The concept of the “connected home” is not a new one to the geeks among us – the X10 system has been around in one form or another since 1978 believe it or not!

It now seems that the idea of digitally serving audio and video content from a central source has started to catch on in the mainstream – the recent What HiFi / Stuff show had a few manufacturers bringing variants on the streaming media theme to the market.
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I listen to a lot of music but I don’t subscribe to the “that artist is great and this one is junk” mentality. Granted there are certain genres that I tend to filter out but on the whole my tastes vary wildly.

The Pandora Project is a very cool music recommendation system that’s tailor made for people like me. They have managed to categorise a huge music library in terms of the characteristics of individual songs. Once you give them an example of a song you like they go off and play you more of the same type of thing.
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A mate of mine has had an assortment of problems with his iPod Nano, so he’s opted to flog it on eBay and buy himself an Archos Gmini 402cc and he was kind enough to write us a review. Over to you Alex.

I’ve had a disappointing experience with Apple and their iPod nanos plus their cheesy tech support. Long story short, Apple is very disappointing and so is their product line. So, I’ve decided to upgrade to something a lot better. One of my good friends Jon has a nifty piece of tech called the Gmini 402. So, I did some searching, and discovered that Archos just released their new Gmini 402 CC. Now, Jon’s Gmini is simply amazing. It plays video, music, games, and records sound, plus a lot more. But the Gmini 402cc has so much more to offer.
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We all need a bit of relaxing time and this Audio Bubble Light is the sure ticket. This cool gadget dances to the sound of music with lights and bubbles from your CD player, iPod, or computer. It even has four pre-recorded nature sounds to enlighten the bubbles.

The Audio Bubble light has four swirling colors, which are red, yellow, blue, and green. The light will soothe and relax anyone after a long day at work or school.

It can hook up to any external sound source such as your CD player, so you can listen to your favorite music or if you decide you may enjoy the soothing sounds of nature. Either way the dancing bubbles are sure to change your mood into a quiet and peaceful one.
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Pure digital were exhibiting at the recent show and one of their products that cought my eye was the PocketDAB 2000.

DAB (digital) radio is slowly catching on over here, helped by companies like Pure. As with digital vs. analogue television the advantages are clearer, better quality audio and the ability to transmit metadata along with the show – anything from the name of the currently broadcasting presenter to song lyrics.
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A short, pictureless post commenting on TV technology: For a while now various manufacturers have been trying to sell large screen LCD televisions. Why they bothered is beyond me because the picture quality to date has been appalling compared to plasma. Sure, on paper they may have more pixels but when you actually go and look at an LCD screen you see jagged edges, no contrast, washed out blacks and various other picture artifacts that make me wonder why I’d want to spend money on them.

The Stuff/What HiFi show this year changed my opinion slightly. The new crop of LCD televisions actually do display a very good picture. Good enough to warrant serious consideration IMO. Except for LG’s effort. LG, if you’re reading this, stick to plasmas or go and look at Sharp and Toshiba to see how it should be done.

To be fair to LG, they were also displaying a monster 71 inch plasma screen that looked exceptional (especially when fed with the high def signal they were using to demo), so it’s not all bad news for them.

Whilst at the Best of Stuff show another interesting product we saw was the Yamaha YSP-1000 Digital Sound Projector. The YSP-1000 is capable of producing full surround sound from just one unit (which fits nicely beneath a Yamaha 42″ Plasma display).

The way it works is by bouncing sound waves off the walls to give the impression the sound is coming from the side or behind. I was pretty skeptical when hearing how the technology worked but the live demonstration made me think differently.

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The phrase “impossibly small” springs to mind but that doesn’t really describe it, so hopefully the photo will emphasize just how diminutive this MP3 player is.

One face of the cube is a screen (so it already scores over the iPod shuffle) and it also packs USB connectivity and a rechargeable battery.

They seem to be available in a few different OEM guises – AdvancedMP3Players.co.uk are selling a differently branded version of the same thing for 129 pounds. Shock news of the decade though is that Dixons are actually cheaper at 110 quid online!