entertainment

Meet the  SRS-RA5000 and SRS-RA3000, Sony's 2021 wireless home speakers, designed for a premium, seamless listening experience you can enjoy anywhere in your home. Equipped with Sony’s unique spatial sound technologies these speakers create ambient room-filling sound. A fantastic enhancement to any home, they allow you to immerse yourself in your favourite music and create a serene and soothing atmosphere where music can be your perfect companion.

Garman recently released its newest line of smart watches featuring the latest in wearable technology.  The Tactix Delta, according to Garmin is built to military standards with many new features to support tactical functionality and outdoor navigation. The Approach S62, designed for golfers with GPS technology that integrates critical course information and full-color mapping, right on the golfer’s wrist.  This can help you to navigate the most difficult golf courses.

Digital UK partners BBC, ITV and Channel 4 and network operator Arqiva have signed a new five year agreement to accelerate the transition of the Freeview Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) service to a fully hybrid platform.  The group hopes to provide the best in free-to-view live and on-demand TV in the UK.

Sonos announced the Sonos Beam “soundbar” yesterday for the ultimate in in-home audio experience. The compact, smart soundbar is due out next month for Sonos customer and those wishing to upgrade their soundbar. Also, coming with the Sonos Beam is support for Apple Airplay2. The smart speaker will offer rich sound experience for all the sonic content in your home, from films and TV shows, to music and podcasts. Sonos Beam supports 80+ music services, and multiple voice assistants.

Savant has announced the addition of new products and features in its 8.8 software update. This release enhanced functionality for connected home users and Savant solution integrators, which allows you to create intuitive smart home environment. Its enhanced user interface makes access to music a snap, and exciting new personalization capabilities that enable integrators to deliver fine-tuned smart home experience that can be tailored to your need.

It is no joke when we said the home has become a fierce battle ground for connected technologies, and 2017 is the year of the smart speaker.  Already this year most of the well known brands have announced dates for release or plans to develop their own smart speaker solution.  Therefore, I can see a smart speaker being high on the shopping list for Christmas 2017.  Underneath the elegant and smooth designs will be one of four voice control systems Apple Siri, Google Assist, Microsoft's Cortana or Amazon Alexa. We have gather them all here for you to have a look and hopefully help you decide.

Core Brands has announced the release of Auriel 2.0 with added features such as streaming audio, climate and lighting control, plus remote access.  Now custom installers installing the Niles Auriel MRC-6430 Multi-room audio system can offer smart home control as well.  The Auriel 2.0 multi-room audio platform is built on the ELAN Control Platform.  The new software update enables any existing Auriel system to easily upgrade to the additional control features.

Users with PCs using Intel's 7th Gen Core processors will be able to experience 4K picture quality from Sony ULTRA.  Sony announced that they will debut SPHE's movie streaming service on computers powered by 7th Gen Intel Core processors beginning Q1 in 2017.  Intel said the new service will take advantage of the processor's new hardware security technologies and offers far richer entertainment experiences and incredible performance and responsiveness.  In addition to the new movie service users can expect longer battery life.

Sky is celebrating a 10 percent rise in profit over the last quarter to the end of September.  The company said revenue rose 6 percent to £2.8 billion leaving a 10 percent operating profit of £375 million. The company credit some of the increase to the growth of its connected home services such as Now TV and other on demand services which have increased Sky’s revenue in UK and Ireland.

Our readers might remember the Google Chromecast, a dongle introduced lost year to offer over-the-top entertainment solutions for TVs. To extend Google cast support and in collaboration with Broadcom, Denon has developed a new line of HEOS multi-room wireless speakers. Denon said, the new Google Cast Ready speakers will allow users to cast their favourite music Apps via any Android or Apple iOS mobile device via their home Wi-Fi network.