

This week, BT said it would offer free fibre optic upgrades to its customers, Android 2.2 came to HTC Desires on T-Mobile and Microsoft re-iterated its stance that Blu-ray is heading for the grave.
We also rounded up the best Android phones, Freeview HD boxes and alternatives to Apple TV.
Read on for this week's most popular stories on TechRadar…
BT customers who subscribe to a bundle of broadband and calls will be offered the chance to upgrade to the fibre-optic BT Infinity for no extra cost when it is available in their area.
BT's Infinity is still available on a relatively small scale, but the telecoms giant will now be offering superfast broadband for £17.99 a month, with a three-month £7.49 window at the start of the contract term.
John Petter, managing director of BT's Consumer division, said: "Fibre is the future of broadband and BT is raising the speed and standard for customers nationwide.
If you're a T-Mobile customer with an HTC Desire, then your Android 2.2 update time has come.
Go to Settings > About Phone > System Software Updates > Check Now, and you should get a message to let you know that Android 2.2 is ready to download.
It's a 90.93MB update so you might want to do it over your Wi-Fi connection.
Wondering about Android 2.2 features and whether you should bother? For starters, it's faster. And it has better HTML 5 support and allows you to use your phone as Wi-Fi hotspot.
Microsoft has re-iterated its non-Blu-ray stance this week, explaining in an interview that the hi-def disc format favoured by Sony and its PS3 is 'being passed by'.
Microsoft has always vehemently defended its decision to not add a costly Blu-ray drive to the Xbox 360 system.
While it did have a brief-but-doomed affair with HD DVD, it seems that the company is sounding the death knell on HD discs altogether and bigging up downloads as the future of how we consume our entertainment.
UK Xbox boss Stephen McGill, in an interview with Xbox Achievements, said about Blu-ray: "I think people may have spoken about [Xbox's lack of a Blu-ray drive] originally, but that's long gone.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab has seemingly got a price reduction before it is even released in the UK, with e-tailer Amazon offering the iPad rival at a cheaper price than its initial listing.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab originally turned up on Amazon with a list price of £799.99 SIM-free.
This brought a lot of criticism, mainly because the price was up there with the highest price of the Apple iPad (£699 with Wi-Fi and 3G), yet it comes with a smaller screen – at seven inches.
Amazon then reduced the price to £679.99 this week, only for the price to be slashed yet again.
YouView's User Interface will play a vital role in its eventual success or failure, according to CEO Richard Halton, with the way in which people find their programmes on the platform likely to evolve over time.
YouView, formerly known as Project Canvas, is the scheme by major UK bodies such as the BBC, BT and ITV to get IPTV into the general public's living room.
Speaking to TechRadar, Halton indicated that there getting to the variety of on-demand and catch-up content would not be limited to a single route.
The recent massive successes of Google's mobile platform are due in quite large part to the vast array of Android-powered handsets thrown out there by the smartphone makers, who have squeezed the open source operating system into a wide range of smartphones.
HTC makes loads of them, Samsung makes loads more of them and LG has a stack in the pipeline - and the mobile networks are sticking their logos over cheaper imports from the likes of Huawei and ZTE to add to the Android handset frenzy.
Android phones can be picked up SIM-free from around £80 these days with prices topping out above the £500 mark for power models with screens bigger than your granddad's TV set, while monthly tariffs vary wildly between £15 and £35.
But which one do you need? Allow us to round up the best Android phones for each budget and sector, from pocket-money spares for the kids to the flashiest piece for all you "prosumers" out there.
Buying Apple is as much about ideology as it is about technology.
We buy Apple because we believe devices should delight, not disappoint. We buy Apple because details matter, from the clickability of a button to the curve of a corner or the positioning of a port.
We buy Apple because we think perfection is worth striving for, and worth paying for. And we buy Apple because Apple isn't a heartless corporation whose only interest is the bottom line.
Perhaps that was true in the early days, but is it still true now?
If you've bought yourself an HDTV in the last couple of years, chances are you haven't actually been watching any HD content on it.
However, with free HD broadcasts available on both Freeview and Freesat, HD TV from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 is just a Freeview HD box away.
With around 18 million HD Ready flatscreens TVs sold in the UK, there's a potentially huge market for these Freeview HD receivers, though arguably the appearance of the Freeview+HD recorder could significantly shrink it.
Apple's latest go-to strategy for Apple TV, its self-confessed hobby, has been to drop the size, drop the hard disk and drop the price to just £99, plus £3.49 a pop for high def (720p) movie streaming and £1.19 per SD episode for some TV programmes.
Sounds great in theory, but the new Apple TV is just about as much as what you can't do as what you can - you'll look in vain for TV tuner, BBC iPlayer or LoveFilm functionality.
Even the iTunes movies you own now have to be streamed from your Mac or PC rather than stored locally.
Facebook has announced this week that its location-based service Places has come to the UK.
Places first arrived back in August in the US and the more eagle-eyed of you will have spotted that there has been a dormant link to it on the UK Facebook iPhone app since then.
Its arrival in the US sparked something of an outcry from privacy supporters who felt letting others know where you are at any given moment could turn you into bait for stalkers.
We've all seen the HTC Evo, both with the same-sized 4.3-inch screens, and they were both successes, so it makes sense that a UK-friendly version would go along the same lines, right?
No sooner has Nikon announced the high-end P7000, designed to go head-to-head with the Canon G12, than the company unleashes an assault on the low-end of the market, with the 12.2 megapixel S5100.
The iPod touch has been the world's premium MP3 player for some time now, and with the launch of the new iPod touch 4G model, that doesn't look like changing.
The world might have been going gaga for the Desire HD, but it's easy to forget another phones was announced at the same time, and given the specs the HTC Desire Z is no little brother - it's a decent handset in its own right.
Arriving in the most popular size for LED-lit TVs – 40-inch – the 40PFL7605 appears remarkably thin (it's just 42mm deep), but, more importantly, well built.
Audio systems
Marantz KI Pearl Lite SACD and amp review
Compact cameras
Desktops
Digital TV recorders
iPod and MP3 players
Laptops
Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG review
Toshiba Satellite A660-18N review
Media streaming devices
AC Ryan PlayOn! DVR 1TB review
Mice
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Monitors
Motherboards
TVs
Webcams
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