Accessory of the Week When it comes to HDMI senders, it’s the quality of transmission and ease of set up which generally sets one apart from another. The smart-looking Marmitek Gigaview – yes, it does sound like the name of an Austin Powers villain – does well on both counts.
The TX/RX pair sport a curvaceous glossy design and are supplied with rawlplugs and a mounting plate, should you fancy popping them on the wall.
Receiver, transmitter and handy remote control
Rather helpfully, the transmitter features two HDMI inputs, plus one loop-through HDMI output. This switching functionality allows a video input to be viewed simultaneously in two rooms or on two displays. Read the rest of this entry »
Product Round-up The UK’s ongoing digital switchover means that Freeview HD has probably now rolled out to a transmitter near you. If you’re using old digital TVs or set-top boxes, you won’t get the four – soon to be five – high-def channels through your aerial, alongside the standard line-up.
One of the best ways to upgrade is with a new recorder equipped with DVB-T2 tuners. If all goes to plan, Freeview recorders will continue to evolve with the launch of YouView, which aims to set a common standard for ‘connected TV’. However, more than half of the DVRs below already access content such as the BBC iPlayer.
In many ways, products that cram in too much end up disappointing. The most dependable get the basics right – like tackling the problematic surround sound used on some HD broadcasts. Read the rest of this entry »
Review The Cambridge audio iD100 is a dock with apparent delusions of grandeur. Brushed aluminium bodywork and a surfeit of serious connectivity signal a determination to squeeze every last drop of performance from any iOS device that comes its way. Clearly it takes the music on my iPod far more seriously than I do.
Cambridge audio‘s iD100 accommodates all but the earliest iOS devices
The iD100 works with Pod, phone, Touch and Pad, and ships with a selection of docking adaptors to ensure all are sitting comfortably. The largest cushion predictably accommodates the iPad, but there are also rubber stabilisers for the iPhone 3G/3GS, iPod Touch (generations one to three) and Nano (3G-5G). Read the rest of this entry »
Review This minuscule media player from home theatre specialist Crystal Acoustics combines a go-anywhere form-factor with play-anything decoding.
Indeed, if there’s a file suffix the MediaMatchBox can’t manage, then it probably isn’t worth playing.
There are basic controls on the player’s tum
As befits a box that weighs just 40g and stands barely 16mm tall, there’s not too much to report when it comes to connectivity. Just an HDMI output, an SD card reader and USB. The latter supports drives formatted FAT 32, NTFS or HFS+. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Sound quality isn’t always the first consideration in the world of digital music, where songs tend to be compressed for convenience, rather fidelity. That’s where Brit hi-fi brand Cambridge audio hopes to make its mark with the NP30 (Network Player 30), which offers better-than-CD hi-res 24-bit audio playback for music files and Internet radio over your home network.
Lacking an amp and speakers, the NP30 has been designed to fit in with the company’s swish-looking Sonata range – such as the AR30 amp (and CD30 and DVD30) – but it can be connected to virtually any set-up using its standard Stereo analogue outputs. You can also use digital S/PDIF and optical outputs for connecting to higher quality DACs and there’s a trigger connection that allows the NP30 to automatically power up when the amp it’s connected to is switched on. Read the rest of this entry »
