Author: Press Room
I grew up in an age of games with pixels so chunky they made Duplo look refined. The era was bookended by the Atari 2600 and the Game Boy, with the likes of the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC, Sega Master System and NES in-between. I love them all. Even the Amstrad. But my favourite retro console these days is the Pico-8. Which is a bit strange when you consider the Pico-8 never physically existed. Instead, Pico-8 is a fantasy console – a virtual platform dreamt up by Joseph ‘zep’ White. It started out as a sandbox for a game before mutating into an entire ecosystem.…
If you own an automatic watch (like one in our best watch guide), a watch winder is one of those purchases you might debate getting for years. Then you buy one and wonder why you waited so long. I’ve tested a fair few watch winders over the years, and Barrington’s single winder has long been one of my favourites, so I was very excited to test the latest model. This is how I got on… The Barrington makes a strong first impression out of the box. It looks premium on a desk or bedside table. It’s painted in a gloss…
When people ask me for a streaming device recommendation, I almost always suggest a Roku (because not everyone needs a streaming device with 256 CPU cores). This is because Roku devices are reliable, easy to use, not expensive, and most importantly, they work with every streaming service you could ever want. And there are even multiple uses for old Roku devices. But what happens when your Roku is not working properly, and you need to troubleshoot your connection? Well, it turns out that Roku has built-in secret menus, only accessible by tapping a combination of keys on your remote, that…
I’ve been using Ninja’s Luxe Café coffee machine for months now – whichever model you choose, it’s a semi-automatic experience available for under $500/£500 for the entry-level Premier model. Both the Premier and bigger brother Pro model involve you interacting with a portafilter to grind the beans and then move it across to the group head for brewing. Milk is heated/frothed in a jug, meaning it’s also up to you to combine the coffee and milk if desired to create your drink. Ninja clearly feels there’s a market for an even more automated experience, and the result of this is…
My TV is big. Like, “large and in charge” sizable. At 77 inches, it dominates my living room wall. Yet for the first couple of years, I owned an OLED that’s so good I replaced my monitor with a TV, and I was having viewing issues. Eye strain, a sore neck, and general discomfort were common. It turns out that how far you sit from a television matters quite a lot. The biggest TV sin I’ve committed over the past two years is being way too close to my screen. My eyes could have avoided undue stress, I wouldn’t have…
Director Sam Raimi pulled off a miracle earlier this year. His new film Send Help opened in theaters in January. Send Help isn’t based on an existing IP or set in some already successful cinematic universe. It’s a completely original story starring actors with names people recognize — Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien — but they’re not so big that they can pull tons of people into theaters all by themselves. It’s rare for a mid-budget movie like this to get made and promoted in Hollywood these days, and yet Send Help was a bona fide hit. It’s available to…
As I write this, electricity bills are utterly unreasonable. While most folks are justifiably reducing their energy output, the one thing I won’t compromise on as a massive TV nerd is the quality of the pictures I’m watching. After discovering my OLED TV looked washed out until I changed one picture setting, I’m never going to sell my viewing experience short again. For most of the year — particularly during summer months — power-saving features/eco modes on your TV should be avoided at all costs if you want to get the most out of your display. Capping max screen brightness…
Free streaming usually comes with a catch. Sometimes it is a sign-up wall. Sometimes it is a barrage of ads. Sometimes a chaotic interface makes you wonder whether the stream is worth the trouble. However, this isn’t what you’d experience with famelack. Previously known as TV Garden (which I think was a catchier name), the platform rebranded at the start of 2026 with a note from its team that what they are building has grown beyond TV. Same core idea but bigger ambitions. It is a free, browser-based platform for streaming live TV channels from around the world. If that…
Dark HDR scenes on my Samsung Frame TV started showing bands of color where smooth gradients should’ve been. Its a classic sign of a bandwidth issue, or so I assumed. I ordered a new certified cable, swapped it in two days later, and got the exact same banding. The fix turned out to be four menus deep on the TV — nothing to do with the cable at all. Once I knew the name, I started spotting the same bottleneck on my TCL Roku TV and Hisense Canvas. HDMI hides more capability than most setups ever touch, but most TVs…
Summary Spotify is rolling out several quality-of-life improvements to its mobile apps. Updates include playlist folder editing on mobile and bulk editing of playlists and the queue, among others. Most features are available now, but some are limited to Premium subscribers. On May 28, Spotify announced several upgrades to its mobile apps to help make the service easier to use. These are relatively small changes, but they actually add up to some big quality-of-life improvements — much more so than some of Spotify’s other recent additions. Related The forgotten Microsoft music player that had one feature Spotify still hasn’t copied…