LATEST ADDITIONS

Philips has created a thing of beauty with its 7 Series 3D Blu-ray deck. Finished in a greyish-silver and sporting a sculpted lip with illuminated soft-touch buttons, it’s a real step up from the humdrum.

Marketed as a straightforward action-thriller, Hanna is anything but your typical Hollywood flick. True, the storyline about a sixteen year-old girl (Saoirse Ronan) who, having spent her entire life being trained to survive and kill, goes on the run from a vindictive CIA chief (Cate Blanchett) sounds like standard blockbuster material. But director Joe (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement) Wright takes its in a completely unexpected direction, using it as the springboard for a modern fairytale that seems as much in debt to the grotesquery of David Lynch or The Brothers Grimm as it does to the traditions and conventions of action genre it continually toys with. It’s the kind of brave, inventive filmmaking that is sure to divide audiences right down the middle.

Hi-fi buffs may already be familiar with Tannoy’s Definition speakers, a two-channel range first introduced way back in the mid-’90s and brought back to life in 2009 with an elegant new design for the contemporary market. That’s the very same system you’re currently ogling on these pages, but before you start checking the cover date we should assure you that there’s a good reason for turning back the clock.

In previous reviews, I have extolled the virtues of the impressive Kaleidescape networked AV system. Although highly expensive and intended for professional installation (bar the one-box Mini, since renamed the Cinema One), there’s nothing to beat its smoothly presented and intuitive method of selecting DVDs and CDs for playback. And now Kaleidescape has added Blu-ray to the mix...