns the shelves of your local gaming emporium this Christmas. As gamers we have never had it so good.

January to March (Q1)

Perhaps the biggest gaming news of the first quarter of the year ('Q1' to the marketeers) was also the biggest home cinema news of 2008 – the end of the HD DVD format, giving Blu-ray a much clearer shot at longer-term success.

Although it will be interesting to see how game and movie download services fare in the next 12 months, what with the recent launch of Virgin Media's 50mbps broadband service in the UK and (no doubt) many other broadband providers soon to follow suit, driving down prices of ultra-fast internet connections for us all.

As we moved towards Easter, TechRadar was the first to bring you the news of one of a number of aggressive Xbox 360 price cuts Microsoft made throughout 2008, taking the 360 to a lower price-point than Nintendo's mega-successful Wii.

As it stands right now, you can pick up an Xbox 360 Arcade unit pretty much anywhere you like for a penny or two under £100. For many, the price difference between that and the PS3 (with Sony steadfast at around the £300 mark) has been the reason why they are still to invest in the new generation of PlayStation gaming and Blu-ray movie viewing.

If Sony doesn't perform notably better with PS3 in 2009 – responding to the joint threat of the growing take-up of downloadable movie services and the move away from well-known third party developers and publishers investing their time and money in 'PlayStation exclusives' – then by this time next year we may well be sounding the death knell for PlayStation.

Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet and Home, while 'interesting', have not been the money spinners that Sony Computer Entertainment so desperately needed this year. Though with any luck we might all be looking forward to playing THE PS3 exclusive we are all gagging for at Christmas in 2009, with Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo 5 rumoured to be finally down for release in late 2009.

Gaming has been hitting tabloid headlines, more often than not for the wrong/misguided reasons, more so than ever before this year. Yet one person who has tried to work with gamers and the games industry to help parents and non-gamers have a better understanding of games has been well-known psychologist, Tanya Byron – who produced a report for Gordon Brown's government, with a number of recommendations for ways in which we can all work together to ensure children and younger teens do not get access to violent 18-rated videogames or to inappropriate content online.

Annoyingly, Byron's recommendation that there needs to be a much clearer, more widely understood ratings system for games has had the effect of sparking off a rather long (largely unproductive) war of words between the two current ratings bodies – with the ongoing row between ELSPA/PEGI versus the independent BBFC due to come to an end early in the new year when a decision is made about how games should be rated.

Whatever the outcome of that decision, TechRadar hopes that it means more parents understand that some games (indeed, more and more games) are truly 'adult' entertainment and most definitely not suitable for minors!

April – June (Q2)/ July – September (Q3)

Rockstar's magnum opus, Grand Theft Auto IV, was far and away the biggest game release of 2008, dominating games news sites throughout April and, following its 27 April launch, with plenty of post-release news and forum chatter dominating many gaming sites throughout the spring and into the summer.

TechRadar's very own James Rivington pondered the fanboy extremists and the propaganda exercises of the console manufacturers surrounding the games release. Whatever your flavour, we imagine that you are looking forward to the release of new downloadable GTA IV episodes in 2009.

E3 returns to its earlier summer slot at the LA Convention Center next year, but this year's show was a somewhat muted affair, with most hardware and software companies focusing on the short-term (Sell! Sell! Sell!) more so than laying out any kind of longer-term vision for gaming and gaming tech.

TechRadar managed to catch up with Sony PlayStation boss, Kaz Hirai as well as managing to nab a good front row seat at all the major press conferences including EA, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony and others.

Aside from the fact that we managed to get an audience with PlayStation boss Kaz Hirai and a bunch of other top gaming execs, and the news that Microsoft announce gamers will soon be able to run their games from their Xbox 360 hard drives and a few new Wii peripherals announced by Nintendo, this year's E3 was not really a lot to write home about. Roll on E3 2009!

This year's summer silly season was marked by a number of rampantly speculative stories about Wii 2, Xbox 720 and PS4. And while TechRadar enjoyed the madness thoroughly we also reminded ourselves to take a long holiday in August 2009!

October – December (Q4)

Q4 is when the games industry battens down the hatches and gets ready to spend its marketing budgets in an attempt to capture that all-important Christmas dollar (*ahem*… pound).

If Easter time is when the industry wakes up from its post-Xmas slumber, the long summer recess that follows it is only punctuated by the joys of the annual trip to the Electronic Entertainment Expo in La La Land, Q4 or 'the holidays' is the time when the real hard work needs to get done. Speak to pretty much any game publishing exec in late December and they will all tell you the same thing – "I'm just looking forward to having a rest!"

Q4 is also traditionally the time when we start to get excited about the tech possibilities for the coming year ahead. Fully immersive 3D gaming on PlayStation looks like it may well be appearing in the very near future, which is about the most exciting game related news we have heard all year. Fact.

We already know that the Nintendo DSi rocks, because we have been lucky enough to be able to play the one that T3 bought in on import from Japan when it released last month. You can read our full review of the DSi right here and start to get excited about what Nintendo has in store for handheld games and fun DS utilities in 2009.

The new Wario DSi title and a bunch of other quirky downloadable games launch in Japan later this week. TechRadar hopes to see the DSi in the UK earlier rather than later in 2009, but as ever with Nintendo, they won't tell us any of their secrets!

Elsewhere in the world of handheld gaming, the much-maligned Gizmondo 2 looks like it is still on track for release in 2009 – although this time around it will be much more of a general smart-phone type device than a stand-along gaming console. We await the release with baited breath! (A polite way of saying 'we will believe it when we see it'!).

And those rumours about a PSP mark 2 being in development also refuse to go away – stay tuned for more on that particular story from the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas next month.

Right now though, it's time to unwrap Fallout 3, gift wrap the Wii Fit for the wife and stuff the Christmas bird ready for a well-deserved week of actually PLAYING some games, instead of writing about them. See you on the other side in 2009 ;)

7 Days in Mobiles: Motorola's un-iPhone creates a Storm

El español amor motorola

December 18th 2008 | Reader comments (1)

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Does Apple care about the oPhone?

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As it's been an interesting week in the old world of mobiles, we've enlisted the help of a popular newscaster to get you up to date with all the stuff that's happened.

BONG! A terrible thing has happened today. And also Motorola's 2009 line-up got leaked to the world... including a phone that looked very similar to the iPhone. Shenanigans! Copying! No, we would never say such a thing. FLASH

BONG! A more terrible thing has also happened today. And The Carphone Warehouse has decided to clear out the all the rubbish from underneath its bed by selling mobile phones for less than a pint. And also selling them for free. Can you do that?

BONG! Oh my God, we don't even want to talk about how terrible this other thing is. And there's a new Android handset being shown from Lenovo. In China. And it looks a bit like the iPhone. And it's called the oPhone. Though once again no shenanigans and copying.Lenovo

Battle segment

FIGHT! The battle of the BlackBerry Storm vs the iPhone has once again reared its ugly head. Here, we describe the battle, '90s popular fighting computer game-style:

'Get over here!' the iPhone throws a spear that hits the Storm right on the click touchscreen. It depresses and the spear flicks right back.

The Storm sends a shower of ice towards the iPhone, but Apple's bad boy turns on the lighter app and fightmelts itself before an uppercut can be unleashed.

The iPhone then spits acid in the face of the Storm, which melts a bit and can no longer show video but still keeps on receiving email, which is really the only point of the handsets.

The Storm then freezes the floor under the iPhone's feet, making it slide towards RIM's touchscreen handset, before delivering a cracking roundhouse and disabling the iPhone's camera. Nobody notices.

But the iPhone does some weird grabby, throwy thing and stuns the Storm into submission. FINISH HIM!

The iPhone gets out a comparative pie chart showing the popularity of the two devices globally in terms of initial sales, and the Storm just dies and everyone stops reading this section because it's got a bit boring. LAME-ALITY!

Mobile YouTube

OK, for MYT this week we're going to be a bit more risqué. If you're not allowed to view such things at work, we suggest you skip this bit. It's not naked-wrong or anything, but still, we like to warn you.

There's a reason we lock our phones with passwords. You never know what you might find on your friend's handset...

"I walked outside / into the rain / got out my phone / and I see you rang / and I..."

How angry would you be if you're teaching a class and someone gets on their cellphone and starts talking? This angry?

There's a reason why some people hate others talking on hands-free kits. Things like this could happen. And nobody wants that.

iPhone spoof of the week

A look at what might happen if the iPhone ran Windows...

Scary press shot of the week

I don't really want to use images from LG every week, but if they keep scaring me in the way that they do I might have to rename this segment.Ice cream

Why do you have so many ice creams? Why is this phone called the LG Ice Cream? Why is she in a huge hat while the other model just gets mittens? There are too many phones in this picture, and ice cream too... pastel colours just seem to have this effect on me that makes me want to rock in the corner weeping.

Retro phone of the week - The Nokia 3210

Come with me on a journey through time, back to the year 1999. Let's party like it's 1999. Two years before the Space Odyssey began. The year The Matrix landed... and the Nokia 3210.

Look at it, in all its majestic beauty. OBSERVE! There's no aerial. Now, we see this as a downside, as we like to have a pull-up toy on the top of every phone, but at the time, it was super awesome.Nokia 3210

And just look at the picture... how could a phone in such a funky turquoise and photographed at such a funky angle not be funky? It is so funky that it might as well be dressed in flares and be strutting its stuff in Amsterdam in the 1970s. But it's not.

We saw the game Pairs on this handset, along with such favourites as Snake and Rotation. We never played the last game, we assume it was rubbish. We were busier sending happy birthday messages to all our friends, with the superb pictures contained within.

Who cares that you couldn't watch video on this? Nobody wanted video all those years ago anyway... we had BOOKS! If you haven't read a book, head on down to your local library and get cracking. If you don't know where your local library is, use Google Maps on your phone and direct yourself there with the GPS on it.

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