Industry insider

It's almost exactly five years since I visited Onkyo in Osaka: reporting from that trip back in May 2007, I said the company seemed to be 'an outfit with the established leaders of the European home cinema market – notably Denon and Yamaha – ...

The Sony SS-AR1 loudspeakers  – the company's no-compromise design, already on the receiving end of accolades in the USA – could be coming to the UK.The floorstanding speakers, combining heavyweight birch and maple ply cabinets with ...

The ability of British retail to shoot itself in the foot never ceases to amaze.  While high-street and out-of-town retailers face an ongoing threat from those with no 'bricks and mortar' presence, for many purchases it's becoming ...

Blimey, it's beginning to feel like I'm turning into whathifi.com's interior design correspondent!  Yesterday it was IKEA's furniture/TV combinations, today it's Linn showing at the prestigious Milan Furniture Fair, with a sleek 'audio ...

Strange blog from the usually dispassionate DisplaySearch, gatherer of information and analysis to do with the flatscreen industry, suggesting that Ikea's announcement of furniture with integrated TVs 'shames' the consumer electronics industry.In ...

There's an unwritten rule in organising press events: Never let the engineers do the presentation.          Too many times I've sat through endless sets of PowerPoint slides as the R&D people ...

We're at Sony's Tokyo HQ all this week, getting the inside info on the company's TV strategy, forthcoming 2012 TV range and other new products heading to the UK later this year.Some of what we're being shown is so secret it's covered by a ...

Sony has committed itself to focusing on picture quality as the No.1 priority in developing its 2012 TVs.The shift in focus follows research by the Japanese electronics giant, which is putting picture and sound quality back at the heart of its TV ...

With sales of hi-fi and AV separates hitting a 20-year low (of which more later), manufacturers and retailers of quality kit are certainly facing some challenges. However, powered by their passion for better-quality sound and vision, they're ...

(...Or 'How Japan's consumer electronics companies went from masters of the TV universe to "Holy s—, now what?"') Just about three months ago I wrote a blog post about the fears being expressed that 'Made in Japan' was proving unsustainably ...