Accessories

These surround sound headphones ship with their own Dolby Digital 5.1 decoder module and employ a quartet of dedicated channel drivers in each ear cup. Peel away one of the felt pads and you’ll uncover a pair of 30mm drivers, one for the front left/right and the other for a surround channel, plus a 23mm driver for the centre and a large 40mm driver to handle the .1 LFE.

XpanD has now introduced 3D glasses that can be partnered with infra-red triggered 3D displays from the likes of Panasonic, Samsung, Philips and Toshiba, thereby reducing compatibility issues for 3DTV owners. If you’re going to a 3D party and aren’t sure what (older!) TV you’ll be watching, these XpanD glasses are good bet-hedgers. XpanD will be launching a new range (the X104) with support for Bluetooth as well as the radio system favoured by Panasonic.

Networked-attached storage (NAS) is a speedy, convenient means of backing up data. Modern units, such as the ReadyNAS Ultra 4 featured here, are also capable of streaming any multimedia files stored on them to any Smart device that can accept them. The four drive bays of the heavy and massively-built ReadyNAS Ultra 4 can each accommodate 2TB drives and so a combined total of 8TB is possible – that’s an awful lot of video, photos and music.

This system uses Dolby Volume, which is a technology designed to intelligently ‘normalise’ loudness to avoid the annoying volume jumps familiar to late-night telly addicts, when broadcasters turn up the sound for adverts. The tech, which was modelled on psychoacoustic research conducted by Dolby, is integral to recent TVs, AVRs and this Volume Stabiliser.

I love my Sony PlayStation 3. So much so that a while ago, I decided that if my house was burning down, it would be the first thing I’d save (after the cat, of course). The rest of my AV gear, including flatscreen TV, receiver, speaker system, Xbox 360 and regular Blu-ray player could melt in a gloss-black pyre. As far I was concerned, my BD-deck-cum-games-console-cum-media jukebox was more precious. Yet now, with Virgin Media’s new TiVo-powered set-top box plumbed into my system, the PS3’s position as hardware numero uno is looking increasingly precarious.

This solid pair of black boxes, from speaker manufacturer Teufel, will let you send two channels of audio wirelessly. This is a handy concept if you can’t run wires to rear speakers, or simply want hassle-free, multi-room music. The cigarette box-sized transmitter sports a couple of phono sockets, which are fed with the relevant outputs of your AVR or audio system. Rather larger is the receiver, the internal amp of which can drive speakers directly. A nifty circuit automatically switches the RearStation 4 into standby in the absence of audio. Additional receivers can be bought for £180 and any number can be partnered with a single transmitter ‘within range’.