Author: Press Room

Growing up at the end of the last century, I had acquired a healthy DVD collection before streaming services came along, and all my favorite movies and TV shows were scattered across countless platforms. Media servers let me bring everything together in one place, so Plex, Jellyfin, and Kodi all solved that problem, but after using each of them, there’s one I think gets the balance of features, convenience, and aesthetics just right. What problem are Plex, Jellyfin, and Kodi actually solving? Local media libraries still have a place alongside streaming services Credit: Jack Mitchell/MakeUseOf Whether your movie collection is ripped…

Between shows like The Night Agent, Jack Ryan, and the excellent Slow Horses, TV doesn’t lack for spy dramas. But there’s practically nothing out there like Patriot, a wildly underappreciated two-season drama that is sitting and waiting on Prime Video to be rediscovered. It’s a comedy, it’s a drama, it’s a James Bond movie if James Bond were a lot more easily distracted. You’ve gotta see it to believe it. Patriot is a different kind of spy show With a very different kind of spy Patriot is about John Tavner (Michael Dorman), a spy working for the U.S. government. He’s…

A lot of outdoor jackets and other apparel uses technology, insulation, and coatings from other companies – think Gore-Tex’s waterproofing, Vibram’s outsoles or PrimaLoft’s insulation. Now US and China-based PrimaLoft is back with a brand new synthetic fabric technology – PrimaLoft Active Evolve – designed to be used for various garments used for outdoor physical activity, whether skiing, hiking or climbing. The fabric – mostly developed from post-consumer recycled material –  is now appearing in products from names such as Rab, Quiksilver and Sprayway. Crucially, the fabric is designed to be as lightweight as possible yet still keep you warm…

If you have a newer Apple phone in your pocket, you’ve got a bunch of excellent cameras in easy reach. They’re superb for stills, but also take fantastic video footage, and iPhone Action Mode is a big reason why. Action Mode was introduced in the iPhone 14 series, and is meant to prevent your vids from being ruined by shaky hands. The digital image stabilisation tech helps keep those otherwise blurry frames from Saturday night looking clean and crisp – which may not be a good thing, depending on what you got up to. To get smoother shots, follow our…

The biggest game in global football is almost here: Spain versus Argentina in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final. Whether you’re hosting a viewing party, hunting for the best streaming service showing the match or – let’s be honest – desperately skimming this article 10 minutes before kick-off as you look for a way to watch it, we’ve got you covered. Here’s everything you need to know about watching the 2026 FIFA World Cup final, wherever you happen to be. Sponsored: Get a great deal with Proton VPN Proton VPN is a fast, secure and private VPN service that lets…

Over the past couple of years I’ve noticed more and more rooftop tents on the road, and one brand keeps popping up more than any other. TentBox has become the Hoover, the Teflon, the Tupperware of rooftop tents – the name people use even when they mean the category. So I packed up a load of outdoors gear, my wife and three-year-old and headed to Dorset to see what all the fuss is about, testing the newly refreshed TentBox Lite XL. Setup and fitting First things first: getting it onto the car. I picked the test unit up from TentBox’s…

There’s no shortage of watches claiming to be “adventure ready” but half of them have never leave the office. So I’ve pulled together the twelve that genuinely earn the label, from big Swiss icons to a rugged smartwatch that’ll outlast your phone battery on a multi-day hike. Whether you want a mechanical watch that’ll survive a fall down a scree slope or a GPS beast that’ll get you home when the fog rolls in, there’s something here for you. 1. Rolex Explorer 36mm The Explorer is the watch that started this whole category. Rolex developed it in the 1950s for…

I love my speakers, in this case, a pair of KRK Rokit 5 active studio monitors. They sound fantastic, with silk dome tweeters, Kevlar woofers, powerful built-in amplifiers, LCD panels at the rear, and a companion app for fine-tuning. The only thing they lack is the convenience of modern streaming. Now, I could simply buy a Bluetooth adapter, but that would mean a downgrade in sound quality. I realized that to keep the superior sound and have wireless functionality, I’d have to find another solution, and that’s when I stumbled upon the WiiM Pro. This little box could be the…

Summary Open Book Touch prioritizes reading: no accounts, no tracking, no DRM — drop EPUBs on microSD and read. Hardware and software are open: user‑replaceable battery, 3D‑printable case, and open-source Focus UI. Crowdfunds at $149–$249; community forums, docs, and repos invite tinkering and long-term ownership. Amazon keeps locking down the Kindle, making it harder to sideload books or use your device your way. If you’re tired of feeling like a guest in your own library, the Open Book Touch is here to set you free. Related Kindle’s most wanted design change in years is finally happening This unexpected choice means…

The new version of Siri is now widely available as part of Apple’s public beta software for devices including the iPhone, Mac, iPad and Apple Watch. While I definitely discourage you from installing it on a main device, if you have a spare device hanging around it’s quite fun to try out. The jury is still out a little bit as to how universally useful the new Siri will be. From my point of view, part of that is that it still clearly has gaps in local knowledge. My version of Siri is set to the UK because that’s where…