Opinion

Forget LG and its OLED screen, forget Toshiba and its glasses-free 3D TV, forget Samsung and its Smart fixation – the most exciting development in the TV market at the moment is from Sharp. Strange, but true.

Flicking through one of the Sunday broadsheets earlier this year I came across a piece by the paper's TV critic, taking a pop at HBO's fantasy show Game of Thrones. With my own opinion being so far opposed to that of the writer, I was actually rather intrigued by the prospect of reading what I assumed would be a thoughtful and intelligent critique of the hit show. How wrong I was.

I have yet another subwoofer-induced headache, and it's not from playing the opening sequence to The Expendables 2. Rather, it's from trying to get my noodle around a mind-bogglingly complex setup. You see, my period of single subwoofer purity has come to an end, with a second Velodyne DD18+ joining my system to capitalise on the new breed of 11.2-channel AV hardware.

There’s something in the air in the world of superhero movies right now. After several years of beating up bad guys, we're getting two comic book blockbusters in quick succession based around the idea of superheroes punching seven shades of hell out of one another instead.

Back in February I finally took the plunge and became the proud owner of a 3DTV. Well, I say that. What I actually mean is that I became the proud owner of a shiny new 50in plasma TV that I knew would make my Blu-ray collection look sensational. The fact that it also offered 3D functionality was little more than an afterthought – although I was aware this would enable me to review 3D Blu-ray titles for Home Cinema Choice magazine, rather than having to palm them off on other, 3D-enabled, members of the team, or making use of whatever stereoscopic TV was kicking around the office [not literally - Ed] waiting to be auditioned.

The tail end of 2014 saw the publication of the latest HCC Movie Awards (which can also be found right here) and, as always, the nominations were a mix of the painfully obvious and the fiercely contested. So, while the likes of Best Picture Quality, Best Audio Quality and even Best Disc fell into place pretty quickly, others proved much more troublesome – the most obvious example being Best Remaster.

What do zero-budget fright flicks, British gangster films and Nic Cage all have in common? Give up? Well, at the time of writing they can all be found clogging up the DVD/Blu-ray charts of your local supermarket. And they aren’t just filling the lower rungs of the charts either, they’re occupying prime positions between mountaineering dramas and Tom Cruise’s latest action epic.