News

Following a blockbuster run at cinemas, Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens is now setting new records for DVD and Blu-ray sales in the UK. According to figures released by BASE (the British Association for Screen Entertainment), the home entertainment release managed combined sales of 1,247,622 physical units during its first week of release. This makes it the year's biggest selling title, easily surpassing the 940,000 Spectre managed during its first week on sale.

Samsung's debut Ultra HD Blu-ray player – the UBD-K8500 – is available to buy online and in UK stores from today according to the Korean corp.    The deck, which supports 4K HDR playback as well as the usual CD, DVD and BD formats, retails for around £230. Stockists are said to include Currys, John Lewis, Richer Sounds and Samsung.com.

Ruark has announced that it has given its multifunctional R7 sound system a sonic tuneup, claiming improvements to stereo imaging and integration. Working to ramp up the audio performance of its 'radiogram', the British audio brand has made tweaks to the crossovers and Class A/B amplifier stage. 

Sky has today announced it has bagged the rights to forthcoming 4K UHD movies from Sony Pictures a year ahead of any subscription services (such as Netflix), suggesting the likes of Ghostbusters (pictured) and Dan Brown's Inferno could find their way onto a yet-to-be launched 4K movies channel.

The science of home cinema design is complex at the best of times. Calculating the relationship between room acoustics, speaker dispersion, screen gain and projection is notoriously difficult to master and usually left to high-end installers to work out. But now an entire room can be automatically designed, specified and rendered thanks to an ingenious new software package called The Cinema Designer. 

Samsung will launch TVs in 2017 that incorporate Dolby's new Dolby AC-4 audio technology. 

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment has revealed that The X-Files: The Event Series is coming to Blu-ray and DVD in the UK on June 13. Screened earlier this year on Channel 5, the six-episode miniseries saw FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) pick up where they left off almost 14 years ago, continuing their investigation into all things weird and wonderful.