Loewe Connect 55

After a period stuck in buy-out hell, can the German brand's first ever 4K TV persuade John Archer that it hasn’t lost any of its premium edge?

There have been moments over the past couple of years where things have looked decidedly dodgy for German brand Loewe. It's always claimed, though, that it knew where it was going – it’s just taken longer than expected to get there.

Now, Loewe's finally ready to emerge – or rather, explode – back into the AV sunlight by becoming the first brand to only sell 4K/UHD TVs. Yep, every size of every TV in Loewe’s new four-series-strong TV range features a 3,840 x 2,160 resolution screen. For a brand with a luxury ethos, it's a sensible step.

Arcam Solo Bar/Sub

Adrian Justins auditions a soundbar and subwoofer duo from Arcam. Is the UK brand's first foray into the market a big hit?

Arcam has been synonymous with quality home cinema for two decades, so it's no surprise that its debut soundbar product – the Solo Bar – is a premium model sporting an £800 price tag. Add in the Solo Sub and the ticket rises to £1,300. Bargain-basement AV, this isn't.

Now, probably no one other than me is going to be troubled by the notion of two products named 'Solo' that work best together, and they are so called because they are additions to Arcam's Solo range of hardware, which also includes the Muso loudspeaker and – soon – the new Solo Movie amp/disc player unit.

When movies went wide

Long before IMAX, audiences were astounded by a film tech called Cinerama. Richard Holliss looks back at the pioneering widescreen format... that you can now enjoy on Blu-ray

At the end of this year, movie fans across the country will pile into their local state-of-the-art IMAX cinema to watch the latest chapter in the Star Wars saga, hoping to be blown away by the sound and image as well as the return of Han, Luke, RD-D2 et al. Cinema is about spectacle – but that's not a new idea...

Take Back Your Privacy

The internet is a dream for snoopers. Almost every action of our daily lives flow through it at some point or another: emailed appointments, streamed TV shows, web purchases, photos shared with friends. Much of this is completely unencrypted and can be read by any of the various companies who own the tubes the data flows through. Even the bits that are encrypted are usually only encrypted between the end user and the company running the website. Once the data is uploaded, it's often mined, and the data is then sold off to the highest bidder.

OnlyOffice

Ben Everard reclaims his privacy with a web-based office suite he controls

OnlyOffice is a web-based office suite similar to Google Docs or Microsoft's Office 365. However, unlike its competitors, OnlyOffice is open source (under AGPL) so you can run it on your own server (there's a hosted version available as well).

OnlyOffice is a rebranded version of TeamLab Office, which has been around in one form or another since 2009, so it's had time to mature to a featureful, stable platform. However, it was closed source and Windows-only until the end of 2014, so is still fairly unknown in the Linux world.