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In Depth: The tech behind London 2012

2012-01-10T01:05:00.000-08:00

The man in charge of Acer's London 2012 involvement is sat in front of one of the desktops PCs that the company is providing in the thousands for next year's Olympics, explaining that he would love for his team of engineers to be bored out of their minds when the Games roll around.

"If they are bored then everything is going well," explains Michael Trainor, the project manager for the Acer Olympic Project.

Acer is just one of a group of tech partners for the London games tasked with making sure that everything runs smoothly; for the Taiwanese computer giant that involves preparing, providing and supporting an estimated 13,500 bits of kit over 107 Olympic venues.

The scale of the project is clear, despite there being nearly 250 days until the opening ceremony on 27 July, Acer is already preparing thousands of PCs to hit the eventual total of 11,500 desktops and 1,100 laptops, as well as 900 powerful servers and a variety of monitors.

This work is being done in a secret location in Canary Wharf at the headquarters of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), and the collaboration between the various tech partners has gone well so far.

"There's no room for politics," says Trainor. "The success of the tech team is the only significant thing for everybody involved."

Companies involved include worldwide partners like Atos, Airwave, Omega, Panasonic and Samsung, London 2012 partners that include BT, and official London 2012 supporter Cisco – so no shortage of technology stakeholders.

Acer's servers are at the heart of LOCOG's operation running all key applications from HR right the way through to accreditation and scheduling applications - and the company is providing Gateway games rack and games tower servers and Altos admin rack servers.

But it will be the PCs that garner the most attention, with Acer choosing its Veriton L670G as its standard desktop, which will be powering the specialised Atos software that will keep people across the Olympic venues abreast of what is going on, including commentary teams, other media and athletes.

The PC has been designed to be economical in its power use and, critically, to have a small enough footprint to be ubiquitous without getting in the way.

"Every PC has the same motherboard and the same RAM," adds Trainor, which simplifies the process of repairing and replacing faulty units.

The Athlete's Village will offer up access points to the isolated network, although competitors will also be able to take their own laptops and connect to the internet.

The logistics around an operation this size are fascinating - each sport has its own pod of computer equipment laid out in LOCOG HQ, and when a test event is run from an Olympic Venue it is shifted across and then back to the building.

Athletics has the biggest pod of computers, but every discipline from the Olympics and Paralympics is represented in the testing lab.

When the summer arrives, the computer equipment will be moved to the venues, and when the Paralympics finish it will be up to LOCOG what is done with it.

The technology and infrastructure is monitored from a special technology operations centre (TOC) with banks of people and monitors assembled in front of boards reporting any emergencies with Sev 1 the most critical - something that everyone involved is keen to not occur.

Trainor explains that the computers being used, including the Veriton desktop and the TravelMate laptops, are running with a 1-2 per cent failure rate.

"We can't run the Olympic project like we would any other business," he continues. "The operational requirement over such a large area means we will be doing zero repairs on site.

"If something fails then we will swap out the PC immediately. There is a reparation department within LOCOG."

When TechRadar asks Trainor what worried him most in terms of what could go wrong he professes to be relatively confident for the time being, although ramping up the staffing for the London 2012 period will be the trickiest job.

"We need to go from a relatively small UK operation up to 350 staff, and we are recruiting staff with similar skills to those being sought by other businesses in Canary Wharf," he explains. "And I'm hoping they will be the most bored individuals at the games."

Samsung Galaxy S3 likely to be powered by 2GHz dual-core chip

2012-01-10T00:35:00.000-08:00

Samsung has unveiled its latest chip to hit the mobile phone market – the Exynos 5250.

This dual-core toting, 2GHz beast is the successor to the 4210 which currently powers the Samsung Galaxy S2 and it is more than likely to be the chip that will make its way into the Samsung Galaxy S3.

When it comes to graphical performance, Samsung is claiming it is four times faster than its predecessor and will be 2560 x 1600 resolution compatible and it also supports stereoscopic 3D.

Tablet friendly

Because of its high resolution the chip will also find its way into a new generation of Samsung tablets and other big-screened devices such as the Galaxy Note line-up.

When it comes to technical specs, the Exynos 5250 has memory bandwidth up to 12.8 Gbps and has been built using the low-power HKMG 32nm process and has two ARM-based Cortex-A15 cores.

It is thought that this SoC will be the first of its type for mobile devices that actually manages to clock 2.0Ghz.

Back in October, it was thought that the Samsung Galaxy S3 specs had leaked out, with the processor set to be 1.8GHz.

The arrival of the 5250, however, may well mean that we can look forward to a higher specified model some time in 2012.

Buying Guide: Best monitor for watching movies

2012-01-10T00:05:00.000-08:00

Best monitor for watching movies

Even with the most powerful processor, a cutting edge graphics card and a range of HD media to enjoy, if your PC's monitor isn't up to the job then you're going to miss out.

When it comes to buying a monitor, there are many more features to consider than just the number of pixels. Muddying the waters further, many manufacturers see fit to boast about relatively unimportant specifications that serve only to let the marketing department put a big number on the box.

The biggest culprit here is dynamic contrast ratio. While the normal contrast ratio of a monitor is very important when determining the potential image quality - especially when it comes to the dark blacks and bright whites - the contrast ratio of most monitors will be 1,000:1. Dynamic contrast ratios, on the other hand, are usually much higher and can range from around 5,000:1 to 10,000:1 and higher.

There's no industry standard way of testing dynamic contrast ratio and extremely high numbers can only result in tiny improvements in performance that won't be noticeable under normal viewing conditions.

We've cut through all the marketing to look at the performance of these monitors where it really matters. When it comes to watching media, the most important specifications here are colour reproduction, response time and overall image performance. There are many monitors on the market that excel in some areas but are disappointing in others, which makes it easy to end up with a display that's not the best choice for your needs.

We're looking for the best media-playing monitor on the market today, paying attention to the figures that really make a difference. Here are the monitors we tested.

Dell U2412M - £310
Eizo Foris FS2332 - £345
Asus ML249H - £200
AOC i2353FH - £155
Iiyama Prolite B2712HDS - £268
Hazro HZ27WC - £549
BenQ EW24300 - £186
ViewSonic VX2753mh-LED - £250

Dell U2412M

This might look like a P2411H Professional series monitor, but there's one important difference: it's an IPS screen, not a TN.

Screen type is the single biggest deciding factor in your screen's image quality. In IPS screens, crystals are kept parallel in a lateral electric field, whereas in TN panels they untwist as voltage is applied, and their alignment alters as they drift from the anchored electrode. This hinders the flow of bulb light, and the contrast and colour representation as you look at the screen from wider angles than head-on.

TN panels are cheaper to produce because they need half as many transistors per pixel. They also produce much quicker response times.

Read our full Dell U2412M review

Eizo Foris FS2332

With two HDMI inputs nestled among the more standard DVI and VGA sockets, plus built-in speakers and a remote control, this monitor is clearly designed to double as a television. As a result, it doesn't look quite as glamorous as dedicated LED monitors.

The infrared port for the remote control and built-in speakers makes it a rather bulky and ugly device - at least on the outside. Thankfully, the hardware powering this panel suffers none of the compromises that plagued earlier monitor/HDTV hybrids.

The Eizo Foris FS2332 uses an IPS panel rather than the more popular TN display found in most LCD monitors.

Read our full Eizo Foris FS2332 review

Asus ML249H

Are the glory days of monitors finally upon us? Looking at the displays in this group test, it seems so, but the problem with glory days is that standards are so high across the board, it's easy to miss out on the very best devices.

Asus' ML249H monitor might not be aiming quite that high, but it certainly wants to beat the competition. With a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 and a contrast ratio of 3,000:1, it goes toe-to-toe with other manufacturer's screens at the £200 price point.

It also boasts an impressive 178-degree viewing angle horizontally and vertically thanks to the VA panel, although this is offset by a slightly longer response time. The screen itself produces the excellent picture quality and accurate colour representation we've come to expect from mainstream monitors outside the designers' realm.

Read our full Asus ML249H review

AOC i2353FH

There's no denying that the AOC i2353FH is a fine looking monitor. Its easily one of the thinnest desktop displays we've ever reviewed at just 9.2mm deep, not including the base. The brushed aluminium design works well and the lower case 'i' in the name hints at AOC taking Apple's design ethics as inspiration.

There are no buttons - just touch keys on the base. This is a rare case of design working against functionality, because the touch keys aren't as quick or responsive as standard buttons. The base of the monitor looks good, but it doesn't let you swivel the display.

If you want a great looking monitor you might be happy to overlook this, but it does make positioning the screen more difficult.

Read our full AOC i2353FH review

Four more media monitors reviewed

Iiyama Prolite B2712HDS

The Iiyama Prolite has a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, and will handle HD content from a number of sources thanks to the DVI, HDMI and VGA connectors. At this price, it shouldn't come as much of a shock that this is a TN panel.

Response times are good, with no noticeable blurring in games or movies. Contrast is impressive, with the deep blacks, though whites can be a little washed out - not a problem for gamers, but if you spend a lot of time working or on the internet then a TN panel may not be for you.

The horizontal viewing angle is a bit of a downside, with a yellow tint creeping in on lighter areas of the screen if it's not viewed straight on. This is only really an issue if you're planning get the whole family round to watch a film.

Read our full Iiyama Prolite B2712HDS review

Hazro HZ27WC

Acres of screen real estate in a frill-free case - that's the idea behind the Hazro HZ27WC monitor. There's more to it than that though, because this simply styled 27-inch screen has strong specs where it really counts.

There's an IPS liquid crystal panel for great picture quality, with an LED backlight for cleaner, longer lasting and more efficient lighting. You don't get much else though. There's a single DVI video input and no controls, contrast or colour buttons.

The only image adjustment on offer is a five-stage backlight level control. If you want to fine-tune the image, you have to do it in software. But just how good is this display? The HZ27WC almost certainly packs the same LCD panel as Apple's expensive 27-inch Cinema Display, which will cost you somewhere north of £900.

Read our full Hazro HZ27WC review

BenQ EW2430

The BenQ EW2430 is impressive on paper and at first sight too. First, there's that VA panel, packing an LED backlight and 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. It also boasts a 3,000:1 contrast ratio, which is the best we've ever seen. It has 178-degree viewing angles in both planes, and a decent pixel response of 8ms.

The EW2430 is an imposing physical specimen. The stand only offers tilt adjustment, but the combination of a glossy black bezel and brushed and anodised surfaces communicates quality in a manner few, if any, competing sub-£200 monitor screens manage.

The feature set is solid too, and includes two HDMI ports, DVI and VGA, along with a four-port USB header. All of which makes it disappointing to report that the image quality is not what we were expecting it to be.

Read our full BenQ EW2430 review

ViewSonic VX2753mh-LED

Unsurprisingly for a 27-inch monitor, the VX2753 is a bit of a beast. Even though it takes advantage of LED technology, it isn't particularly slim; its dimensions are a rather imposing 25.91 x 18.9 x 8.35-inches.

However, while the LED doesn't result in a slimmer model, it has an impact on power consumption. ViewSonic boasts that the VX2753 is around 40 per cent more efficient than comparable 27-inch displays. The large screen and 1,920 x 1,080 resolution make it ideal for watching media.

As with other TN panel-based monitors the response time is excellent - just 1ms - which makes it excellent for fast-moving action movies and games. While the VX2753 comes with two HDMI ports and a VGA, it lacks a DVI port.

Read our full ViewSonic VX2753mh-LED review

The best monitor for movies is...

One of the conclusions we can take away from this test is that when it comes to monitors - especially ones designed for media playback - all is not what it seems.

As we said at the start, the specifications that manufacturers stamp on their boxes are only a small part of the story and sometimes hardly affect the monitor's overall image quality. Astronomical dynamic contrast ratios and boasts of full HD 1080p resolutions are all well and good, but nowadays what really sets monitors apart is the oft ignored panel type.

In our tests the IPS-based monitors blew away the TN, and to some extent the VA monitors when it came to image and colour quality - their Achilles' heel being a slightly sluggish response time. The Dell U2412M was a worthy winner, but our value award goes to the AOC i2353FH for proving that IPS panels don't have to break the bank.

Editor's choice

Dell U2412M
Price: £310
Info: www.dell.com

When all is said and done, the most important thing a monitor can do is provide the greatest possible image quality, and in that respect the Dell U2412M excels. Colour reproduction and contrast - two elements that are so important in ensuring image quality is at its peak - are handled wonderfully by the Dell.

The Dell U2412M excelled in all our benchmarks and we wouldn't hesitate to recommend it as a media-playing monitor for your PC.

Verdict: 5/5

Value award

AOC i2353FH
Price: £155
Info: www.aoc-europe.com

The AOC i2353FH looks fantastic, offers brilliant image quality and, despite lacking DVI, offers plenty of connectivity for your media playback - all at a great price. What's not to like?

It might not be the largest screen on test, and lacks some advanced features, but for just over £150, the AOC i2353FH is excellent value for money and well worth considering.

Verdict: 4.5/5

Art Lebedev Optimus keyboards get pre order

2012-01-09T23:35:00.000-08:00

Art Lebedev's Optimus Popularis and Optimus Mini Six keyboards which feature an LCD screen behind every key are now available to pre-order.

Known for making some of the most impressive – and costly – keyboards around, Russian design studio Art Lebedev has released new photos of its stunning Optimus Popularis and Optimus Mini Six models.

The Optimus Mini Six costs €258 (about £220), while the Optimus Popularis is €747 (about £640).

Both devices are made up of keys featuring a 64 x 64 pixel LCD display beneath their surface. Using the included Configurator software, users can customise layouts and settings and quickly switch between presets on PC or Mac.

Retoucher's delight

In use, this means that shortcut junkies will no longer have to use overlays or buy marked-up keyboards specifically for complicated software like Photoshop, and multi-linguists will be able to type out a missive in English before promptly switching their keyboard to Arabic for another.

The Popularis is a full keyboard (without numerical keypad) that includes a further LCD display strip below the function keys, while the Mini Six is a six button auxiliary device for accessing shortcuts and displaying program information.

You can head over to the Art Lebedev site to cast your eyes over the Optimus Popularis and Optimus Mini Six.

Windows 8 beta confirmed for February

2012-01-09T23:05:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has announced that a beta version of Windows 8 will be arriving for our delectation in February.

The software giant's next generation operating system is on track for its release in 2012, and the beta release date of February 2012 has now been confirmed.

Although a final Windows 8 UK release date has not yet been announced, we have already been afforded a chance to play with the OS, which you can read all about in our hands on Windows 8 review.

Metro

Windows 8 brings the Metro interface, which features heavily in the Windows Phone 7 operating system, and provides finger-friendly tiles that will make Windows more tenable for tablets.

The current early version has won plaudits for some of its implementation of touch, but remains very much a work in progress, with the transition from Metro to a more traditional desktop still jarring.

That will no doubt be one of the things that the beta version looks to address, along with improvements to the Windows 8 app navigation.

brightcove : 1199351091001

Buying Guide: Best CPU: the 8 top processors today

2012-01-09T22:35:00.000-08:00

CPUs: What you need to know

What CPU is the best for games? What is the best processor for productivity? What is just the hands-down best CPU?

Stick with us people, we've got all you need to know to find out what processor you should be dropping your cash on.

This year could have been one of the greatest ever for PC processing. After an awfully long wait for new high-end chips from AMD or Intel, verily they both delivered. The result could have been, and should have been, a titanic tussle for desktop supremacy.

Even for those who can't afford premium-priced chips – and let's be honest, that's most of us – the knock on effects would have been huge.

Competition not only improves the breed; it also tends to push down prices. Faster chips and cheaper prices for all, in other words.

As it turned out, neither AMD nor Intel's uber-processors were quite what we were expecting.

AMD's new Bulldozer-based FX processors, for instance, haven't exactly torn up the record books for raw computational grunt. Rumours of upcoming respins could translate into improved performance, of course.

For now, the FX is AMD's new top chip and at least offers an intriguing alternative at certain price points.

Intel's latest range topper, the chip known as Sandy Bridge E, has indeed emerged as the hands-down fastest PC processor you can buy, but it's still not the massive leap forward we had hoped for.

Worse than that, it very much looks like it's a case of Sandy by name, sand bagging by nature.

Put another way, we're convinced Sandy Bridge E could easily be much, much faster, if only Intel was facing stiffer competition. With AMD's Bulldozer not delivering, Sandy E's performance has been capped at a level that's merely good enough. Intel has plenty in reserve should AMD's form take an uptick.

If that seems like a grim assessment of the current state of CPUs, the reality isn't all that bad. New CPUs mean new platforms and in turn that makes now a great time to buy into a high-end system while maximising your long-term upgrade options.

Meanwhile, AMD's failure to take the high end by storm means Bulldozer has been dropped right into the heart of the mid-range melee. Since few of us can actually afford Intel's £820 monsters, maybe we only need AMD to keep Intel honest in the midrange. There's only one way to find out.

Is the PC in crisis?

Certainly the unleashing of new CPUs from AMD and Intel has left us all with a pair of crucial conundrums. Can AMD survive the failure of Bulldozer to sock it to Intel? And just how badly is Intel sand bagging with Sandy Bridge E?

If you reckon we're trying some scaremongering, well, think again.

Bulldozer is a big problem for AMD. Quite literally, the new FX processors sired by Bulldozer are very large. Clocking in somewhere between 1.2 and 2 billion transistors, they are twice as complex as any previous AMD desktop CPU.

That's fine if you're slapping the competition around with large benchmark results. If you've got the biggest performing processor, you can attach an equally large sticker price.

As it turns out, however, Bulldozer is struggling to match the performance of Intel chips with little more than a billion transistors.

Frankly, Bulldozer FX doesn't even compare all that well with some of AMD's own chips packing fewer than a billion transistors.

Bulldozer's problems become especially vexing when you dig down into the architectural details. The big idea with Bulldozer is beating Intel at the multi-threading game. Put simply, there are two ways you can add threads to a CPU.

Most obviously, you can drop in more cores, but you can also allow a single core to process more than one thread.

Playing with threads

The latter option is known as simultaneous multi-threading or SMT for short.

Intel has offered SMT for the better part of a decade, dating right back to the Northwood version of the Pentium 4. In fact, the very first Willamette P4 also had Hyper-Threading (HT) support, as Intel calls it, but it was never switched on.

The early P4 flavour of HT was never that impressive.

It duly disappeared around the same time Intel gave up on chasing high frequencies and changed its focus to power efficiency and multi-core processing with the introduction of the Core 2 family.

However, the basic idea was sound and Intel proved just that when it reintroduced Hyper-Threading with the Nehalem architecture in late 2008. Switching on Hyper-Threading boosted system performance by up to 25 per cent.

Critically, however, that performance increase comes at the cost of very few transistors. Intel's Hyper-Threading is all about using existing resources more efficiently, not bolting on more bits.

In that context, the challenge for AMD was to come up with a CPU architecture that met the dual challenge of increasing the thread count without ballooning the transistor count. And all the while it had to do so more effectively than Hyper-Threading.

AMD's solution is the Bulldozer module.

In simple terms, it's a halfway house between bunging in more cores and Intel's 'multithreading lite' in the form of Hyper-Threading.

A Bulldozer module has a pair of integer execution units, each with its own scheduler. But the rest it effectively shared. So, that's just one decode and fetch and a single floating point scheduler feeding a lone floating point engine, albeit composed of dual 128-bit FMACs.

Now, exactly how effective this would turn out in terms of actual multi-threading performance was pretty much impossible to predict. Predictably, AMD said the Bulldozer was SMT done right, inferring that Intel's HT was SMT on the cheap.

Bulldozer's modular design also threw into doubt the very notion of a CPU core. Did a Bulldozer module count as one seriously hefty core? Or is it a sort of dual-core processor lite? Again, only testing Bulldozer would give us the answer.

Bull-dozy

However, one thing that we were certain about was that a Bulldozer-based chip with four modules and therefore four or eight cores – depending on how you look at it – would end up being a lot smaller in size and transistor count than a conventional eight-core processor.

After all, if it wasn't, AMD may as well have produced a full-on eight-core chip without risking any performance losses associated with Bulldozer's shared resources.

So here's the bombshell.

AMD's six-core Phenom II X6 processor packs precisely 904 million transistors. A quad-module Bulldozer FX chip weighs in at a scarcely believable two billion transistors. Now, it's true that the Phenom II X6 has just 9MB of cache to the FX's 16MB, but that alone is not enough to account for all those extra transistors.

The problem for AMD really hits home when you postulate the kind of performance it might have achieved with a straight forward eight-core update to the Phenom II architecture.

Some simple maths suggests it would be both much faster across the board than a quad-module Bulldozer FX and also smaller and cheaper to manufacture. Meanwhile, hypothetical 10- or even 12-core Phenom IIs would probably fit inside Bulldozer's two billion transistor count and not only blow it away, but very possibly give Intel a run for its money, to boot.

Hell, even Intel's mighty Gulftown six-core chips only swallow up 1.17 billion transistors.

Exactly how AMD ended up with a two-billion transistor chip with at best eight cores and at worst just four, we may never know for sure.

However, one theory mooted by former AMD engineer Cliff Maier is that the explanation involves AMD abandoning hand-tuned circuit design. Instead, Maier claims, AMD has shifted to an entirely automated design process. He also says that circuits designed with automated tools are not only 20 per cent bigger than hand or human-tuned circuits, but 20 per cent slower, too.

Whatever the truth, the upshot is that AMD's FX chips measure 315mm2, which is 50 per cent larger than Intel's Gulftown, a chip that easily outperforms the FX and sells for as much as three to four times the price.

Middling AMD

How much this all matters to you and us depends on the time frame you are considering.

AMD has set FX prices that allow it to compete quite well against Intel's middle to higher performing LGA 1155 processors, such as the Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2600K.

That's all fine and dandy for now. We would advise anyone looking for a chip costing between £100 to £200 to give AMD FX a look.

But in the longer term, letting such a big and expensive chip go for comparatively pitiful prices (remember, Intel's top chips go for anywhere between £400 and £820) cannot possibly be sustainable.

Unfortunately, the fall out may already have begun.

AMD recently announced a round of 10 per cent redundancies affecting pretty much every part of its business. Whether AMD as we know it will survive has become a very real question.

In the meantime, what seems very clear is that another failed CPU design will very probably kill the company. From here on in, every significant product salvo must be on target.

If that's the state of play at AMD, it also provides the context for Intel's most recent CPU launches.

We speak of the new Core i7-2700K and the all-new Core i7-3000 series.

The former takes the tried and tested quad-core Sandy Bridge die and merely ups the nominal clockspeed from 3.4GHz for the 2600K up to (wait for it) 3.5GHz. Not terribly exciting, but easy enough to understand. Critically, the 2700K is only around £20 more expensive than the 2600K. So while you're not getting much more performance, you're not paying a lot extra for it, either.

It's therefore the new Core i7-3000 series that's most intriguing, both in terms of what it might do to high-end PC performance and what it says about Intel's current attitude. All Core i7-3000s are based on the new Sandy Bridge E core.

The first big surprise for us was a total core count – it maxes out at just six.

Not only has Intel already been offering six cores on the desktop for nearly two years. It's been flogging server CPUs with up to 10 cores for a while, too.

Okay, those chips sell for several thousand pounds a pop. But at the very least we were expecting Sandy Bridge E to bring eight cores to desktop computing for the first time.

Playing hide the cores

But the really big surprise came when we saw the die plot image provided by Intel.

Like any plot, it showed the functions of each block on the CPU die in broad brush terms. For Sandy Bridge E, that involves a large lump of cache in the middle, cores down each side and uncore kit including I/O and the memory controller above and below.

The difference, however, was a pair of unlabelled blocks, one each side of the cache memory pool. And it was very clear these blocks were disabled CPU cores.

Yup, It turns out that Sandy Bridge E is an eight-core chip after all. We've seen CPUs with disabled cores before, of course. It's one of AMD's favourite ruses, allowing additional processor models to fill niches, reducing the need to spin up multiple chips and minimising the number of processor dies that end up in the bin.

The thing is, Intel has always been a bit sneery about AMD's core-disabled chips, even inferring that it wouldn't lower itself to such cheap shenanigans. But here we are with an Intel chip with disabled cores.

What on earth is going on? Well, in our view, it's pretty straightforward – Sandy Bridge E isn't running in full eight-core mode because it doesn't need to.

AMD isn't even close to challenging Intel at the top of the performance tables.

Meanwhile, thanks to optimisations to Sandy Bridge cores compared with the previous Nehalem architecture, even with the same core count as Gulftown, the new i7-3000 chips have a modest but unmistakable performance advantage.

For Intel, therefore, it makes sense to ship today with six cores, allowing the use of processor dies with broken cores that would otherwise be thrown away.

Meanwhile, should AMD release a revised Bulldozer chip that unexpectedly raises the stakes, Intel can simply flip the switch on the hidden cores and open up the gap once again.

That's all pretty frustrating.

We'd much prefer to see Intel pushing the envelope, not dragging its feet. On the other hand, you could argue LGA 2011 in its entirety is pretty irrelevant to most desktop users, even to most enthusiasts.

However, in a parallel universe where AMD's Bulldozer was putting Intel under serious pressure, it's easy to imagine Intel releasing a six-core processor for the mainstream LGA 1155 socket and placing it at roughly the same £250 price point as existing LGA 1155 chips.

However you slice it, then, we're all paying a little ourselves for AMD's failure to take the fight to Intel.

In that context, now is definitely one of the trickier times to pick your next processor. The new FX chips are certainly competitive at the price points AMD has chosen. But do you really want to buy into a platform – and even a CPU manufacture – with such an uncertain future?

At the same time, the launch of Sandy Bridge E has just made Intel's LGA 1155 platform look a whole lot less attractive.

The problem, as ever, is that Intel's split socket strategy puts the kibosh on the upgrade path. As it stands, there's no significant upgrade path beyond four cores for LGA 1155. That's something that's not even set to change when Intel releases its 22nm Ivy Bridge processors next year.

Overall, then, it's not an ideal situation. There's not a perfect platform among AMD's AM3+ or Intel's LGA 2011 and LGA 1155 options. And as long as AMD struggles, all things chip-related will remain a little uncertain.

It's a complicated process then, buying a new CPU, so what processor is right for you?

We've checked out the best CPU technology available so there's no need to worry, come with us and find out where to put that hard-earned cash.

Processor Reviews

It's definitely not one of the easiest times in processor history to be choosing your next upgrade.

The best you can do is choose your budget carefully, peruse our reviews and benchmark results and choose the socket, platform and CPU that best meets your needs.

Today's PC processors aren't quite as quick or as affordable as they could be, but there are still some pretty effective chips out there in terms of bang for buck.

Intel Core i3-2100 - £95

Take a cheap chip. And clock the living bejesus out of it. This, friends, has long been the path to great PC performance for the pathologically penniless.

Enter, therefore, the Intel Core i3-2100. Like it or lump it, Intel has by far the best CPU architectures today and the feisty little 2100 is part of its latest generation of chips, known as Sandy Bridge.

With an unlocked multiplier, this thing could seriously rock. Without one, it's merely OK.

Read TechRadar's Intel Core i3-2100 review

AMD FX 4100 Black Edition - £100

Consider the AMD FX 4100. We can't be absolutely sure about this without official confirmation, but we reckon it's based on the very same two-billion transistor processor die as the range-topping FX 8150.

The difference is that two of the 8150's four Bulldozer modules have been nuked from orbit.

The best that can be said about this dual-module Bulldozer is that it's not far behind its triple and quad-module brethren in games.

If only they weren't all off the pace.

Read TechRadar's AMD FX 4100 review

AMD FX 6100 - £140

When is a six-core PC processor not a six-core PC processor? When it's AMD's new FX 6100.

Long before AMD released its fancy new FX chips, we had a feeling a fisticuffs was brewing over the definition of what constitutes a processor core. Now the FX has arrived and the gloves are off.

At stock clocks and with the final module hidden, it's not terribly exciting. However, if it turns out that most of all 6100s will happily run with the final module enabled, it might just be worth a roll of the dice.

If that happens, we'll be more than happy to upgrade the 6100's status to buy.

Read TechRadar's AMD FX 6100 review

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T - £150

Little did we, or frankly AMD, know how good we had it with the Phenom II X6 1100T.

Only now, with the release of AMD's all-new Bulldozer architecture and the FX processors it powers, can we truly put what was once known as Hammer into full context.

It's not that far off when it comes to threading. But it also ponies up that little bit more per-core performance that could make the difference between smooth frames rates and the occasional chugging that really spoils the experience.

It's a bizarre thing to be asking, But please, AMD, have another go with the Hammer.

Read TechRadar's AMD Phenom II X6 1100T review

Intel Core i5-2500K - £170

Odd as it is for a CPU that's a year old to still offer the most advanced computing technology available, the Core i5-2500K feels like an old friend.

Of all Intel's CPUs it seems like the most honest, the most straight forward. If you're a keen gamer, it's probably still the fittest for purpose.

Only the higher clocked 2700K has it beaten. That's beyond impressive for a relatively elderly and affordable chip.

Chuck in the ability to go well beyond 4GHz on air cooling and you have an unbeatable package.

Read TechRadar's Intel Core i5-2500K review

AMD FX 8150 - £225

Eight cores. Over 1 billion transistors. A radical modular architecture. 16MB of cache memory. And Turbo clockspeeds north of 4GHz. How could something that sounds so awesome end up so wrong?

One day, the full story of AMD's troubled new PC processor architecture will emerge. It should make for a fascinating tale. After all, the Bulldozer architecture that underpins the FX 8150 must have seemed like a great idea. It's all about balancing threads with cores with a view to delivering the most efficient and effective processor architecture possible.

However, that two billion transistor count makes it very expensive to manufacture, while its disappointing performance puts a limit on the price tag AMD can attach.

And more than anything else, it's just not a great chip for PC gaming.

Read TechRadar's AMD FX-8150 review

Intel Core i7-2700K - £250

The 2700K is the new de facto king of Intel's line of LGA1,155 models. For us, it's the LGA1,155 socket that's really relevant to PC enthusiasts and gamers, not the highfalutin', server-derived LGA2,011 platform and its quad-channel silliness.

The 2700K, then, is the fastest chip any mere mortal is likely to run in his PC any time soon.

Unfortunately, what it ain't is a big step forward over the existing Core i7-2600K.

What'll she do, mister? The answer during our testing and in the context of air cooling and a modicum of extra voltage is an overclocking speed of 4.8GHz.

A very good result, we think you'll agree. But not materially better than you can expect from most 2600K processors. Again, the game doesn't move on.

Read TechRadar's Intel Core i7-2700K review

Intel Core i7-3930K - £499

The Intel Core i7-3960X is a positively preposterous processor. This is the Intel Core i7-3930K and it's not the same chip. Not precisely, anyway.

We've reviewed the 3960X elsewhere and deemed it disappointing, moderately sinister (it's prima facie evidence of Intel carpet bagging in response to AMD's failure to bring out a really quick chip) and largely irrelevant to human existence.

So, here's the best bit. The 3930K costs over £300 less.

OK, £500 is still a big ask. But the difference in price alone is enough to buy a half decent desktop PC or a cheap laptop.

The point, then, is that this cheaper Sandy Bridge E gives you everything the top chip delivers for a lot less money. There's absolutely no reason to spend any more.

We're not completely convinced even this truly means the 3930K is good value for money. But it's still a very fast processor and the chip we'd buy if we had a big budget.

Read TechRadar's Intel Core i7-3930K review

And the best CPU is...

We'll be honest. This isn't quite the CPU super we'd been hoping to bring you.

That's not because we couldn't get hold of the right chips. Au contraire. We've all the latest and greatest from both Intel and AMD. That includes examples of epic new high-end architectures alongside much more modest chips and some old favourites in between.

No, the reason why it's not quite the test we were planning is simply because AMD and Intel's latest salvoes in silicon didn't turn out how we were expecting. Both disappoint but for very different reasons.

Ultimately, the biggest bummer is AMD's failure with the new Bulldozer FX chips.

They aren't entirely without merit. The two cheaper chips, the six-thread FX 6100 and quad-thread 4100, will be particularly interesting if it turns out that most buyers are having success re-enabling the hidden cores.

Instead, it's the FX's failure to put Intel under any meaningful pressure that's most damaging and in turn explains why Intel has been able to be so very conservative with its own processors.

The new six-core Core i7-3930K is undoubtedly a very fast CPU. But it would be even faster with the final two cores enabled. And we can't see any reason why Intel wouldn't do so.

Apart from the simple fact that the 3930K has no direct competition, that is.

We smell something similarly fishy wafting forth from the new Core i7-2700K. A clockspeed bump of 100MHz is barely worth the bother. But it's enough to give Intel a new product to sell and there's nothing AMD can do about that. It simply doesn't have a product capable of forcing Intel's hand.

All of which means the two most interesting processors here turn out to be the oldest, too.

More than anything, AMD's six-core Phenom II X6 1100T proves the folly that is Bulldozer. It's much quicker per core and it's not that far behind in multi-threading.

In the context of a transistor count that's half as big as Bulldozer, that's ridiculous. The 1100T is a chip that could always make an argument for itself, but we didn't expect Bulldozer's arrival to make it look even better.

Thus by process of elimination, you know what's coming next.

That's right, our winner once again is our old favourite, the Core i5-2500K. Like the Phenom II X6 1100T, the arrival of disappointing new products has only served to enhance the appeal of the 2500K.

It's not absolutely perfect. It would take Intel to flick the switch on Hyper-Threading for that to be true. We all know that's not going to happen.

It's therefore not the ideal chip for heavy multi-threaders including video encoding enthusiasts (with the possible exception of those who are happy with Quick Sync's restrictions).

For everyone else, and especially for gamers, the 2500K remains the champion chip it always was.

Buy one and we guarantee you won't regret it.

Buying Guide: Best motherboard: 15 top choices

2012-01-09T22:05:00.000-08:00

Best Intel motherboards

Now that AMD Bulldozer and Intel Sandy Bridge E CPUs are out, we have a short break before next year's big refresh cycle kicks in with Trinity and Ivy Bridge.

That gives us time to sit back, take stock and figure out which are the best motherboards money can buy right now.

Your choice of platform between Intel and AMD is a somewhat personal one. While Intel has it all sewn up in terms of raw performance and power usage, AMD's still competing well on price largely and motherboards for its new FX chips are much cheaper.

If you just want a low power, cheap PC, AMD's Fusion CPU/GPU hybrids offer better graphics performance than the equivalent Core i3 or Atom chips from Intel.

As CPUs get more energy efficient, though, the days of the giant PC tower are clearly numbered – the real choice is less about which manufacturer you want, and more about size.

Which is why, for this revision to our motherboard buyer's guide, we've included a new category: small form factor boards.

With high end chipsets like the Z68 squeezed into mini-ITX packages, there's almost nothing a big PC can do that a tiny one can't – and they also come in a lot cheaper. Just think about it, OK?

1. Asus Sabertooth X79 - £259

If you want the best of the best, you'll be after one of Intel's new six core Sandy Bridge E processors. These enormous processors require a 2011 pin motherboard socket with quad channel memory support to get the most out of them, which is exactly what the Sabertooth delivers. Right along with most of the overclocking features and multi-GPU support that appears in ASUS' big money Republic of Gamers boards, but for a lot less cash.

Read our Asus Sabertooth X79 review

2. Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 - £77

A PC built around X79 and Sandy Bridge E probably won't need upgrading until the sun goes supernova. But if you're happy to settle for something a little more realistically priced that will merely outlive civilisation as we know it, then grab a socket 1155 Core i5 or Core i7 chip and Gigabyte's astoundingly cheap Z68 board. It's got all the added extras of Z68, including Hydra multi-card graphics support and Intel's brilliant SSD caching technology, for around half the cost of its rivals.

Read our Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 review

3. MSI Z68A-GD65 - £142

Any other full sized Intel board is going to struggle against the Gigabyte above, because it really is very cheap. But MSI comes closest with this fully featured Z68 board that has tons of overclocking options with its automated Genie II system, as well as two more SATA 6Gbps sockets for ultra fast hard drives.

Read our MSI Z68A-GD65 review

4. ASRock Z68 Pro Extreme 4 - £95

On the off chance you don't want to include a discrete graphics card in your next PC and yet aren't interested in a small form factor system, Asrock's Z68 Extreme 4 is the motherboard of choice thanks to a huge variety of video out ports for Sandy Bridge processors. Fortunately, that's not all it has to offer, mind, as it also boasts good passive cooling for all the onboard components and a fair amount of overclocking overhead too.

Read our ASRock Z68 Pro Extreme 4 review

5. Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3-ISSD - £164

Unless you're planning to go for massive overclocks, there's little to be gained by spending more than £100 on an Intel motherboard at the moment. Little, that is, apart from the inclusion of a small SSD drive specifically designed to make use of Intel's SRT smart caching technology. The 20GB drive fits into the special mSATA adaptor below the CPU socket, and intelligent algorithms keep your most commonly accessed files there for fast access.

Read our Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3-ISSD review

Best AMD motherboards

1. ASRock Fatli1ty 990FX Professional - £150

This AMD 990FX board is as fully featured as they come in terms of Crossfire X compatibility the ability to overclock and number of on board SATA 6Gbps ports (it has six). Apart from the fact it'll look good in a windowed case, though, there's also some added extras for gaming, like the dedicated USB port for mice, which can have its polling rate adjusted in a Windows app.

Read our ASRock Fatli1ty 990FX Professional review

2. ASUS M5A99X Evo - £98

If it's value you're after, then it's hard to argue with AMD's second tier 990X chipset which forms the core of the ASUS M5A99X Evo. You may lose out on a second full speed PCI Express port and a handful of SATA 6Gbps ports, but everything else about it is designed to eke out every bit of performance Bulldozer can offer. As far as overclocking and BIOS control goes, it's second to none.

Read our ASUS M5A99X Evo review

3. ASUS RoG Crosshair V Formula - £170

As much as we like ASUS' top of the line Republic of Gamer motherboards they're usually quite hard to recommend because they cost more than most PCs do. With the Crosshair V Formula, though, you get a full size motherboard, Bulldozer FX support and built in Creative X-Fi sound, all for a relatively reasonable price when pitched against its peers. It's almost endlessly tweakable even when it's not fully turned on: a Bluetooth link give you access to the BIOS from a mobile phone.

Read our ASUS RoG Crosshair V Formula review

4. Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7 - £196

Want an AMD processor but multi-card NVIDIA graphics? You're in luck, because the Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7 has everything rival high end 990FX boards do, and four way SLI support as well. Throw in a massive eight SATA 6Gbps connectors and you could build a formidable system around this – if you don't mind paying a bit more, that is.

Read our Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7 review

5. MSI 970A-G5 - £69

The real strength of AMD's current line up is the price. You can get a six core Bulldozer CPU for less the £140 at the moment, which means that with this motherboard you can build a lightning fast system for under £210. Currently retailing for under £70, the 970A-G5 from MSI could be the base of a low cost games machine, with support for two Radeon graphics cards in CrossFire mode and a decent amount of overclocking.

Read our MSI 970A-G5 review

Best Small Form Factor motherboards

1. ASRock Z68M-ITX/HT - £94.03

Mini-ITX is the smallest form factor of motherboard currently available, but thanks to the sterling work of some motherboard designers, there are plenty of options if you want the fastest CPUs possible in your media centre. ASRock's Z68 is a cut above most of the competition, thanks to room for a full size graphics card and THX sound built in.

Read our ASRock Z68M-ITX/HT review

2. Zotac A75-ITX WiFi - £105

Pair this tiny motherboard with one of AMD's Llano processors, and you've got a decent shoe box system that can do anything from office work to gaming. The on board graphics of a Llano hybrid make it a far more rounded chip that Intel's Sandy Bridge: you'll sacrifice a little raw CPU power for a lot of gaming grunt.

Read our Zotac A75-ITX WiFireview

3. MSI A75MA-G55 - £81

The drawback of mini-ITX systems is trying to get enough cooling inside the case to make the cut down size worthwhile. MSI's Llano compatible motherboard uses the slightly larger microATX form factor, which will still fit inside a small case but gives you extra room for a quieter heatsink and better all round airflow. Plus, it's good value too.

Read our MSI A75MA-G55 review

4. Zotac IONITX-P-E - £147

Can't be bothered choosing a chip to go with your motherboard? How about this mini-ITX system in a box which has absolutely everything you need ready assembled? CPU power is provided by the unusual Intel Celeron SU2300, which is paired with NVIDIA ION graphics of the type more commonly seen in netbooks. It doesn't come close to the performance of a Sandy Bridge or Llano PC, but for the size and price it's an unusual and worthwhile design for a HD media centre or living room machine.

Read our Zotac IONITX-P-E review

5. Zotac Z68-ITX WiFi - £130

All you need is a bargain basement Intel Core i3 and some memory, and you've got everything required for a very capable media centre or office machine with WiFi built in. Zotac is aware of the problems that Intel's on board graphics have with games, though, so has included a single PCI Express slot for a discrete graphics board, which means this could be the basis for an unusually small games machine too.

Read our Zotac Z68-ITX WiFi review

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Tutorial: Best codecs for video and how to encode

2012-01-09T21:35:00.000-08:00

Best codecs for video

Our mobile devices are faster, the way we watch videos on our TVs has changed, and the way we buy and store content is completely different from 20 years ago. We're in the middle of a home media revolution, where shelves of DVDs are being pushed into NAS boxes and discreetly hidden away.

We're only in the infancy of this revolution, though. That means we've yet to find a definitive method, and there are as many good solutions as there are pitfalls.

Codecs are the best example. If you've had anything to do with digitised video over the last 10 years, you'll know that video performance is dominated by the black art of manipulating these encoding and decoding programs. Finding the right one is a balancing act between the amount of processing that goes into creating the video file and the amount required to decode it.

Too much on the input and you'll be waiting until next Wednesday for your file. Too little and the new generation of HD decoders plugged into your TV won't have enough grunt to reconstruct the video stream at 60fps.

Codecs call for careful consideration. That's why, for high definition, it's often better to use a codec designed specifically for the job rather than one from the '90s shoe-horned into a higher bit-rate and resolution than it was ever intended for.

The same is true for any other disparate playback devices. You get the best results from a movie encoded specifically for your usage scenario, whether that's mobile access across the 3G network or playback on a wireless tablet.

We're going to help you solve these challenges using a mix of hand-on tweaks, free software and plenty of acronyms, taking you from 1990s DVD diva to 21st century streaming media mogul. You'll find everything you need to become an expert over the next six pages.

The best codecs

Best codec for high definition

H.264 & MKV

Before we start, we need to first make a distinction between the codec used to store the video data and the container used to encapsulate everything else, because the two are often confused.

The most popular container for high definition content, for example, is called Matroska, as denoted by its MKV file extension. Matroska isn't a codec in itself, because it doesn't define how to encode and decode the video data - it simply stores the bytes from a codec in such a way that MKV-compatible applications know where to find everything for playback. That could be the video, audio and subtitle data (if present), all of which can be encoded using different MKV-compatible formats and codecs.

That's why you always have a choice of which video codec to use with a container. With MKV files, for example, the choice is usually between H.264, MPEG-4 and VP3, the latter of which is based on Theora. All three use similar technology, but the first two are far better than the third.

For high definition, we'd recommend H.264. This is often represented by x264, which is the free software implementation of the codec.

Bit-rates and resolution are important too. 1080p source material has 2.25 times more pixels than 720p, and higher rates can be harder to decode on your playback hardware. As a rough approximation, we recommend generating a file with a size within the 8-12GB region for a typical two-hour HD movie. To maximise quality, aim for a 12GB+ file with a bitrate of 10+ Mbps.

As for the choice of audio codec, this is down to your AV setup's capabilities. Our preference is not to touch the audio at all and use the 'pass-through' option in your encoding software. DTS and AC3 audio streams can be passed within MKV, and this will embed an exact copy of the audio tracks, as found on your original media, within the MKV file, which should play back on your equipment the same way it would with the original.

Best codec for streaming

MPEG-4

H.264 has become one of the most common codecs for high-quality streaming across the internet thanks to portals like YouTube and Vimeo. It's therefore no surprise that it's good at providing a high quality, homogeneous and predictable video stream across a limited bandwidth.

It's a great choice for streaming too, if you encode your video and drop it into a MOV or MP4 file, but we've found that its closely related alternative, MPEG-4, offers a similar pedigree and is usually a better choice at low bitrates over limited bandwidth.

The relationship between MPEG-4 and H.264 is complicated, as they're both parts of a wider MPEG-4 specification, but it's also a codec that's closely related to the data on a DVD that's streamed as digital television. That means it can produce better and more robust results under bandwidth and processor limitations.

There are as many container formats for MPEG-4 as there are for H.264. They include stalwarts like AVI, MOV and the raw transport stream (TS), which you will often have found dumped from your DVB hardware, as well as newer variants like MP4 and MKV. Which you choose will depend on the compatibility of your playback device, but encoding them shouldn't be too difficult.

The only reliable free tool is the open source FFMPEG utility, which you can use to create MPEG-4 compatible files, although there are plenty of expensive commercial options available that may stick closer to the original specification.

When it comes to encoding, the main limiting factor is available bandwidth rather than playback hardware. You may want to stream video across a wireless-N network, for example, and while its specification may boast a transfer speed of 108Mbps, the results are seldom as fast as promised.

Thanks to the vagaries of distance, interference, other users and hardware, wireless 802.11n is seldom fast enough for high definition video, and anything with a lower bandwidth is going to require a compromise. The same is probably true of your broadband connection. You might want to stream videos across the internet from your NAS, for instance, but this operation will be limited by your broadband upload speeds, which are often far less than 2Mbps.

This means you need to find a compromise between resolution, bandwidth and quality that hits your bandwidth sweet spot, and unlike the limitless world of high definition, you'll also need to compress the audio. The codec you choose will depend on the playback hardware, but the most common options is MP3 encoded through Lame.

Best codec for iOS

H.264 and MOV

Even Apple's portable devices are constrained by bandwidth and hardware. That means you need to make as many cuts as you can without sacrificing quality. If you're encoding video for playback on an iPad, for example, it makes good sense to scale your original material to 1,024 x 768 before encoding.

This is good practice for any encoding job where you know the end platform is the only place your files are likely to be played. You should also consider whether you plan to output the video from the device to a bigger screen. For example, you can connect an iPad to a TV and get 720p output, which may affect your choice of resolution. Apple's mobile devices also combine with the software to provide excellent video acceleration, getting the best possible video quality and battery life from your device.

In order to capitalise on these advantages, your video files need to adhere to Apple's strict codec discipline, which at least makes the job of choosing a codec easier. For best results on your iOS device, you need to choose an MOV container using the H.264 codec. 29.97fps (NTSC) is the best framerate to choose, which you can enter as 30,000/1,001 if you're using FFMPEG, and audio should use the AAC codec with a bitrate of around 160kbps.

Best codec for Android

H.264 or AAC-LC

Android devices don't have the same degree of lock-in as their Apple counterparts, which means you're free to install a media player like VLC that can handle many kinds of video file. There's no standard hardware configuration, so playback performance and capability are specific to each device.

Many will accelerate Flash, or even DivX files, because hardware acceleration is more general and not limited to a single codec, but there are still some Google-endorsed standards based on H.264 and MPEG-4. Google's documentation recommends H.264 with a bitrate of 500kbps, and AAC-LC at 128kbps for audio.

Resolution should be the same as the destination device, and you can use an MP4, 3GP or even a raw TS as a container. Google now has its own container and codec combination in WebM. This is also worth a try, because the VP8 codec it uses is closely related to H.264 and is likely to benefit from acceleration now that Google owns Motorola's smartphone division.

The law

Here in the UK, when you format-shift your CD and DVD collection from the discs you own to another device, you're currently breaking the law. That's because, in legal terms, only the owner of the copyrighted material can permit its duplication.

This is also a law that's been openly flouted since the 1980s, when we all started taping singles from the top 40 countdown on a Sunday evening. Music and video players, from Microsoft's Zune to Apple's iPod, have been allowed to flourish despite this obvious flaw in UK law.

This is unlike the US, which has a fair-use caveat that allows personal copying if you're moving the media to a different device for personal use, but things in the UK could be about to change.

The Hargreaves report on intellectual property, a preview of which was published in May [PDF], recommends that the government amends the rules on format shifting to allow for a stance similar to that of the US.

In August, the cabinet declared its full support for those recommendations, hopefully paving the way for a change in the law. Until then, you can't legally copy a DVD or CD that you own and stream it to another device. Consider yourself warned.

Handling audio

We've spent a lot of space discussing video encoding, but in some ways, audio can be even more important. When you're streaming a movie, video data can be scaled to fit the end resolution and format regardless of the input format, but audio isn't as flexible.

If you only include the surround channels, and your playback device supports only stereo, you won't typically hear anything. Some players can downmix a surround stream, but not many, and the ones that can are usually PC-based.

The solution is to encode the stereo and surround tracks if you want to keep the surround data, or just the stereo mix if you don't. Tools like Handbrake will let you downmix a surround stream if that's the only one available, or choose the stream you want to encode from the Track dropdown menu.

If you want to re-encode a surround stream, you can usually choose between AC3 and DTS, depending on which codecs are installed, and lower their bitrates. This will preserve the multi-channel aspect of the audio, but you will need to make sure your playback device is connected digitally to an amplifier that can decode it.

How to encode your movies

Encode your movies

Provided you're legally entitled to do so, getting your data off an optical disc and onto your streaming server or portable device isn't difficult. There are two stages.

The first decodes the disc and grabs the raw data from it, so you'll need the hardware required by your media. This step might be redundant if the source of your material is a legitimate unlocked download, or perhaps a recording from a digital television receiver or PC-based DVB card.

The second stage takes this raw data and runs it through the number crunching routines that generate the final file. Success on the first part depends on the protection used by the source disc. If there's none, then you'll be able to copy and encode your movies in a single step. If there's encryption, then you'll first need to remove this from the data before you can begin the transcoding stage.

Selling software that side-steps this protection is legally dubious, especially in the UK, but there are free tools available that will do the job, leaving you with either a copy of the DVD on your hard disk, or a new ISO burned to disk.

The best tool we've found for transcoding is called Handbrake. This is an open source application that harnesses the power of several free codecs, including FFMPEG, x264 and libtheora, and turns your video data into a file you can easily stream or move to a portable device. You don't even need to worry about the intricacies of codec configuration.

Handbrake includes a list of profiles you can use to quickly select the end device to load the best values into the codecs. These can be previewed and altered before you commit yourself to the final process.

Encoding a film, especially in high definition, can easily take several hours. But the length of time is dependent on the power of your system, so this might be a good time to upgrade that aging Core2Duo you're sitting at.

How to encode your movies with Handbrake

1. Select a source

We installed the the nightly build of Handbrake because it often has cutting edge features and speed improvement, but the official release is more stable. When you run it, you need to select the source location for your movie. After clicking in the 'Source' icon, select the optical drive, folder or file you want to convert.

2. Choose a profile

Once Handbrake has scanned for chapter information, select a preset for the destination format and choose a title from the source. If your presets don't include Android devices, choose 'Reset' from the Options menu. Handbrake defaults to the longest title, which is probably what you need unless you're after the outtakes.

3. Tweak presets

Adjust the video and audio encoding options to suit your own requirements (see the main text for some hints), and use the 'Picture' page to change the resolution, if required. You can use the 'Preview' window to generate a 10-second clip with your settings, then click 'Start' to generate the final file.

How to build the best media PC

Transcoding a video from one format to another takes a lot of CPU power, so a powerful machine will save you hours of waiting and, eventually, your sanity. But before you hand over your credit card details to your favourite retailer, you should first consider whether an upgrade is really necessary and how often you're likely to want to encode a movie.

Initially you'll want to transfer as much of your current collection as you still watch to your digital library. That's a big hurdle, but also a finite one. It might not be worth investing in the best hardware if it's only going to save you a couple of weeks of pain.

Your super video transcoding PC might become a costly white elephant whose resources you're unlikely to test again after an initial splurge. If you only buy a few movies a month, there's no real need to upgrade your hardware. Anything from the last five years will handle even a high definition movie overnight. That said, if you want an excuse to upgrade your machine, a big encoding job is the perfect opportunity.

Processor overheads

As with any upgrade, the best place to start is with the CPU. Most of the codecs we've mentioned use the free x264 library, which is widely considered to be one of the best available, regardless of price. It will use as much processing power as you throw at it, so the CPU question is easily answered with 'the best you can afford'.

If money is no limit, that means something sporting Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture, with its requirement for a LGA1155 CPU slot and memory accelerating potential of up to quad-speed DDR3-1333. We'd recommend the Intel Core i7 2600k, which can now be had for around £240. It has four cores and it's fast.

If you're looking for something a little cheaper, or a CPU that might not require a complete architecture overhaul, AMD's six-core Phenom II X6 Thuban represents great value for money for that amount of processing power, as it can now be bought for around £120.

Video encoding is also hungry for memory, so fit as much as either your motherboard or wallet can take. The more you add, the less your system will have to read either your slow optical drive, or the hard disk.

Unfortunately, graphics cards don't change the CPU equation, despite the promise of GPU-accelerated movie encoding. Modern graphics cards, and the APIs their vendors have built to access their raw number crunching abilities, have failed to offer the advantages that seemed imminent in 2008.

The current consensus on the encoding software that's able to shoe-horn a GPU into encoding duties is that the quality of the output just isn't good enough. As a result, CPU grinding is still the best route for the serious media collector.

The only good news is that this could save you a few pounds, because the latest Sandy Bridge Intel CPU's offer SoC - systems on a chip - and these include graphics. They might not be good enough for the latest games, but they're definitely good enough to show you what you're doing while you fine-tune your Handbrake codec parameters, and for playback.

It might also be worth investing in a screen capable of 1,920 x 1,080 if you want to check the encoding quality of your high definition material without moving it to your television.

Finally, for the hardware, don't forget to add an optical drive that can read your media. SATA II Blu-Ray players can be bought for as little as £50.

With your hardware sorted out, you just need to choose your operating system. There's nothing wrong with whatever version of Windows you've already got, but you will need the latest updates to version 7 for the modern chip designs and drivers, and a 64-bit installation is essential if you've got more than 4GB of RAM at your disposal.

Storage issues

There's no getting around the fact that movies take up a lot of space, which means your storage provision is just as important as the rest of your hardware. Capacity is probably the most important feature to consider, because you may be storing your entire collection on the same machine.

However, you don't need to store all your films on an internal drive. A portable remote drive attached to a PogoPlug is a great solution, as external drives are readily available with 2TB of space, for example, for about £60. Failing that, look for a NAS that offers streaming built-in.

For the internal drive, speed becomes a more important factor. The faster the drive, the more quickly your super-fast CPU will be able to crunch through the data. The fastest drives you can get are solid state, and while they're relatively limited in terms of storage capacity, as long as you're not planning to store the resulting files on the same drive, you won't encouter any problems. You can now get 120GB of SSD storage with a SATA II interface and a 3.5-inch form factor for £140.

Media playback hardware

The hardware you use to access your newly complied media collection is utterly dependent on the device it's being connected to. Our recommended storage solution is a Pogoplug, which is capable of streaming media using a wide variety of protocols. If you're playing your movies on an Android or iOS device, you can download a free app that can access your data through the cloud and stream content directly from your storage device, for example.

Unless you're happy connecting your laptop directly to your TV, you'll need a hardware streaming client. The premium version of Pogoplug, like many other streaming servers, can send video data using the UPnP protocol, and dozens of devices will be able to transform this into high definition video.

You might already have a suitable device sitting under your TV, because two of the most readily accessible devices are Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 games consoles. If you do need a separate unit, we recommend investing in one of the latest Popcorn Hour boxes, which are quiet, simple to use and capable of playing virtually any codec you throw at them.

Local streaming and movies on the go

Local streaming

Now you've got your content encoded and ready to go, learn how to stream it across your local network to any device Networking is the most important part of your setup to get right and can easily become the weakest link in the chain, making all those codec refinements you've just spent an hour on redundant.

There are two principle aspects of networking that affect video streaming. The first is bandwidth, because streaming high definition video is probably the most bandwidth intensive task you're likely to perform, short of running a Tor exit node.

The second is reliability. This is important because even if you have the bandwidth, you also need to ensure that packets are transferred not just quickly, but with enough consistency to ensure your player never goes hungry. It's not like web browsing or downloading game updates - video needs to arrive at your playback device as a predictable and constant stream of blocks.

This provision of data starts at the PC or NAS that holds the videos. Data access needs to be quick enough, which isn't always the case with older units or cheaper NAS devices. You can easily work out how much bandwidth you need because the bitrate value for video encoding is often the same metric used for network speed. If your total bitrate exceeds that of the available bandwidth, you're likely to run into problems.

This competition for bandwidth can cause problems with wireless networks in particular. Any 802.11n wireless gateway will have enough theoretical bandwidth, but not if slower devices are connected at the same time, or if several people are streaming video at once. That's what makes them fail.

The obvious answer is to have two networks - one for video streaming and the other for everything else. Both networks could even be wireless, because several modern wireless routers, like the FritzBox 7390, can now run two frequency bands side by side, effectively offering the advantage of two networks without the hardware overhead. This lets you set your family up on one, for example, and your video network on the other.

As the hub of your network, the router is vitally important. You might want to consider using a standalone switch rather than an ADSL/wireless/router combination, because these are less likely to overheat in use and let you siphon off your video network from your standard connections.

For the ultimate in bandwidth provision, we recommend using a powerline network for your video data and a wireless router for everything else. Ethernet through a powerline network is slightly more costly than wireless, as you'll need a plug capable of AV speeds for both the router, your NAS and each playback client. But if you've already spent a fortune on the equipment that can make the most of HD content, as well as the movies to play on it, the extra £100-150 for those three units is worth it.

They're also plug and play, and after a few button presses, you'll have a network that won't destroy the suspense in the gas station scene from No Country for Old Men just because someone else is microwaving noodles.

The final network consideration is the limit on your upload bandwidth. For domestic ADSL installations, this is likely to be the most limiting factor in streaming your movies to your devices while you're out and about. Typical upload speeds are in the region of 500-800Kbps, for example, which is enough for a low resolution, medium quality film.

But even this number can vary, depending on your distance from the exchange. Users of an ISP that support Annex M, like O2 and Be, or BT's new Infinity broadband will have between 2 and 10Mbps, which are slightly more flexible. But it does mean you'll have to re-encode high definition material for both your television at home and for your portable devices, if you want to stream movies to your phone, tablet or laptop while you're stuck waiting for delayed aircraft at Heathow's Terminal 5.

Movies on the go

Getting content off your LAN and onto the internet can be tricky. You could run your own server, forwarding ports manually and ensuring the setup is secure, or you could use cloud storage like Dropbox, but both are convoluted.

The best option we've found is to use PogoPlug. This is a software and a hardware solution, and the best description of its facilities is that it provides a DropBox replacement where you supply the storage. With the desktop software installed on your PC, for instance, you can share specific files and folders with your online account. As long as your PC is on, you can access those files though a suite of mobile apps, desktop tools and web portals without any further configuration.

If you don't want to leave your PC on, you can buy a hardware PogoPlug unit that will connect to a USB hard drive to provide always-on access.

For movie lovers, the Android and iPhone apps will stream your movies from any PogoPlug source, depending on the video format, and you can use the web browser interface for any other device like a laptop. This works brilliantly at home, where fast wireless provides a seamless stream of data to your palm.

But the PogoPlug software can also stream video outside of your LAN. For a one off $29 payment, you can stream data from your LAN through the internet to any other Pogo-compatible device without any further configuration. This is ideal if you don't have the patience for messing with firewalls or setting up your own servers, and PogoPlugs web interface makes managing your content easy.

Just install the desktop client, select the folders you want to share, and install the client apps on your chosen device. As soon as you've created an account, registered the premium upgrade and synced your collection, you'll be able to stream movies and browse your image collection immediately.

UPnP servers

The PogoPlug is a great plug-and-play solution, but there are many alternatives that may not be quite so convenient but might offer greater flexibility.

Even Microsoft's default media player can act as a UPnP server, automatically streaming your content to other UPnP clients on your network. But another good option is a modern NAS from the likes of Qnap and Synology.

The latest firmware on these boxes include UPnP, iTunes and web streaming without any extra effort, and both manufacturers also offer iPhone and Android helper applications that can be used to view content and upload data to your NAS box while you're out and about. If you need terabytes of storage, a NAS box is the best option.

Alternatively, you can run a server on a PC. This has the disadvantage of always needing to be on to be accessible, but it is cheap. The free TVersity server, for instance, can stream almost any format to any UPnP client and is also very good at converting between formats on the fly. This is great if you've got an MOV file that won't play on a PlayStation 3, for example, because TVersity will make the changes itself.

Stream movies to your mobile with PogoPlug

1. Install the software

A PogoPlug source can be either a desktop application for Windows and OS X, or a hardware device connected to some storage. The desktop option is free if you'll limit your streaming to your LAN, and confi guration is easy. Register an account at PogoPlug.com, install the software and select the folders you want to share.

2. Add the content

You can now add the files you want to have access to. If you've shared your Windows 'My Videos' folder, for example, move your transcoded movie fi les into this folder and log into the web interface. Within a few moments, you should see your content overview updated to include the new fi les you've just added.

3. Watch a movie

Now your content is accessible from your desktop and registered at PogoPlug, you can use any access route to play back your collection. On an iOS device, for example, log in with the same account credentials and navigate to the file. You can stream immediately or download to watch later in another application.

Apple 'in talks' to buy flash memory firm Anobit

2012-01-09T21:05:00.000-08:00

Apple is looking to expand into the flash memory market, with reports that it is digging deep and shelling out up to $500 million for technology firm Anobit.

Anobit knows quite a bit about flash storage – it is at the forefront of the chip technology that enhances flash drive performance and its tech is already used in many of Apple's products, including the iPhone, iPad and the MacBook Air.

Flash focus

It is rare for Apple to buy up a hardware firm, as its usual focus is on snaffling software manufacturers that can improve on Apple's own OS, so if the deal were to go through it would be one of the biggest ever for the company.

Anobit is a hardware company based in Israel with around 200 employees and the deal is thought to be handled by Pitango Venture Capital, the firm which was responsible for selling video search engine Video Surf to Microsoft in November.

LG to show off WiDi televisions at CES 2012

2012-01-09T20:35:00.000-08:00

LG has sealed a strategic alliance with Intel which will see the latter's wireless display technology make its debut in televisions in 2012, and allow people to stream their content from tablets, phones and computer.

Intel's WiDi is all about high quality streaming but has yet to land on televisions; which remains the key screen in the average home.

That's all set to change following Intel's agreement with LG, and the Korean manufacture is hoping that it will give it the edge over its consumer electronics rivals.

Wider variety

"Through this strategic alliance, Cinema 3D Smart TV users will be able to access a wider variety of content in a more convenient manner," said LG Home's Seog-ho Ro.

"Intel WiDi will be one of several features that will enhance the user convenience of our Cinema 3D Smart TVs, further differentiating our products from the competition."

The tech will not be confined to LG televisions either – with the company confirming that the alliance will see WiDi integrated into its key products.

"Intel is planning to expand Intel WiDi technology to various devices to provide con-sumers the seamless, smarter usage experience," said Hee-Sung Lee, Country Manager of Intel Korea.

"Through this collaboration with LG Electronics, LG cinema 3D Smart TV users could also benefit from Intel's WiDi without the need to purchase an external adapter."

The first LG WiDi Cinema 3D products will be on show at CES 2012 –so TechRadar will be hoping to get a little time to see how well the WiDi integration works.

In Depth: TechRadar's best gear of 2011

2012-01-09T20:05:00.000-08:00

TechRadar's best gear of 2011

Every year, we review hundreds of bits of hardware here at TechRadar, and every year the standard gets better and better. The phones get more advanced, the PCs get faster and the TVs get a picture quality we never though possible.

Of course, it can be hard to follow all those reviews, especially when some products get so much hype, but turn out to be disappointing.

Well, we say the best kit always rises to the top, and the list below is definitely the cream of the crop. Our experts selected the products that stood out far above the rest, either because of having top features, excellent quality, a bargain price or all of the above, so you can be sure that this is the best kit of 2011.

Best LCD TV: Philips 46PFL9706H

This Philips set wins out for one very good reason: it produces quite possibly the best 2D pictures we've ever seen from an LCD TV. The Moth Eye filter and direct LED backlighting create an astonishingly good contrast ratio, and the Perfect Pixel HD processing engine helps to create truly beautiful images.

It's smart, too, with plenty of internet-connected features, and 3D support. We should stick in a special mention here for the Samsung UE60D8000, simply for its sheer wow factor. With an almost invisible bezel and impossibly slim form factor, it's as much a work of modern art as it is a television.

Read TechRadar's full Philips 46PFL9706H review

Best plasma TV: Panasonic TX-P55VT30B

Proving that 2011 was a hell of a year for TVs, we not only had the best LCD picture quality ever, but now the best plasma TV ever. This TV sits at the top of Panasonic's range, and it really shows. Images are bright and full of colour, with 3D images a vast improvement over previous plasma models. There's almost no crosstalk (ghosting) at all, meaning you can enjoy visually rich films at their very best.

Read TechRadar's full Panasonic TX-P55VT30B review

Best Blu-ray player: Panasonic DMP-BDT310

This top-of-the-range Panasonic Blu-ray player packs in an extraordinary feature list, including iPhone control, Skype functionality and 2D to 3D conversion, but also manages to produce excellent video performance with 2D or 3D content. And yet, somehow, it's also brilliantly easy to use. It's not cheap, but you get what you pay for and then some with this unit.

Read TechReadar's full Panasonic DMP-BDT310 review

Best compact system camera: Sony Alpha NEX-7

This camera might be pricey and oddly shaped, but its massive pixel count and the best EVF we've seen to date won us over. The tough, lightweight magnesium body helps too, and the manual controls and excellent video quality from the 24-megapixel sensor are ideal for professionals.

It's a close run thing with the Panasonic G3, though, which has an EVF and an articulated touchscreen to help capture images from all sorts of angles.

Read TechRadar's full Sony Alpha NEX-7 review

Best DSLR: Sony Alpha 77

OK, we admit that, strictly speaking, this isn't an SLR, because it has a fixed translucent mirror rather than a standard moving mirror, but to the average user it's the same thing. Well, apart from the fact that it has a phenomenal 12fps maximum continuous shooting rate, full-time autofocus in live view and video mode and an electronic viewfinder (EVF) in place of an optical viewfinder.

The EVF is the same one as in the NEX-7, and it comes as close to an optical unit as we've got yet, but it also shows a range of useful data. The icing on the cake is the A77's 24.3-megapixel sensor, which captures heaps of detail.

Read TechRadar's Hands on: Sony Alpha 77 review

Best compact camera: Canon PowerShot S100

Canon's S95 was one of the most popular compact cameras around, but the company has managed to improve on it with this model, primarily by updating the sensor technology to improve low light performance. Slight modifications to the body also make the S100 much more comfortable to hold and use one-handed that its predecessor, while raw shooting and manual control make this a top all rounder in a small package.

Read TechRadar's full Canon PowerShot S100 review

Best phone: Samsung Galaxy S2

The Samsung Galaxy S2 is here for one simple reason: it absolutely blew away the competition when it was released. It proved that you could have slim good looks and dual-core speed with a big, beautiful screen in one package.

Everything about it works brilliantly, from the obvious, such as the slick interface on the Super AMOLED Plus screen, to the little things, like the speed of the GPS. Samsung raised the bar for mobile phones massively the day the Galaxy S2 came out.

Read TechRadar's full Samsung Galaxy S2 review

Best tablet: Apple iPad 2

The tablet market has grown hugely since the original iPad renewed the world's interest in larger touchscreens, but the iPad 2 was where it really started to grow up. The criticism that tablets were for consumption, rather than creation, were blown away by the combination of dual-core power and apps such as GarageBand, Codify and ArtRage.

The iPad 2 is slicker, thinner and lighter than before, with great apps for absolutely anyone, making it the best tablet out there.

Read TechRadar's full Apple iPad 2 review

Best gaming product: Nintendo 3DS

When the 3DS first arrived, we were massively impressed with the hardware. The analogue Circle Pad feels easy to control, the 3D effect is immediately impressive, and the augmented reality games that are built in really showed off what you could do with the hardware.

But it suffered from a lack of high-quality games for most of 2011, which held it back. Now we've got the likes of Super Mario Land 3D and Mario Kart 7, we're reminded what an engrossing gaming experience the 3DS offers.

Read TechRadar's full Nintendo 3DS review

Best audio product: Atomic Floyd SuperDarts

There are two things you need to know about the SuperDarts: they are really quite expensive; and they sound absolutely amazing. There's no question about it – these headphones are brilliant, and if you can afford them, you should get them. Every nuance and piece of detail in your music will be picked out, and you'll just want to listen to everything anew. Even the Kevlar cables are superb, ensuring that you're not struggling with knots when you want to be listening to your music.

Read TechRadar's full Atomic Floyd SuperDarts review

Best sat nav: TomTom Go Live 825

TomTom already made the best sat-nav devices around, and yet this is even easier to use and more powerful. It's slick and polished in the extreme, with features such as spoken road names and signposting at motorway junctions. There are options for traffic and safety camera updates as well, making this the best sat-nav choice on the market.

Read TechRadar's full TomTom Go Live 825 review

Best ebook reader: Amazon Kindle 4

The latest Amazon Kindle is smaller and lighter than before, but also significantly cheaper. It feels much more mature when it comes to software, and the screen is the best it's ever been. The Kindle Store is still the best place for picking up ebooks, though we will say it's a shame there's no 3G option. That doesn't detract from this being a bona fide bargain.

Read TechRadar's full Amazon Kindle 4 review

More top gear of 2011

Best laptop: Apple MacBook Air 11-inch

The MacBook Air has had an incredible transformation over its life, going from a slower but lighter laptop offering to one of the speediest machines around. With Intel's Sandy Bridge processors powering it and an SSD providing the storage, it comes on from sleep almost instantly, yet offers a huge amount of battery life.

The addition of a Thunderbolt port even means that its relative lack of ports doesn't have to be an issue in the future. This is just an astonishingly fast and polished laptop for its diminutive size and weight.

Read TechRadar's full Apple MacBook Air review

Best desktop PC: Dell Inspiron One 2320

The Dell Inspiron One 2320 is one of the few PCs to really nail the middle ground between computer and media hub. The 23-inch, 1080p screen is great for watching movies on, and it comes with a remote control that lets you get away from the mouse and keyboard.

Conversely, it can also be controlled using its touchscreen. Even the speakers are pretty good for a standard all-in-one PC, and the whole thing can be wall-mounted. It's not a super-powerful gaming powerhouse, but this is a superb home PC for just about any user.

Read TechRadar's full Dell Inspiron One 2320 review

Best printer: HP Photosmart 7510

The Photosmart 7510 wins out here for getting the basics very, very right: it offers stellar printing quality at good speeds. It may not have the most comprehensive feature list, but it's easy to use thanks to it's touchscreen interface, offers double-sided printing and has ePrint and AirPrint functionality. If you want printing done right for a reasonable price, look no further.

Read TechRadar's full HP Photosmart 7510 review

Best processor: Intel Core i5 2500K

Astonishing performance. That's it. That's why the 15 2500K is here. In one move, Intel made its previous range of top-end chips look silly in comparison. It can be overclocked to an astonishing degree, features improved on-board graphics with a blisteringly fast Quick Sync Video feature for encoding video, and all at a mid-range price.

Read TechRadar's full Intel Core i5 2500K review

Best graphics card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 580

You can't argue with raw power, and the GTX 580 has it coming out of every vent. It's the fastest single-GPU card out there, and for those who need to push some serious pixels, there's no better option. The price, admittedly, is a little on the steep side. Okay, quite a lot on the steep side. But for those looking for the best DirectX 11 performance possible, this is the card.

Read TechRadar's full Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 review

Best motherboard: ASRock Z68 Pro 3

This motherboard gets the nod because there's not better value option on the market. It may not be the most friendly for really serious overclockers, and it doesn't support multiple GPUs, but it doesn't skimp on the other high-end features, meaning this is the perfect board to put in a high-performance, low-cost machine.

Read TechRadar's ASRock Z68 Pro 3 review

Best monitor: Asus PA238Q

Normally, when we talk about a monitor with an IPS screen, LED backlighting, HDMI and DisplayPort support, a 100% sRGB gamut and a stand that's adjustable in all directions, we're talking about spending many hundreds of pounds. But this astonishing screen from Asus is just £250. There's been no slacking on the image quality at the price, making this a beautiful monitor that's a true bargain. This is as close to a perfect monitor as we've seen yet.

Read TechRadar's full Asus PA238Q review

Best SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 240GB

The key thing with this SSD is its use of the SandForce SF-2000 controller. Combined with OCZ's flash knowhow, it's capable producing double the speed of earlier drives in this SSD. Only a year ago, you could barely dream of speeds this fast, and though it's true you'll have to pay a big price for the performance, there's no doubting that this is drive to get is speed is your aim.

Read TechRadar's full OCZ Vertex 3 240GB review

Best RAM: G.Skill RipJaws-X 4GB

Though Intel's Sandy Bridge platform has reduced the importance of RAM overclocking, that doesn't mean it's a dead art. These sticks aren't just a bargain at around £50, they're also capable of some serious overclocking. There simply aren't any of the usual trade-offs with this 4GB set, making it the best RAM you can pick up for Sandy Bridge setups right now.

Read TechRadar's full G.Skill RipJaws-X 4GB review

Apple A5 chip production ramped up by Samsung in US

2012-01-09T19:35:00.000-08:00

Apple has decided to bring the making of its A5 chips to the US, with Samsung chosen to create the chips in one of its factories in Texas.

According to Reuters, the two companies have strengthened their flimsy relationship through the medium of processors.

There have been numerous courtroom battles between the Apple and Samsung over similarities between the iPad and iPhone and Samsung's smartphone and tablet line-up.

But, it seems the companies have put their differences aside and Apple is now using Samsung's chip manufacturing plant to create the A5 processor, which can be found in the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2.

According to Reuters, the production facility is the size of nine football pitches and was previously being used to create NAND Flash chips.

A5 production

Samsung had begun manufacturing the A5 chip earlier in the year but now the facility is "dedicated to producing Apple chips".

Both Apple and Samsung have decided to not to comment on their chip-based relationship but they have worked together in the past on the A4 chip.

It's unclear, however, if this relationship will continue for the A6. Back in August, it was reported that chip company Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) had kicked off a trial production run of the A6 processor.

Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO launches

2012-01-09T19:05:00.000-08:00

Star Wars: The Old Republic has launched across the globe – with the MMO hoping to overhaul industry behemoth World of Warcraft with a stellar brand.

The arrival of SW:ToR is a major shot in the arm for PC gaming, bringing the Star Wars brand to the MMO world for the second time following the innovative but ultimately doomed Star Wars Galaxies.

"This is the moment you've been waiting for, Star Wars: The Old Republic is officiallyreleased.
Get your copy today* and join the hundreds of thousands of other players alreadyonline.

This time around it is Bioware that has developed the world – building on the popular single player Knights of the Old Republic franchise – and try to make this a key MMO.

Star Wars fans

"Everyone is coming to this game because they're fans of Star Wars - no-one is a fan of this game because no-one's played this game yet," the game's senior writer Alex Freed told CVG.

"So when people are coming in with these expectations and very strong emotional associations with Star Wars, you don't want to let them down.

"You want to do a story that they're really going to love, that they're going to get excited by, that fits the Star Wars that they want to see while also feeling new and fresh enough.

"Having this many people coming to the game because they love Star Wars... it's a big responsibility. It is something that you worry about now and then."

For the tech world this represents a game that, should it become a success, could be a major boost for the PC, as it battles with the consoles for a share of the gaming market.

Seagate completes purchase of Samsung HDD business

2012-01-09T18:35:00.000-08:00

Seagate has finalised its purchase of Samsung's hard disk drive business –gaining 'select elements' including assets, infrastructure and employees.

American company Seagate has snapped up the HDD business and takes over the likes of Samsung's high capacity 2.5-inch drives along with bringing over some of the key design engineers and senior managers from the Korean company.

"Together, Seagate and Samsung have aligned our current and future product development efforts and roadmaps in order to accelerate time-to-market efficiency for new products and position us to better address the increasing demands for storage," said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO.

Exciting time

"It is an exciting time in the industry with rapidly evolving opportunities in many markets including mobile computing, cloud computing, and solid state storage."

The deal was announced back in April alongside a strategic partnership that will see Seagate drives used in Samsung laptops and Seagate gaining semi-conductors from Samsung for its solid state drives.

"The companies have also extended and enhanced their existing patent cross-license agreement and have expanded cooperation to co-develop enterprise storage solutions," added Seagate's release.

AMD's Radeon HD 7970 gets reviewed

2012-01-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

AMD has just pulled the tarp off its new AMD Radeon HD 7970 Southern Islands graphics card and we can finally unveil our thoughts on its brand new card and architecture.

It's the fastest single-GPU graphics card and also a graphics card of firsts.

The HD 7970 is the first GPU manufactured with 28nm transistors, is the first to support DirectX 11.1 (when that finally emerges) and the first to support PCI Express 3.0.

The first of these firsts is the biggy though and has allowed AMD to jam 4.3 billion of those 28nm transistors into the Tahiti XT graphics processor at its heart.

It also represents a new direction in graphics architecture for AMD, more in line with what Nvidia has been doing for years.

AMD is adamant it is no copycat though.

"From a purely technical point of view, the architecture that we've moved to is similar," says Mike Mantor, AMD Senior Fellow Architect. "On the GPU side though we've been investigating this scalar architecture for some time. We had good ideas how we'd go about it, what our gains would be and the cost of actually implementing it."

As well as being the fastest at stock clocks it's also one hell of a serious overclockers graphics card. We managed to push ours from 925MHz up to 1,125MHz.

The AMD Radeon HD 7970 is also rather expensive.

We don't have final UK prices yet but our best guess is around £450, with future overclocked versions coming in considerably more.

That's good news for Nvidia as it makes the impressive GTX 580 a far more reasonable proposition at just £365.

And talking of Nvidia, it's own new architecture, the Kepler-based graphics cards, will be available early Spring 2012. According to Nvidia insiders it's feeling quietly confident about its ability to compete with the Radeon HD 7970.

We've got a full, in-depth review of the AMD Radeon HD 7970 here.

In Depth: PC tech in 2012: what to expect

2012-01-09T17:35:00.000-08:00

PC tech in 2012: what to expect

With 2011 drawing to a close, it's time to look forward to the technological delights heading our way courtesy of the most resilient and consistent innovative computing platform of them all, the trusty old PC.

This time last year, we got it right on Intel's Sandy Bridge and a relatively stagnant year for PC graphics, were let down by AMD's Bulldozer and jumped the gun on tablets and apps.

For 2012, it's looking like the roles are set to reverse for CPUs and GPUs, laptops PCs are going to be better than ever and the tablets will finally make the mainstream. No really, this time it's true.

Not a vintage year for CPUs

The great hope for the end of 2011 and in turn 2012 and onwards was the arrival of AMD's long awaited – almost mythical - Bulldozer chip, otherwise known as the AMD FX processor. It duly arrived and utterly disappointed.

Not long after, Intel unleashed its latest high chip, the Core i7-3960X, and our worst fears were confirmed. Without any competition at the high end, Intel is taking its foot off the gas. The Core i7-3960X is the fastest PC processor on the planet. But it's only a little quicker than Intel's existing Core i7-990X. More to the point, it could have been much faster. Intel has switched off two of the cores.

Intel says that was always the plan. But we've little doubt things would have been different had Bulldozer presented a stiffer challenge. Anyhow, the prospects for a big leap in high end CPU performance in 2012 are pretty much zero.

At first glance, things don't look much better back in the mainstream. Details of Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge generation of 22nm CPUs have been trickling out. The bad news is that neither core count nor clocks are due for a big change. Four cores remains your lot and clock speeds will top out at 3.5GHz nominally and 3.9GHz with a little Turbo action.

However, the shrink to 22nm will also bring a much more powerful integrated graphics core. If nothing else, that should mean Intel's QuickSync video encode engine gets an upgrade and that should mean insanely quick encode times.

As for AMD, well, we can't see anything too exciting on the horizon for desktop PCs. It'll be all about pricing its new Bulldozer processors to make them as competitive as possible.

Graphics glut

If processor power isn't on the up, at least 2012 should be a good year for graphics. AMD's Radeon HD 6 Series GPUs haven't exactly set the world alight. But we're just days away from dishing the dirt on the new 7 Series and it looks very promising indeed.

Admittedly, AMD's new high-end GPU won't be cheap. But it will put downward pressure on the prices of run out 6 Series boards in the first half of 2012. As more affordable 7 Series cards come on steam, your bang for buck will only improve.

Ultrabooks are coming

Grudgingly we must concede that while Apple perhaps didn't invent the ultra-slim, ultra-light notebook computer, it did establish it as the next big in laptop computing. But like so many Apple products, the MacBook Air has never been particularly affordable until relatively recently. But it's still a Mac.

The good news is that 2012 should see the arrival of whole armies of MacBook Air trampling Ultrabooks from the big names in PC manufacturing. Te Ultrabook is an Intel concoction and the idea behind it isn't terribly radical. At its simplest, it's a thin and light laptop PC with solid state storage.

But as prices for SSDs come down and advances in chip manufacturing make desktop performance possible in ultra-compact form factors while extending battery life towards the al-day ideal, the ultrabook adds the final ingredient to the recipe Apple has been simmering with the Air. Affordability.

Intel wants Ultrabooks to top out at $1,000. In the UK that's means something around £800. That's slightly less than the £849 starting price of the Apple MacBook Air. It's also much cheaper than current high-performance thin and light systems such as the Sony Z. For an idea of what an Ultrabook looks like, check out Asus's delightful Zenbook UX21 .

Of course, Intel's major contribution to the Ultrabook sector in 2012 will be mobile processors from the upcoming 22nm Ivy Bridge family. These won't have a huge impact in terms of performance. But at a given performance point, they'll put the kybosh on both prices and power consumption.

By the end of 2012, you'll be able to choose from a wide range of superlight, relatively highperformance laptop PCs that go all day on a single charge and delivering a computing experience that's indistinguishable from most desktop PCs.

Windows 8 makes the PC tablet-friendly

The tablet PC is the idea that just won't die. In fact, last year we prgonosticated 2011 could be the tablet transition happened, what with Intel's Atom maturing and Apple's iPad 2 pushing the basic tablet concept into the mainstream.

Needless to say, it didn't happen. Is there any reason to think 2012 will be any different? Yes, actually, there is. Microsoft is finally taking mobile platforms seriously and the next release of Windows will include a proper touch interface, not the feeble, half baked efforts we've seen up to and including Windows 7.

If that sounds like a familiar refrain involving promises from Microsoft that never make the transition into reality, may we point you in the direction of Windows Phone and its cutting edge Metro UI. This tile-based interface forms the starting point for Windows 8's tablet edition and it's on another level to anything Microsoft has previously achieved. It even makes Apple's iOS look a little old and crusty.

ARM vs x86

Of course, the arrival of Windows 8 also presages the emergence of an even biger question for the future of the PC. Can it survive death by a thousand cuts from a swarm of ARM-powered chips and devices. Moreover, can a PC be a PC without an x86 processor?

The issue here is the arrival of the first version of Windows with support for ARM rather than x86 processors. It would be a bold prediction to suggest Windows on ARM was going to be the next best thing. But it does add to the general momentum towards a blurring between conventional x86 PCs and ultra mobile ARM-powered devices.

In Depth: Year in tech: the highs and lows of 2011

2012-01-09T17:05:00.000-08:00

Year in tech: the highs and lows of 2011

It was clear back in January that 2011 was going to be the year of the tablet.

Indeed, if 2011 had a shape it was definitely rectangular with rounded corners, but of course there was much more to 2011's tech than that. In 2011 we saw some extraordinary things, said hello to some extraordinary kit and waved goodbye to an extraordinary man.

Where's Windows?

Microsoft didn't unveil Windows 8 as rumoured in January, but it spent most of the year bigging up its forthcoming operating system. A developer preview was made available in September, and by the end of the year we knew pretty much everything about Windows 8 on tablets and Windows 8 in general.

When it wasn't banging on about Windows 8, Microsoft spent most of 2011 jumping out from behind things and shouting "boo!". The first shock was a multi-billion dollar deal with Nokia to make Windows Phone the new OS for Nokia's high-end kit, and the second was when Microsoft plonked down a staggering $8.5 billion for Skype for no other reason than to annoy Google.

It was an odd and arguably overpriced move: as we said at the time, Microsoft "started with an opening bid of 'all the money in the world'."

Rise of the robots

The big news in 2011 was the rise of the robots: Android smartphones. By November, Android accounted for a massive 52% of the smartphone market.

However, while the newly unveiled Ice Cream Sandwich - which unifies the Android codebase so there aren't separate versions for smartphones and apps - is really rather lovely, Android tablet sales have been relatively titchy. ICS promises to change all that, but it'll be a while before it's widespread.

Android also powered success of another kind: Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble's Nook Tablet both have Android underpinnings, albeit heavily customised ones that don't include the standard Google Apps or the main Android Market. Launched amid much hype towards the end of the year, the two non-techy tablets are expected to become big sellers.

More tablets than Moses

When Apple unveiled the iPad in 2010, rivals hooted with derision - but by 2011 they were desperately churning out tablets to try and get a bite of the enormous tablet money pie. Many of them failed, and failed spectacularly: by the Autumn, Apple's rivals were hiding behind shipment numbers to disguise the fact that once their devices had reached shop shelves, they stayed there.

As the year progressed and the mountains of unsold tablets reached terrifyingly large proportions, some firms cracked. HP was first, canning its TouchPad and promising to quit the PC business before changing its mind, selling TouchPads for a packet of sweets and a few shiny beads and promising to stay in the PC business forever and ever and ever.

A question mark now hangs over WebOS, the rather excellent mobile OS HP was/wasn't/was/wasn't going to can. The latest: it's going to be open sourced.

Meanwhile over at RIM, top execs did their best impressions of the Titanic's captain. "The PlayBook is a huge success!" they yelled over the sound of dump trucks unloading thousands of unsold tablets. "We're cutting its price by nearly half because it's so awesome!" they added as RIM shareholders hurled themselves from high buildings.

Even when RIM got lots of free publicity it was the wrong sort: RIM's BlackBerry messaging service, BBM, was widely blamed for being the tool of choice of UK rioters.

In September, we predicted that the combination of the iPad 2 and Kindle Fire meant that "as far as the oh-so-lucrative Christmas shopping period in America is concerned Motorola, RIM, HP and the rest might as well pack up and go home."

We didn't expect any of them to take our advice so quickly.

Apple ascendant

March's iPad 2 launch illustrated three of the key trends of 2011: Apple making really nice kit, Apple kit flying off the shelves, and people being disappointed that Apple didn't make products to meet the specifications invented by a bored man on the internet.

On the eve of the launch we predicted that "all over the internet, people will write about how much of a disappointment it is, how Steve Jobs has lost his touch and how the Motorola Xoom / BlackBerry PlayBook / a piece of wood with a face drawn on it in biro is the new tablet king."

We were right, and the reaction was even more pronounced when the rumoured iPhone 5 turned out to be the iPhone 4S. The only difference between the rumoured device and the real one was the name, so of course half the internet piled on. "Rather than unveil an iPhone 5, Apple merely made the world's most popular smartphone much better," we said. There's no pleasing some people.

It was a busy year for Apple. In addition to a new iPad and new iPhone there was a new version of iOS, iOS 5; a new version of MobileMe, iCloud; a new MacBook Air, and a new OS X, Lion.

The last few years have seen Apple do extraordinary things: in 2011 it was the most valuable technology company on the face of the planet, worth almost as much as Google and Microsoft combined.

The four way fight-fest

In many ways 2011 resembled a tag-team wrestling match, with Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon taking it in turns to put their tanks on one another's lawns. We've already mentioned Amazon versus Android, but the bookseller also launched a cloud-based music service - as did Google, Apple and (via Spotify integration) Facebook.

Google has a social network and now owns a phone and tablet manufacturer, Motorola Mobility; Facebook's encouraging us to forget about Google and live inside its walled garden; Google's making YouTube more like a broadcaster while Apple and Amazon stream TV shows... if there's a market and there's money in it, the big four are fighting it out.

What we've seen this year is a distinct change of emphasis among the world's most valuable tech firms: they're no longer content to stay in one sector, such as making nice bits of kit or running a social network.

If there's a pie, they want a finger in it, whether the filling's music, movies, social networking, books, newspapers, magazines or anything else that can possibly turn a profit.

Freedom fights

We like tradition here in Britain, and we appear to have a new tradition of idiotic attempts to regulate the internet.

In the aftermath of the London riots the Prime Minister seriously considered shutting down social networks in any future unrest, because clearly "the trouble wasn't spreading because of the close-ups of burning buildings shown continuously on the news channels. No. It was spreading because of tech."

Sadly such idiocy was rather common. A great deal of time, effort and money was wasted drawing up plans for widespread web censorship that were subsequently abandoned on the grounds that they were completely sinister. As we explained at the time, "The process, it seems, goes something like this:

BIG COMPANY: Oi! Judge! This website's made of villains and evil!

JUDGE: Blimey, what a well-researched and argued case, with lots of supporting evidence! Let's block it forever!"

While the government changed its mind, organisations such as the BPI are now using the courts to make ISPs block individual sites. The first successful such action ordered BT to block Newzbin2, and it took, oooh, about ten seconds for the site's users to find a way around the block.

There was some good news - in November the EU Court of Justice ruled that ISPs couldn't be forced to install expensive, indiscriminate monitoring and/or filtering systems on the grounds that such systems broke more laws than a London rioter looting JD Sports - but calls for censorship do have worryingly widespread public support. We aren't saying goodbye to this issue as we say goodbye to 2011.

Bye, Steve

We lost a giant in 2011: Steve Jobs, who died in October. As we wrote following Jobs' resignation from Apple in August, "If you were to pitch his story as a script, it'd be rejected for being too far-fetched: a man starts a firm in his garage, changes the world, gets kicked out of his own company, gets into the film business, becomes a billionaire, comes back, changes the world a few more times and ends up in charge of the most valuable company on the face of the planet."

Bill Gates was one of the first world figures to mourn Jobs' passing: "The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.

"For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely." So will we.

Tutorial: 10 New Year's resolutions for your PC

2012-01-09T16:35:00.000-08:00

10 New Year's resolutions for your PC

The New Year is a great time to start using your computer in a safer, more efficient and more exciting way.

Get 2012 off to a flying start with these quick tips.

1. Back up data

We should all back up our important data and documents regularly. Unfortunately, most people only start backing up after losing something irreplaceable. Learn from others' past mistakes and back up your machine right now.

If you have a CD burner or DVD writer, simply select your documents and pictures in Windows Explorer and then hit the 'Burn' button in the top bar. Follow the prompts, burn your disc and then store it somewhere safe.

2 Save to the cloud

Make an extra backup by saving your work in the cloud, as well as to a physical disk. Storage services such as Microsoft SkyDrive offer lots of free space for saving personal files, photos and documents. SkyDrive comes as part of a Windows Live account, which you'll have if you've got a Hotmail account.

3. Clean out the junk

Computers inevitably collect rubbish over time. All those programs you install, websites you visit and things you download from friends and family eventually conspire to slow down your machine. Luckily, cleaning this mess up is a lot easier and more rewarding than you might imagine.

To get started, open Windows Explorer, right-click your hard drive and select 'Properties' from the drop-down list. Click the 'Disk cleanup' button and after a quick check of your system, you'll see how much space you can save by deleting temporary files, rubbish in the Recycle Bin and a variety of logs. Click 'OK' to clean it up!

4. Defrag your hard drive

Now that you've got a lot of rubbish off your hard drive, you can optimise the space that's left. Whenever you delete a file from your hard drive, lots of little gaps are left behind. When you defragment your drive you basically put all these gaps together again. To defragment your drive, right-click your hard drive(s), select 'Properties', click on the 'Tools' tab and then click the 'Defragment now' button.

5. Organise your data better

If you want your machine to operate efficiently all the time, then try to get into good habits when you're deciding where to save your photos and documents. Don't save your files to your computer's desktop with the intention of putting them in your Documents folder later on - save them to the right place in the beginning so you don't have to worry about moving them afterwards. This won't only save you time in the short term, it will make backing up your machine easier as well.

6. Optimise Windows

Now that you've got your hard drive in tip-top shape, you can turn your attention to Windows itself to see if there are any performance-enhancing tweaks to be made there as well. Windows 7 boasts built-in tools that can help you sort out performance issues.

Open the Control Panel from the Start menu, select 'Find and fix problems' under the System and Security section, and then select 'Check for performance issues'. Follow the suggestions supplied by the wizard and any advice it offers.

7. Encrypt your important files

You can improve your computer's security by using encryption to protect your most sensitive data. You'll need a copy of Windows 7 Business or Ultimate to access this feature, and you must be running the operating system on a NTFS-formatted hard drive.

If you've got that list of requirements ticked off, simply create a folder to encrypt, right-click it, select 'Properties', click on the 'Advanced' button and then click the 'Encrypt contents to secure data' option. That's it - the files in that folder are now protected.

8. Update your software

Probably the biggest cause of PC problems is software not being up to date. You should have Windows Update set to work automatically anyway, but if not you can do so from the Windows Update utility using the 'Change settings' option - just set it to automatic.

You should check for updates for all your other programs as well, either by visiting the developer's website yourself, or making sure that any automatic update options are turned on.

9. Take security seriously

With more and more of our lives spent online, doing everything from managing our bank accounts to booking holidays and ordering the weekly shopping, it's important to make sure you and your computer are protected while doing so.

First, make sure that you've got a security suite installed - Microsoft Security Essentials is good and free - and ensure it's kept up to date. Second, remember to scan your system from time to time, and don't just rely on real-time antivirus protection. Third, and most important of all, don't be lax with your security online - if an offer looks too good to be true or is from someone you don't know, just avoid it.

10. Try new things

Our last suggestion for a new year's resolution is to enjoy your PC and use it to do interesting and fun things. 2012 will see an explosion of new applications and web-based services that enable you to do incredible things with your pictures, movies and data. Try something new, different and interesting. We'll be covering the best of what's out there right here, so you can always turn to us for inspiration.

Tutorial: How to undelete a Registry key

2012-01-09T16:05:00.000-08:00

How to undelete a Registry key

Editing the Registry can be a dangerous business. Not only are you playing around with some of the most important settings on your PC, but there's no easy way to reverse whatever changes you might make.

And so if you delete something accidentally, then you could be in serious trouble.

It doesn't have to be that way, though. Deleting a Registry key is a little like deleting a file; you may not be able to see it any more, but its data is still there on your hard drive.

And so, if you equip yourself with the right program, and act quickly, then you may be able to recover the lost Registry key (or keys) and get your PC back in working order.

One of the best tools for Registry recovery is yaru (Yet Another Registry Utility). Grab yourself a copy, unzip the download file and run yaru.exe to begin. (Windows Vista and 7 users should run it as an administrator; right-click yaru.exe and select "Run as Administrator".)

You won't see any Registry values immediately because yaru works offline, and you'll need to open the relevant hive file first. To open HKEY_CURRENT_USER, say, click File > Open User Hive (local) and choose your user account; to open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software click File > Open Software (Local); to open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System click File > Open System (local), and so on.

The tree for your chosen section of the Registry should now appear, and at the bottom of this will be a branch called Deleted Keys. Open this, browse through what's on offer, and with any luck you'll find your deleted settings.

There are no guarantees, though. If you don't act quickly after deleting a setting then there's a chance it may be overwritten by some other value, and that's what has probably happened here. Confirm that you really are looking in the right area of the Registry, and if so then you'll need to look at some other possibility for recovery.

System Restore will restore your entire Registry back to a previous version, for instance, and if you've a full system backup then that may also help.

Export and restore

If yaru managed to find your lost settings, though, then you'll need to export these in a format which can re-imported into your current Registry. And that only takes a moment. Just right-click the top-level lost key and choose the appropriate export option, which will probably be "Export keys to file [Recursive]"; this means export everything beneath this level to a Registry file. And save the results to a file called "recover.reg" (or something similar) on your desktop.

With that done, now find and double-click the file you've just saved. Windows will warn you that setting a block of Registry keys in this way can be dangerous. If you're 100% sure that you want to do it, though, click "Yes", they'll be imported, and that's it - your lost Registry settings have all been recovered.

You do need to be careful with this technique. You shouldn't assume it gives you leeway to freely delete whatever Registry settings you like, for instance - there's no guarantee yaru will be able to recover any particular value.

And you also have to be careful in deciding what to restore. If you make a mistake there, restore the wrong Registry keys by accident, then you could make your situation even worse. If you're at all unclear about any of these steps then make sure you get yourself some insurance by running System Restore and making regular system backups.

For the most part, though, yaru is an easy way to restore lost Registry keys. Powerful yet compact (the executable file is only 1.4MB), it's packed with powerful features, and is well worth a place in your portable troubleshooting toolkit.

Samsung 27-inch 9 Series monitor unveiled

2012-01-09T15:35:00.000-08:00

Samsung has officially unveiled a second-generation 27-inch Series 9 monitor, with the S27A970 to be shown off at CES 2012 next week.

The stylish monitor is a flagship offering from Samsung taking on the mantle from the Samsung T27A950, and includes the company's proprietary Natural Colour Expert tech and boasts a resolution of 2560x1440.

"Interest in user-generated content and a premium computing experience is growing as consumers are demanding products that allow them to better view, edit and share their photos, videos and entertainment content," said Samsung UK's Neil Sawyer

Answers needs

"The new Series 9 monitor, with Samsung's exclusive Natural Colour Expert technology, answers the need for higher resolution and meticulous detail editing, regardless of the job," he added.

"Its unique minimalist design draws users in for truly immersive computing and delivers Samsung's signature best-in-class viewing experience."

The Natural Colour Expert promises to provide colours 'as they were intended to be seen' and each monitor is apparently hand tuned for colour balance by an engineer.

Also included is Samsung's Plane Line Switching panel tech, that quad high definition resolution, a USB hub in the base, DisplayPort, Dual Link-DVI and HDMI video connections, 7W stereo speakers and a Mobile High Definition Link (MHL) for MHL-enabled smartphones and tablets.

We've not been let in on a UK price yet, but this is a premium offering, so don't expect it to be cheap.

Logitech Cube is a mouse shaped like a brick

2012-01-09T15:05:00.000-08:00

You know what else really needs reinventing aside from the wheel? The mouse. Good job Logitech's on hand then, with its curious quadrangular Logitech Cube.

Instead of easy, straightforward buttons, the Cube comes with touchscreen tech, which should prove handy for free-flowing scrolling, and you can magically transform the mouse into a presenter simply by picking it up.

Rather than keep it al desko, the Logitech Cube is intended to be taken with you wherever you go, hence why it comes with a tiny receiver which you can keep plugged into your laptop all the time. So all you need do is pop the Cube in your pocket and head for the hills or Starbucks or wherever.

It's not really a cube though, is it

You can pair the Cube to up to six devices and work up to 25 metres away from the computer if that's how you roll, plus the visual battery meter lets you know when the mouse is running low on juice.

Obviously we'll reserve final judgement until we can try the Cube out for ourselves, but we can't imagine wanting to use the brick-like mouse for extended periods of time. It doesn't look exactly ergonomic, if you see what we mean.

But if it tickles your fancy, the Logitech Cube will be showcased at CES 2012 with a UK release date set for January 2012 when you'll be able to pick it up for £59.99.

Also on show at CES 2012 will be the Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920, a full HD video camera complete with Carl Zeiss lens, autofocus and H.264 compression.

Updated: CES 2012 highlights: what you need to know

2012-01-09T14:35:00.000-08:00

CES 2012 highlights

The world's greatest tech show - CES 2012 - kicked off on Monday 9 January (if you're a show obsessive, note that's a week later than usual).

Running until Thursday, the show will see the entire tech world descend on Las Vegas. We'll be hearing from the biggest names in tech to talk about their plans for 2012. The show covers more than 1.8 million square feet and has more than 140,000 attendees from across trhe globe.

As for every CES, TechRadar will be there getting hands on with the hardware that matters and bringing you the latest breaking news from the show. We have a dedicated CES 2012 channel where you can keep up with all the news.

This year the show will be 'greener' than ever; attendee badge holders are made from repurposed vinyl show banners from last year, and they'll be recycled again after the show. New signs have been made using a reusable, recyclable paper honeycomb material. A whopping 289.6 tons of waste was recycled from last year's event.

CES is about to kick off, with the press day running throughout Monday 9 January. Ahead of this, we've already got our hands on some of the new gear, and there's lots more to come.

Here are our CES 2012 highlights…

Tablets

Acer Iconia Tab A700 teased

Acer took to the stage at CES 2012 to announce a number of new laptops, including the ultra thin Acer Aspire S5, and also to give the world a very brief glimpse of its upcoming Acer Iconia tab.

Hands on: Acer Iconia Tab A700 review

Acer tried to do something a little different when it took to the stage at CES 2012, using the final part of its press conference to drop a 'one more thing' moment.

Hands on: Lenovo IdeaTab S2 review

Lenovo has really gone to town at CES 2012 and made Sunday's traditional build up to press day its own. Pride of place was this tablet - the Asus Transformer-alike IdeaPad S2.

Hands on: Lenovo IdeaTab K2 review

This 10.1-inch tab has power to burn, so why was Lenovo so keen to keep it on the down-low, hidden at the back of a display during the introductory CES press event?

Laptops

Hands on: Acer Aspire S5 review

After Acer launched the 13.3-inch Aspire S5 during its CES 2012 press conference, we got a few minutes up and close with the company's second latest-gen thin and light.

Acer to launch Windows 8 Ultrabooks in 2012

We'll be seeing Windows 8 Ultrabooks in the second half of this year and Acer will be among the first to produce them. That's according to Acer's CEO J.T. Wang who predicted that Ultrabooks will be mainstream during the next two years.

Lenovo reveals IdeaPad U Series Ultrabooks

Lenovo has unveiled its latest IdeaPad laptops over at CES 2012, with colourful new notebooks it thinks will suit anyone and everyone and a couple of Ultrabooks thrown in for good measure.

TV

In pictures: World's first Ice Cream Sandwich TV

LG may be bringing an integrated television with Google TV to the world but Lenovo has decided to port the company's Android OS Ice Cream Sandwich to a 55-inch TV.

LG cuts bezel to 1mm on new Cinema Screen 3D TVs

CES 2012: 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.

Opera TV Store finally launches

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

Home entertainment

Hands on: Optoma PK32 review

Pico projectors may not have the lustre they had when first released but there's certain companies which keep churning out the pint-sized product again and again.

Hands on: Griffin Twenty review

If you want Apple's AirPlay but don't want to spend hundreds replacing the speakers you've already spent hundreds on, Griffin has a treat for you.

Cameras

PMA@CES Preview video

What can photographers expect to see at CES?

CES 2012: Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock previewed

2012-01-09T14:05:00.000-08:00

Belkin has detailed its new Thunderbolt Express Dock, which brings next-gen connectivity to the current generation of super-slim, port-shy Ultrabooks and MacBook Airs.

The new dock, which will be on show at CES 2012, features a plethora of ports to give easy access to loads of peripherals with one cable.

This means users can connect up USB devices, transfer high volumes of data and connect to online content at the same speeds offered by gigabit Ethernet.

Very, very frightening… Galileo

The Thunderbolt Express Dock includes three USB 2.0 ports, one Firewire 800 port, one HDMI port, one 3.5mm Audio port, one gigabit Ethernet port and two Thunderbolt ports (one upstream and one downstream) for connecting up multiple Thunderbolt devices too, with 10Gbps bi-directional data transfer rates.

"People purchase the MacBook Air and Ultrabook for ultimate portability, but constantly plugging-in and unplugging numerous cable-connected peripherals is an annoying and time consuming ordeal," said Martin Avilla, general manager of Belkin's Core Business Unit.

"The Thunderbolt Express Dock provides a much-needed solution that creates a cleaner, faster, more productive workspace and reliable connectivity to desktop devices and the Internet."

The Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock release date has been set for Autumn 2012 across Europe, with pricing to be decided in the second half of the year.

CES 2012: LG's latest monitors unveiled

2012-01-09T13:35:00.000-08:00

LG's TVs may have stolen much of the attention, but its monitor line-up has also been given a key boost, with four new arrivals.

The DM92, DM82, DM52 and D43 IPS monitors all offer 2D to 3D conversion - as LG looks to continue to blur the line of where TV's start and monitors end.

"The 2011 IPS monitor line-up shows LG's continued commitment to deliver innovative products that provide consumers with the most immersive home entertainment experience possible." said LG US home entertainment senior VP Jay Vandenbree.

LG DM92

The headliner, as the naming would suggest, is the DM92 - which has a design 'mirroring' the slim bezel Cinema TV range.

It's a 27 inch display and uses the LG FPR 3D display tech - with the Korean giant suggesting that it enables consistent colour and brightness from wide angles.

The DM82 series offers up a 23 inch panel, 7w speakers built in and a 'futuristic' design - which consists of a metallic neck and square base.

The more budget-friendly DM52 range comes at 27 and 23 inch , while the D43 offers up another option for those looking for a TV Monitor combination.

We're yet to get a UK release date, but the monitors will hit the US in the first quarter of 2012.

CES 2012: LaCie shows off new Thunderbolt products

2012-01-09T13:05:00.000-08:00

LaCie has announced the 2big Tunderbolt Series and the eSATA Hub Thunderbolt series at CES 2012.

The storage specialist is showing off its latest Thunderbolt-equipped offerings with the technology offering transfer rates three times that of FireWire 800.

LaCie 2big features RAID security, hot swappable discs and a solid aluminimum case, with capacities up to 8TB for people with massive storage needs.

New lease

The eSATA Hub Thunderbolt "gives new life" to existing eSATA drives by allowing you to connect up two eSATA external drives to its ports and take advantage of the Thunderbolt connection.

"LaCie is proud to offer the widest range of storage solutions featuring Thunderbolt technology," said Erwan Girard, professional business unit manager at LaCie.

"These products are some of the fastest and most flexible storage solutions on the market. They will dramatically accelerate the workflow of even the most demanding digital users."