Author: Press Room

For a while, 4K UHD Blu-ray was poised to fall into obscurity as a medium. The overwhelming majority of movie and TV watchers made the leap to streaming services, leaving physical media ownership behind. Some of the physical media enthusiasts that remained chose cheaper standards like DVD or Blu-ray to invest in rather than 4K UHD Blu-ray. The 4K UHD Blu-ray already had a niche following, and it was shrinking. Until it started growing again. Physical media sales are still in a downturn overall, according to the Digital Entertainment Group’s report analyzing consumer spending on digital and physical home entertainment…

Tom Holland’s latest Spider-Man movie, Brand New Day, brings the entire MCU movie tally to 38, and at the time of writing, it’s grossed over $1bn at the box office, vigorously shrugging off notions of superhero fatigue like an arachnophobe wearing a tarantula.  And while audiences lap up everyone’s favourite webhead in this firmly Big Apple-based adventure, eyes nervously look to whether the incoming Avengers double-tap of Doomsday and Secret Wars can replicate Spidey’s success later this year and in 2027. Until then, watching the entire MCU run can be a daunting undertaking. So if you’re looking to consolidate your…

The £230/£200 Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max are earbuds with a difference. Their square AI Note-Taker Smart Case has can record, transcribe, even translate meetings. It has 100 built-in languages and promises 97% accuracy. I put it to the test. The case is square and a bit bigger than most – the touchscreen lid slides up to reveal the earbuds. A QR code appears on screen for the app. Pairing is straightforward but you have to pair twice: once for the headphones, a second time for the case. Double-tap on the screen to wake it, then swipe up and select…

Futurama is a TV institution. The sci-fi comedy first premiered in 1999 on Fox, and has weathered many changes in the years since. It was canceled at least twice, once on Fox and later on Comedy Central, before coming back in its current form on Hulu, where it just started airing its 14th season. Last year, Hulu changed the show’s long-running formula and dropped every episode of Season 13 all at once. For Season 14, it’s taking a more traditional approach, and it’s the right move. The long and continuing legacy of Futurama There are a lot of stories in…

PDF has become the default answer to “how do I get this into ChatGPT,” even when the original file would preserve far more useful structure. PDF is designed primarily to preserve a document’s fixed appearance. Although well-made PDFs can contain tags and logical structure, exports often flatten spreadsheets, slide decks, and other working files into pages that are harder to analyze reliably. Tables can lose clear column relationships, multi-column text may emerge in the wrong order, and formulas disappear behind their displayed values. Before I upload a PDF, I now ask what file existed before someone pressed Export. These six…

I’m a cynic when it comes to special editions. Hey, folks! Buy this thing you already own, but in a new colour! Just no. But also, I am weak. So when the chance arose to pit remakes of two 8-bit classics against each other, how could I refuse? Besides, this was a chance to settle that decades-old argument once and for all: which really is better, the ZX Spectrum or the Commodore 64? (I’m 100% certain there’s no way picking a favourite here will cause me any trouble among fans of either system!) Back in black I started with TheC64 Mini Black. Unlike previous…

When I first got access to Siri AI through Apple’s iOS 27 Developer Beta in June, I’ll admit I wasn’t overly optimistic. We’d been waiting two years by then, and, in all honesty, I thought Apple was unlikely to compete with the likes of Google Gemini and ChatGPT, which had years on poor old Siri by then. But then I tried Siri AI, asked it some pretty tricky questions to see if I could catch it out, and it turns out I was wrong to underestimate it. Siri was the first personal assistant, after all, and while Gemini, Alexa and…

Generally, physical media beats streaming content. The maximum bitrates supported by a disc will outperform those offered by the best streaming services. This is how a lower-resolution disc can appear better than a movie or TV show streamed in 4K. The three main physical media disc standards are DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD Blu-ray — but not every 4K UHD Blu-ray release is created from a 4K source. Many films use a digital intermediate in the finishing process with a 2K resolution, which is then upscaled to create a 4K UHD Blu-ray disc. That begs the question: are 4K UHD…

If you’re a Netflix subscriber, you can always be sure you’ll be able to find new content to watch. Last weekend, there wasn’t much in the way of new original content, but there were plenty of older movies and shows being added to the platform. This time around, Netflix is bringing us lots of stuff you won’t be able to get anywhere else, from reality series to literary adaptations and beyond. Let’s Marry Harry Streaming right now Harry Jowsey gained some notoriety after appearing on a different Netflix dating series called Perfect Match. Now he has a reality series all…

Since the heatwave hit, like everyone else, I’ve suddenly become interested in all things refrigeration – namely portable air con units and cool boxes. Who wants to feel like a sticky mess at home or drink a warm Coke on the beach, when tech offers us alternatives? Igloo’s Playmate KoolTunes cooler, $140/£234, piqued my interest because it doesn’t just keep your food and drinks cool, but it also brings the party, doubling up as a Bluetooth speaker. What’s the story with the Igloo Playmate KoolTunes cooler? Quite simply, it’s a 13-litre cool box and a boombox – two boxes in…