How Sony is trying to save the world

Sony is famous for a lot of things.

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

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

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

The road to zero

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

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

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

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

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

TVs made from old DVDs

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life cycles

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

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

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

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

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

Samsung has hinted that it may sell off its LCD TV making arm in order to focus on the more lucrative world of OLED TVs.

The news jives nicely with Samsung's earlier public mulling over the possibility of bringing its OLED display business, Samsung Mobile Display, in-house.

Play it off, keyboard cat

If you're staring sadly at your Samsung LCD TV and wondering where it all went wrong, we'll tell you: money.

LCD TV prices have steadily fallen over the past few years thanks to a flooded market and falling demand for LCD – it means that Samsung makes a loss on each LCD TV sold.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Samsung's LCD unit sales fell 10 per cent in 2011 due to lacklustre demand as well, so selling the entire unit off would make a lick of sense.

Much more enticing is the brave new world of OLED displays. Currently the darling of the smartphone and tablet world, OLED TVs are slowly but surely infiltrating the living room.

Samsung itself has a very lust-worthy 55-inch OLED TV heading to the UK in the second half of this year.

However, it is worth mentioning that Digitimes thinks Samsung will keep the LCD business and pump $6 billion into it in a bid to make it work. But, you know, Reuters v Digitmes. Who do you believe?

Now watch our video of the Samsung 55-inch OLED TV in all its glory while you mull that conundrum over:

After years of doom and gloom in the TV world, Samsung has reported that sales of TVs are on the up this year and it plans to make the best of this with a range of new, low-end sets.

The company says its noted that demand for cheaper flat-screens has been on the up, although it didn't give any indication of exactly where and when we'd see the cheap and cheerful range hit the shelves.

"We've been preparing to introduce cheap models and have been studying to optimise production costs and retail prices. Those models will be ready for sale in one or two months," Kim Hyun-suk, executive VP of Samsung's display division, said.

"As long as there's demand, we're open to get into that segment."

Olympic

It looks set to be a good year for TV manufacturers all 'round, given that it's an Olympic year and people tend to replace their televisions for major sporting events. Couple that with Euro 2012 and the UK alone will probably cause a spike in the sales charts.

As well as the lower-spec TVs en route to the market, Samsung has planned a global launch for the Samsung ES8000 3D-ready LED smart TV in March, which should take care of the more demanding consumer as well.

So excited is Best Buy by the money-making possibilities of the currently-imaginary Apple TV set that it is including it in a customer survey, complete with some specs that may or may not be legit.

What Best Buy reckons Apple has up its sleeve is a 42-inch LED set with 1080p (Full HD) resolution, calling it Apple HDTV (although we're sure Apple has a catchier i-prefixed product name in mind).

The retailer supposes that the iTV will run iOS, bringing iCloud compatibility for streaming films and music from that magical realm, the cloud, as well as App Store apps into the mix.

"Can you imagine playing Angry Birds on a big screen in your living room?" it asks. Yes, that's why we'll all be shelling out thousands of pounds on an Apple television. Angry Birds.

iSkype

Best Buy also surmises that the television will include an iSight webcam and microphone "for Skype" which just goes to show that whoever wrote it knows nothing about Apple since Facetime is the video-calling application of choice for iOS.

The retailer even goes so far as to suggest a price tag for the hypothetical goggle box - $1,499 (£950) – that's a lot more than the current raft of 42-inch TVs around, but then this is an Apple TV we're talking about.

Sadly for AV fans, the survey doesn't make any mention of technical specs like whether the panel is 3D-ready, whether the TV uses edge-lit LEDs or if there's local dimming involved and it has nothing on the set's sound options.

Is this for real? Sounds like Best Buy spitting into the wind to us but we suppose there's a chance that Apple's readying an Angry Birds-toting Skype TV.

Samsung has announced its latest batch of financials and it is good news all round for the company, with the Korean giant managing to reap in circa £2.9 billion in profit.

Proving how much of player it now is in the smartphone game, Samsung revealed that half of its profits came from its telecoms division, with the company's smartphones and tablets mustering 2.64 trillion won (£1.4 billion) from October to December.

This was down to its sprawling Galaxy line-up which also contains the Galaxy Note – a handset Samsung is hoping will usher in a new category of the mobile market.

"We are actually generating new demand in the Note category," explained Younghee Lee, a vice president in the company's mobile division during the earnings call.

"That will be continued based on our hardware competitiveness with the addition of brand and user experience."

TV watching

In all, Samsung's profit was up 17 per cent for the year and its revenue rose 13 per cent.

When it comes to TVs, Samsung sold 206 million units which is a little lower than the 211 million predicted but it did manage to bring this side of the business into profit.

In 2011 the display division managed to make an operating profit of 570 billion won (£323 million), which is up from the 2000 billion won lost last year, said to be due to the influx of smart and 3D televisions.

At CES 2012, Samsung announced the arrival of big-screen OLED TVs and said that it would be bringing voice and gesture control to its television line-up this year.

As for the Samsung Galaxy S3 - it looks likely that we won't see this phone for a while as it looks likely to be a no-show at MWC 2012.

It's not often that you find yourself standing with your head around six inches away from an 84-inch TV.

But then it's not every day that you find yourself faced with LG's 84LM960V.

The thing is, as well as being unfeasibly massive for an LED-lit TV, the LG 84LM960V on show at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is one of the first TVs around with a native 4K (3840x2160) pixel count, taking HD to the next level of clarity and detail.

And the impact of this extra resolution - which even has the power to astound on screens as small as 20-inch - is likely to be prodigious on a screen as massive as 84-inches across.

Hence the head-to-screen situation mentioned earlier. For no matter how close you get to the 84LM960V, the extreme density of its pixel structure makes it almost impossible to discern any visible pixellation in the image.

Instead you get a near flawlessly smooth image which, given the screen's 84-inch size, is the closest match any TV has yet delivered to a commercial cinema screen experience.

Intriguingly, the 84LM960V's 4k resolution is joined by LG's passive 3D technology, meaning that for the first time you can combine the crosstalk- and flicker-free benefits of passive tech with a genuine full HD-to-each-eye 3D resolution.

And the results are impressive, as the 3D images are portrayed without the minor horizontal line structure issues noted on previous large (55-inch), non-4K passive 3D TVs.

The 84LM960V's CES demo also revealed images that were startlingly bright considering the TV uses edge LED lighting over Direct LED to illuminate its vast acreage of screen, and its colours were bold and believable.

Motion looked impressively crisp and clean too, and the source images (a collection of curious martial arts footage and some classic Korean 'happy girls' nonsense) looked detailed and textured - or perhaps 'dense' would be a better word.

Good though the pictures looked, they didn't look truly 4K in the same way sometimes seen with other 4K demos. And there's a good reason for this, namely that the two 84LM960V wasn't actually showing 4K!

Using - not unreasonably - the excuse that there's currently no simple way to get a 4K video source into an HDMI-based TV, LG instead was showing full HD source material upscaled to the screen's 4k pixel count.

This upscaling worked fairly if not spectacularly well - at least well enough to show some of the benefits of using a 4K resolution on such a large screen, and to have us seriously looking forward to the TV launching in the latter part of 2012.

While the 84LM960V certainly gave a promising account of itself, though, it's impossible not to think that it could have caused much more of a stir had LG got some true 4K TV content playing on it. Oh well. Maybe next time...

This week's hottest reviews on TechRadar

This week we've reviewed a new budget tablet from Viewsonic, the latest-gen BlackBerry Bold as well as a plethora of other tech.

We also got hands on with a whole bunch of TVs over at CES in Las Vegas, in addition to checking out the UK debut of Netflix.

Let's get on with checking out all this week's reviews from TechRadar.

ViewSonic ViewPad 10e review

One of the best-looking budget Android tablets on the market, the ViewSonic ViewPad 10e has traded a sleek, ultra-thin form more reminiscent of its higher-end competitors for basic function. Having compromised on a number of key components, primarily the uncertified Android operating system, smooth user interaction is never quite on the cards. While to achieve such a low price point we know some corners must be cut, such poor craftsmanship to the point where the screen is easily coming free from the frame is inexcusable, no matter how much money it saves.

That said, for just £199 the ViewSonic ViewPad 10e is a well positioned entry-level tablet for those looking for the latest plaything and little else.

BlackBerry Bold 9790 review

It's hard to be massively excited about the BlackBerry Bold 9790. The Bold 9900 was a mobile phone to be excited about, since it was the obvious successor to the Bold 9700 and 9780 handsets, which seemed like they'd been around forever. But if you were to take the BlackBerry Bold 9900 out of the equation and judge the BlackBerry Bold 9790 on its own merits, you could quite confidently say it's a cracking little phone.

We're not massively excited by it but, geek-speak aside, just the specs alone make it worthy of a £350/$450 SIM-free price tag. If we were torn between the BlackBerry Bold 9790 and the Bold 9900, we'd pick this, albeit at the risk of grumbling about a smaller screen.

Hannspree SE40LMNB review

Can an app-less telly eschewing any semblance of home networking and smart TV cut it? Selling for less than £350, the SE40LMNB's is a bare bones experience indeed, though for owners of Sky, Virgin or Freeview HD set-top boxes and PVRs, it could be the stripped-down HDTV bargain you've been looking for.

The user interface in general is attractive and well designed, and there's no doubting that the SE40LMNB is easy to use. We particularly liked the speed of setup, the nicely designed EPG's thumbnail of the live TV channel, and the ability to customise the names of each input. Pictures lack sparkle, for sure, but contrast is decent and Blu-ray in particular is excellent. Besides, this is a 40-inch TV for less than £350.

LG 55EM960V review

This 55-inch OLED TV is jaw dropping. It's just 4mm thick and has the most amazing picture we've ever seen on a TV. We're excited, and so should you be. If you start saving now, you might be able to afford one by the time it goes on sale.

Samsung Series 8 S27A850D review

This is a seriously excellent computer monitor. While it's not quite at the very sharp end of technical innovation, it still packs some dazzling features and an excellent display.

This week's other reviews:

Audio systems

Bayan Audio Bayan 7 review

Desktop PCs

Hands on: HP Omni27 review

Hard drives

Seagate Momentus XT 750GB, 2nd Generation review

Input devices

E-pens Mobile Notes for Mac review

Laptops

Hands on: Toshiba Qosmio F755 review

Hands on: Compal prototype Ultrabook review

Media streaming devices

Iomega TV with Boxee review

Mobile phones

BlackBerry Bold 9790 review

Orange San Francisco 2 review

Monitors

BenQ RL2240H review

BenQ EW2730V review

Philips Brilliance 248C3LHSB review

Samsung Series 8 S27A850D review

ViewSonic VP2365-LED review

BenQ RL2240H review

BenQ EW2730V review

Philips Brilliance 248C3LHSB review

Samsung Series 8 S27A850D review

Software

Hands on: Netflix UK review

Hands on: BlueStacks on Windows 8 tablet review

Microsoft Security Essentials review

Tablets

Hands on: Kupa X11 review

Motorola Xoom 2 Media Edition review

Televisions

Hands on: LG 55EM960V OLED TV review

Hannspree SE40LMNB review

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Usually when you visit the TV section of a Panasonic stand at an industry show, it's all about plasma.

After all, the brand has been the single biggest supporter of plasma as a flat TV technology, and has consistently made the best-quality plasma TVs on the market.

However, in a move that hints at a potential shift in Panasonic's long-term flat TV view, at the recent CES the brand was at least as vocal about its latest LED TVs as its plasma ones. Especially the flagship WT50 LED series.

Available in 47in and 55in models, the WT50 TVs certainly do look like a force to be reckoned with. The first thing that catches your eye is their design.

Panasonic hasn't always been at the top table in design terms, but the 55WT50 looks deliriously pretty thanks to a combination of 55an ultra-slim bezel, skinny rear, one-sheet finish, and a bezel which attractively combines black with a chrome silver outer trim and a little transparent section jutting out from the bottom edge that contains an illuminated Panasonic logo.

The 55WT50 also clearly shows in both its spec sheet and - from the demo screens at CES, at least - performance just how much effort Panasonic has ploughed into its 2012 LED range.

Potentially the most significant improvement comes in the new backlight scanning system Panasonic has introduced for the 55WT50.

This combines a high-speed 200Hz core panel with 8-phase backlight scanning, supposedly resulting in both enhanced contrast and a massive reduction in motion blur. Indeed, Panasonic claims that its latest scanning system can deliver a full 1920 lines of motion resolution - more than double the motion resolution of most rival LCD TVs.

Checking out the 55WT50 in action, both the key claims for the new backlight system seem to be borne out. Moving objects appear not far short of the near-perfect clarity witnessed on Panasonic's plasma models, and black levels seem much richer and deeper than those of Panasonic's 2011 LED TVs.

The 55WT50 also seemed to pick up the baton from last year's Panasonic LED TVs by suffering with less crosstalk during 3D viewing than any other active non-plasma 3D TV to date - despite the fact that the 55WT50's 3D pictures also looked brighter and more intense than those of last year's LED models.

The 55WT50 employs Panasonic's latest IPS Alpha technology too, which meant that it could be watched on the stand from a much wider angle than most LCD TVs before colour and contrast started to deteriorate badly.

There were a couple of areas of concern among all the good news, though. First, the bright conditions of the show floor made it look as if the single-layer screen was rather reflective, meaning you'll probably need to install a WT50 in a room where you can control the light levels. Second, bright objects against dark backgrounds exhibit a little cast-off 'glow' rather than looking precisely cut.

Overall, though, once you've also taken into consideration the 55WT50's much more developed and enriched online 'Smart Viera' services (including a new Web Browser interface), it's fair to say that this large LED model did more than enough to ensure that for once, it certainly isn't just Panasonic's plasma screens we can't wait to get on our testbenches this year.

Lovefilm isn't resting on its laurels after last week's Netflix launch, having now announced that it is bringing all its movie-streaming smarts to LG Smart TVs.

LG-owning Lovefilm subscribers will be able to stream Lovefilm's 5,000-strong library of on-demand films, although you won't be able to take advantage of its pay-per-view movies which tend to be the more recent releases.

What makes this different to any other TV-based streaming service is that you can control it with the LG Magic Remote feature – so instead of languidly tapping buttons on a remote control, you can instead flail around like an octopus trying to knit.

Motion in the ocean

Lovefilm is already on a host of smart TVs from Sony and Samsung, and LG is now running to join the connected pack.

LG may have been lagging behind on Lovefilm but it has pipped its competitors to the post when it comes to Google TV integration, having announced the first Google TV television at CES 2012.

Newly-launched Lovefilm competitor Netflix, meanwhile, is currently only available on Samsung Smart TVs, although it can also be found on LG Blu-ray and home theatre systems.

For most people, the 55-inch OLED TVs from Samsung and, especially, LG were the televisual highlights of this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Sony, however, begged to differ. For according to the Japanese megacorp, OLED technology was already old hat, having been superseded by something called Crystal LED technology.

Shown on a 55-inch screen in a 'future technology' zone in an out of the way corner of Sony's CES stand, the world's first Crystal LED (CLED) screen was claiming to deliver all the pictorial benefits of OLED - outstanding contrast, dazzling colours, extreme sharpness, and immaculate motion reproduction - along with two significant further benefits.

First, since CLED doesn't use organic material, it's not prone to OLED's image quality decay issues, where colours tend to fade.

Second, it's a self-emitting system, with around 6 million RGB LED light sources positioned at the front of the screen - an arrangement which would be expected to produce such benefits as a wider viewing angle, more expansive colour range, and better motion reproduction.

In some ways, the two CLED demo screens on show delivered on these promises. Colours looked as rich and yet also subtle as they did on the OLED screens at the show, and the screen's black level response was outstanding without compromising shadow detailing.

Motion looked very crisp too in a head to head with one of Sony's current normal LED TVs.

Actually, it looked almost too crisp; there were signs of noise during the motion demonstration that suggested some sort of artificial sharpness processing was being applied to the pictures. But certainly actual motion blur of the sort all too obvious even on a top-flight standard Sony LED set was practically non-existent.

For all its undoubted quality, though, there was still a slightly rough and ready appearance to the CLED pictures compared with the much more 'finished' OLED products being shown by LG and Samsung. The CLED sets lack the swanky ultra-slim designs of the OLED models, too.

There was nothing about the CLED demonstration, though, to suggest that Sony's new technology won't ultimately be capable of producing an image quality at least as good as OLED.

The only problem with the demo is that it was clear that CLED technology is still much further from becoming a commercial reality than OLED - a fact which raises questions as to whether there will really be space in the market for CLED sets when/if they finally appear. Only time will tell.

Amazon UK is reporting a 491 per cent rise in sales of telescopes as the British turn their eyes skyward after watching Stargazing Live with Professor Brian Cox.

So much did the viewing public enjoy Stargazing Live that telescope sales went up six-fold in the three hours after it aired after 3.8m people tuned in earlier this week.

Neil Campbell, camera and photo store manager at Amazon.co.uk, explained: "Each time the popular physicist appears on TV we see a jump in telescope sales and that would appear to point to a significant 'Brian Cox effect' encouraging a renewed interest in stargazing."

Things can only get better

Professor Brian Cox, whose glory days as the keyboard player in D:Ream are too often overlooked, has been responsible for the astronomy renaissance as impressionable young geeks and women of a certain age fall under the spell of his enthusiastic grin and incredibly large brain.

Astronomy hipsters who have been tracking the heavens since before Cox even picked up his first telescope, yeah, are no doubt outraged at the mainstreamification of their niche pastime.

But it's happy days for Amazon whose virtual tills are ringing as its telescopic goods, priced from £18, sell like hot cakes - and yet more proof that tools like Zeebox, which allow you to purchase goods seen on TV as you watch, are going to get more and more useful in the coming years.

OLED TVs were the big story of CES - and the LG 55EM960V was OLED's crowning glory

Although TVs using Organic LED technology have gone on sale before, they've all been puny in size and ridiculously expensive.

But the biggest TV story from this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was that big-screen OLED TVs are finally coming to market.

And on the evidence of LG's 55EM960V, they can't arrive soon enough.

The 55EM960V has a 55-inch screen (built, astonishingly, onto the front of a mere 4mm of rear depth), meaning that really for the first time the world has got the chance to appreciate just what OLED is truly capable of, rather than having to squint admiringly at 11-inch or 15-inch screens.

The results truly are jaw-dropping.

Even in the less than friendly viewing environment of a crowded show floor there's so much good stuff about the 55EM960V's pictures that it's hard to know where to start.

While showing some footage of Vancouver by night, the screen's contrast is quite astonishing. At one end of the light spectrum the screen presents black colours of a richness, intensity and purity that just hasn't been seen before on a flat-panel TV - not even Pioneer's legendary KURO plasmas.

Yet within the same frame you've got ultra-pure, perfectly defined whites and a dizzying array of colour tones in between.

Shifting to more colourful daylight footage, the screen's remarkable colour response is even more spectacularly obvious, revealing outstanding subtlety and range as well as explosive vibrancy that punches through the CES showfloor lighting as if it's not even turned on.

Then there's the image's sharpness. The HD footage on show actually looks more akin to 4k-resolution fare so pure its presentation; so free is it of LCD's usual motion blur; and so incredibly rich are the set's shadow detail levels.

Dark areas look completely consistent in tone too, with no backlight clouding, and the image holds up much better from a wide viewing angle than typical LCD TVs.

The only flaw with the 2D image was a faint horizontal 'seam' across the screen about half an inch down from its top edge. Though there seems little reason to suspect that this will appear on final production samples when the TV goes on sale for an as yet unconfirmed price.

Some 3D enthusiasts might be concerned to learn that the 55EM960V uses passive 3D technology rather than full HD active 3D. And it is indeed true that you can occasionally see faint horizontal line structure from the filter when you're watching 3D.

But the lack of crosstalk, rich colours and high brightness of the 55EM960V's 3D images still make it a very compelling 3D proposition.

The 55EM960V isn't going to be cheap when it finally comes out. But so far as many people who witnessed it in action at the CES, the fact that it's not going to go on sale until the latter part of 2012 is good news, as it just means they've got longer to save up for what was arguably the show's single most impressive AV product.

Sony has released a new teaser video touting 'Dot Switch' as a form of 'new entertainment' from the company.

It doesn't give much away – which, to be fair, is the point of a teaser – but shows a Sony Ericsson handset being used to control a TV, a gramophone, some glitter cannons and a robotic arm that lifts a cover off a small black box.

While we're not sure about real world use for the glitter cannons or the robotic arm, the video seems to hint at smartphone control of external devices, and perhaps sharing content between the handset and the TV, just as the Sony Tablet S can.

Mystery box

With that in mind, is the small black box some kind of media hub?

Then again, perhaps the small black box is a red herring – some are speculating that the teaser could be for the 'new kind of TV' that Sony hinted at in late 2011.

Basically, we dunno. For all we know it could be that box from that film The Box where you get a million dollars if you press the button that kills someone.

What we do know is that all will become clear on 21 February – that's a bit early for Mobile World Congress 2012, so we're not pinning our hopes on a new Sony smartphone but it does seem clear that phones will be involved in some way.

Although with the teaser and its surrounding text and web address all in Japanese, we may not be privy to this 'new entertainment' over in the UK and US. Check out the video for yourself below:

You hear a lot about how people watch films today, from the legit movie stream to the shady bit torrent - but for all the fancy tech, more films are watched live on TV than any other way in the UK.

Live televisions broadcasts take a 20 per cent share of the UK's film viewing, with films recorded from the television coming in second with 14.5 per cent, according to figures released by the BFI in the UK Film Policy Review published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

It may hearten the film industry to know that P2P sharing comes in ninth, taking only a 2.5 per cent share – but that's still more than legal online streaming which accounts for only 1.9 per cent of the UK's film watching ways.

Download shmownload

Worse by far, though, is the state of legal film downloading in the UK. Only 1 per cent of the country's share of film watching is done through legal downloads – that's 8 percent lower than bought DVDs.

The DCMS report expects that improved broadband speeds will change all this, though, making it quicker and less painful to download films (legally of course).

As well as highlighting differing viewing habits, the report reiterated the need to address online piracy, agreeing that 'pro-copyright education' and increased access to legal services are the way to go, rather than opting for heavy-handed site-blocking measures.

The report recommends that a proposed research fund be put to use looking at "how different distribution models could affect levels of copyright infringement, including the impact of theatrical windows, on the release of independent films" - the outcome of this could see films reaching streaming and download services more quickly than they do now.

Bang & Olufsen has taken to CES 2012 to reveal its latest 3D TV in the form of the B&O BeoVision 12-65.

The company describes the 65-inch plasma screen as "ultra flat" which left us wondering how flat its predecessors were until we realised it means "very thin indeed" combined with "an optical illusion" involving the aluminium speaker housing.

It's intended to sit on the wall rather than a stand, so the wall bracket comes partly integrated into the set itself, adding to the ultra flatness of the thing.

Other features are available

As well as being dead thin, like, the centre speaker holds five speaker units within it and helps pump out 7.1 surround sound when set up in the correct formation.

The NeoPDP panel promises improved 3D and 2D performance thanks to phosphors with a very short retention time.

No sniff of a UK price for the B&O BeoVision 12-65 but it's likely to be high - now take that price you're thinking is high and double it. About that.

Speakers galore

Also revealed at CES 2012 are the company's new BeoLab 12 loudspeakers that sit mounted on the wall aside a television, providing the auditory illusion of three-dimensional sound.

And finally there's the B&O Play portable music system, the B&O Beolit 12, which brings all the excellence of a Bang & Olufsen sound system to, well, anywhere, given that you can pick it up and carry it around.

Unusually for Bang & Olufsen, the Beolit 12 isn't too far out of a normal person's price range, set to land in the UK with a price of around £575 (€699, $799).

Opera has unveiled more about its television app store at CES 2012, promising a "completely different way to experience TV" thanks to apps from the likes of Facebook and Vimeo.

The app store offers HTML5 apps and will run on any device that has the Opera Devices SDK integrated, including internet televisions, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes.

Optimised for HD-ready televisions and able to be controlled by standard remote controls, the store should play nice with pretty much all televisions and that was just how Opera wanted it.

Cross platform, happy platform

Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera, explains, "We had a simple idea that, in order to bring apps to the world of TV in a huge way, you need to provide users with a lean-back web experience and developers, content providers and manufacturers with the most convenient, cross-platform technology.

"With the Opera TV Store we've done it, and given the world of TV more possibilities and entertainment options at the same time."

Although you probably won't see the app store hitting any televisions today, it will provide a ready-made app market for any company currently creating web-connected televisions.

It'll also make life easier for developers, who can use Opera Dragonfly, the company's development tool, to port and create apps for use on TVs instead of just tablets and smartphones.

Having been announced at IFA 2011 and promised for CES 2012, Opera says it has an agreement in place with "a leading consumer electronics manufacturer" and it expects to see the first TV sets on the market during the course of 2012.

For now, you can check out the Opera TV Store for yourself in the video below:

LG's latest batch of 3D TVs comes with a bezel of just one millimetre as the home entertainment industry continues to strive towards a bezel-less world at CES 2012.

Following Samsung's 2011 lead, LG has scythed the bezel down to a frankly outrageous 1mm width. For comparison, Samsung's 60D8000 LED Smart TV has a 1.5cm border.

LG has dubbed this new look 'Cinema Screen Design' and believes it will mean a more comfortable and immersive 3D viewing environment, but really it just looks super cool.

A TV inspired by a cinema screen? Revolutionary

"The 3D experience is still evolving and we at LG intend to push the limits of what 3D can deliver," said Havis Kwon, President and CEO of LG Home Entertainment Company.

"With our 2012 Cinema 3D Smart TVs, we have been able to take a significant step forward, thanks to a series of new and upgraded 3D features led by the Cinema Screen Design."

As well as the snazzy new look, the Cinema Screens come with new, comfier Cinema 3D glasses, which LG says come in three 'elegant' models but we haven't seen any pictures yet so we can neither confirm nor deny whether this is just marketing speak for average.

Gamers will no doubt welcome the inclusion of Dual Play, which shows two entirely different images as opposed to splitting the screen (although you'll need special specs to see these) and the TVs also come with internet integration and 3D sound zoom, as revealed in the company's home entertainment line up last week.

We'll be feasting our eyes on the bezel-deprived TVs and new glasses over at CES 2012 so stay tuned for more, including individual model spec and hands on reviews.

Netflix? What Netflix? Says Sky as it announces a partnership with Zeebox that it hopes will see Sky customers getting social as they watch TV using the Sky mobile apps.

Sky is set to be the only TV platform in the UK to offer Zeebox integration in its bespoke mobile apps (including Sky+ and Sky Go), with the new 'augmented' features set to hit Sky's apps during the first half of this year.

You may recall Zeebox from its launch last year – it's a social app that allows you to see what your friends are watching, find out more about TV shows that are on, chat as you watch the gogglebox and even buy products featured in programmes and adverts.

Sensible

It's a partnership that certainly makes sense for Sky, as Emma Lloyd, Sky's director of emerging products, explains, "We know that millions of our customers have smartphones and tablets and regularly use them to engage with Sky on mobile devices, so [the integration of Zeebox] is a natural next step for us."

Having launched as a web platform on iPhone, iPad, Android and online, Zeebox has a lot of potential but really needs a bigger user base to become truly useful – and Sky, which is currently in around 10.3 million homes across the UK, can certainly provide that.

What's more, the cash-money that the deal has obviously brought in will allow Zeebox's plans for world domination to continue apace.

"Thanks to Sky's backing we now also have the resources and expertise to set our sights firmly on international expansion alongside further innovation here in the UK and Ireland," clarified Ernesto Schmitt, the co-founder and CEO of Zeebox.

This week's hottest reviews on TechRadar

Even though it's one of the quietest periods of the tech year, we've still got a great bunch of reviews for you this week.

We've got a superb Asus entertainment laptop, A 50-inch Phllips CinemaScope TV and the Samsung Infuse 4G. Read on for more!

Philips 50PFL7956T review

Is the Philips 50PFL7956T the first affordable CinemaScope TV? Not quite, but this effort from Philips halves the price of a 21:9 aspect ratio telly while also halving the resolution of 3D. Using Edge LED backlighting and passive Easy 3D tech, the Philips 50PFL7956T is a noticeable step down from the flagship 58-inch – and £4,000+ – 58PFL9956, but here the experience is smaller, so those compromises on ultimate quality are less of a problem.

The fullscreen option for split-screen games provides a tempting trickle-down tech from 3D, and some games look fabulous in a 21:9 shape, although this TV is at its best when it's simply removing the black bars from Blu-ray discs – and presenting them with more detail than ever.

Asus N55SF review

The N55SF is a superb home entertainment laptop with only a couple of weak points in the odd keyboard, mouse controls and some irritating software alerts. Performance is excellent and the spec sheet as a whole is impressive. The powerful Core i7-2570QM processor, huge keyboard with numeric keypad and slab of speaker atop the keyboard suggest that it may be intended as a desktop replacement. But the weight and general lack of bulk suggest otherwise.

Of course, all this doesn't come cheap, but this machine compares extremely favourably to more stylised and costly entertainment laptops from the likes of Toshiba and Alienware. We'd definitely recommend it – if you can put up with the strange keyboard.

Fuji X-S1 review

Fuji appears to have had an epiphany and has decided to distinguish itself by producing high quality cameras that get photographers excited.

First, we had the X100, a retro-styled camera with a fixed 23mm lens and an APS-C sized sensor. Then we had the X10, a more compact version of the X100 with a 2/3in, 12-million pixel EXR CMOS sensor and a zoom lens with angle of view equivalent to a 28-112mm optic. Now the X-S1 joins the prestigious X-series adding a high-end bridge camera to the range. We haven't been able to examine images from the X-S1 yet, but as it has the same sensor as the X10 we have fairly high expectations.

Philips Fidelio SoundSphere review

The Philips Fidelio SoundSphere is one of the best-looking Airplay speaker systems we've ever seen – and, we're extremely happy to report, its beauty is far from skin-deep. Comprising two forward-leaning cylindrical speakers clad in a classy gloss black, it's accompanied by a simple iPod/iPhone/iPad charging dock, remote control and all the cables you need to get it up and running quickly and simply. So should you buy the Fidelio SoundSphere? If you love music, the answer is definitely.

Samsung Infuse 4G review

The first thing anyone will notice about the Samsung Infuse is its gargantuan 4.5" Super AMOLED display. But the Samsung Infuse 4G feels a bit like a phone with an identity crisis. It costs the same as the Epic 4G Touch, but is excluded from the Galaxy line. It's got a 4G right in the name, but it doesn't boast 4G speeds. And at 4.5" it's also large enough to feel almost like a tablet - albeit one rocking the stale Froyo Android OS. But is it a good phone?

This week's other reviews

Camcorders

Kodak Playfull ZE2 review

CCTV

Withings Smart Baby Monitor review

Compact cameras

Samsung EX1 review

DSLRs/Hybrids

Samsung NX200 review

Graphics cards

Zotac GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Limited Edition review

AMD Radeon HD 7970 review

Laptops

Asus N55SF review

Acer TravelMate 8481T review

Toshiba Satellite Z830-10U review

Lenovo IdeaPad U300S review

Acer Aspire S3 review

Mobile phones

Samsung Infuse 4G review

Modem routers

Cisco Linksys X3000 review

Monitors

Samsung Series 5 T27A550 review

GeChic On-Lap Monitor review

Motherboards

Asus P9X79 Pro review

NAS drives

Buffalo Cloudstation Duo review

D-Link ShareCenter review

Synology DiskStation DS411 review

Radio tuners

Revo K2 review

Software

Adobe Carousel 1.0.3 review

Speakers

Philips Fidelio SoundSphere review

Storage

Western Digital My Passport Studio 1TB review

Iomega eGo Portable HD Mac Edition 500GB review

Tablets

Acme TB01 review

Televisions

Philips 50PFL7956T review

Logik L423ED11 review

Hands on reviews

Cameras

Hands on: Fuji X-S1 review

Hands on: Nikon D4 review

Mobile phones

Hands on: LG Prada 3.0 review

Hands on: Orange San Francisco 2 review

Google has dumped Intel architecture in its new Google TV products in favour of the ARM-based Marvell Armada 1500 chipset.

The new televisions will be showcased at CES 2012 next week, complete with the Marvell Armada 1500 HD Media System-on-a-chip which should mean lower prices and better power efficiency than the Intel-made predecessors.

What's more, the passive cooling system means no whirring fans to distract you from whatever it is you're watching.

Marvell-ous

"The Google and Marvell teams have been working closely together to bring our combined software and chipset technologies to market to grow the Google TV ecosystem of manufacturers and devices," said Mario Queiroz, VP of product management at Google TV.

"Marvell-powered Google TV solutions will enable powerful products to be brought to market at attractive prices."

Both LG and Samsung have talked up their interest in Google TV televisions and, although Samsung said it won't be able to show its TV set off at the show, we're expecting to see more than one launching at CES 2012 next week.

And of course TechRadar will be out in Vegas to bring you our expert thoughts on the new televisions as they launch – it's a hard life, we know.