Pinnacle has replaced its Showcenter 200 with the Showcenter 250HD home media streaming device, making PC to TV easier for the average consumer.

It acts as a bridge for digital content - movies, music and photos – from a networked PC or Mac to your TV, without the need for a software instal. And now it offers HD streaming, so you can view HD files on your HD-ready TV as well as standard definition, all controlled via remote from your living room.

The box has a range of outputs, as well as built-in Wi-Fi and ethernet. Expect to see it from January 2008 for around £129.99.

Pinnacle Systems

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Hauppauge has temporarily moved away from TV tuners to introduce XFones - wireless USB headphones for your PC or Mac.

These wireless 2.4Ghz headphones use a tiny USB transmitter for a range of up to 10m from your PC, which means you can be sat elsewhere whilst listening to net radio or your MP3 collection. The headphones themselves use full 40mm drivers and 'Dolby Headphone; technology for a rich/clear sound, wth 3x AAA batteries offering up to 10 hours of continuous playback.

They're also plug and play on either a PC or Mac. Expect to pay around £79.99

Hauppauge Digital

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The D-Link DSM-330 DivX Connected HD Media Player is now available to order in the UK.

It's a wireless digital media adaptor that lets you stream HD-quality DivX videos, photos and music from PCs to TVs, as well as offering access to online media. Requiring a home network and Microsoft Windows XP or Vista (on either a PC or an Intel-based Mac), you can hook up the device via the cables provided, then follow the wizard to optimise for your TV and scan for files. Once you have done that, your media can be accessed by your living room TV.

And if you are lacking DivX videos, software is included to convert your clips. Available to pre-order from Amazon, it retails for £129.99.

Amazon product page

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If talking to people when you just want a bloody burger is too hard, you might want to move to Korea - where a branch of McDonalds has just started accepting order by text message.

It's not as fancy and futuristic as it sounds, though - eaters at the top-class "restaurant" have to sit at a table, plug an infra-red reader into their phones, then scan what they want in off the menu. You're then sent a text notification when your reprocessed lips, cheeks and skin has been sufficiently microwaved to kill off most of the bacteria.

Lots of complicated technical speak explaining how the whole thing works can be found over at the Korean Times. It all sounds a bit complicated and 'novelty'.

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LINDY has announced its new wireless VGA projector server, which allows a projector or display monitor to be added, without cabling, to a local area network.

It all sounds a bit "business-y", being targeted more at those running business meetings, presentations and seminars in the board room, though I suppose if you really love gadgets and hate wires you could implement it at home.

The unit supports audio and streaming media standards (MPEG 1, 2 and 4), and display up to 1024x768 in 32-bit colour. It features the 802.11g Wi-Fi standard, as well as having an wired Ethernet interface.

It has a Conference Control function which lets up to 20 users log into the server simultaneously.

Now you have no excuse for faffing around during that all-important multi-person multimedia presentation. Now go out and win that contract... or something like that.

The unit costs £299, but of course you'll also need the projector.

LINDY

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Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology, which allows devices to communicate wirelessly at high speed over relatively short distances, has been given the go-ahead by Ofcom to be used unlicensed in the UK.

Normally, equipment which uses a part of the radio spectrum requires a license from Ofcom in order that any interference between different users can be managed. However, UWB technology has a low power output and shouldn't interfere with other signals.

Time to get excitied, ladies! The Doro 525 is pink, which means it's for you. He's not allowed near it. His big, dirty hands would crush it in seconds and leave a nasty brown residue down the side of its sleek, curvy buttons. He would also make it smell of sweat and feet AND take it into the toilet.

The Doro 525 Pink is "for the style-conscious UK consumer" according to Doro's Chris Millington, which means it's pink. If he'd just said "it's pink" he would've saved himself a whole lot of unnecessary typing there.

Doro has done its research into this whole pink thing, too. It quotes a recent YouGov survey which reckons 71 percent of UK homeowners think of most home phones as 'forgettable', 'dull' and 'outdated', with 50 percent more women than men wanting phones people would describe as 'funky' and 'cool'.

All we look for in a phone is one that 'works' and has a 'nice ring' for when we get our annual phone call from mum on our birthday.

devolo isn't the only company networking around your home circuitry, D-Link is offering it too, courtesy of its DHP-301 PowerLine HD Ethernet Starter Kit.

The DHP-301 is being pitches as a solution for streaming bandwidth-demanding applications such as high-definition media streaming, music sharing and online multi-player gaming. Connecting to the home network is as simple as plugging one adapter to a router and the other to an Ethernet-ready device such as a personal computer, High Definition TV, digital video recorder, game console, print server or digital media player. That facilitates data transfer rates of up to 200Mbps. The electrical currents do not interfere with the data network because electricity and data are transmitted at very different frequencies.

devolo home networking kits have featured on these pages previously - offering home networking through your home wiring system. Well, that system has just been extended with the dLAN Wireless Extender, which adds wireless connectivity into the mix.

That means both HomePlug and WLAN networking are available in a single adaptor, with data transfer rates of up to 85Mbps via dLAN and 54Mbps via WLAN. It’s still plug and play and offers WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption over WLAN and HomePlug data transmissions protected by DESpro encryption.

The devolo dLAN Wireless extender Starter Kit (including a dLAN Highspeed adapter) sells for £139.99

devolo website

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- Tiscali has admitted it will take at least 10 days to restore their customers' email addresses to full functionality, after being blacklisted as spam by various ISPs. At least we've got Big Brother now to distract us...
- Web browser junkies will be jonesing for the fifth alpha release of Firefox 3 from Mozilla set for release tomorrow, sadly syringes aren't included.
- Apparently Londoners aren't interested in free internet and the plethora of potential Bittorrents possible, as only 6,000 people have registered to use the free City of London Wi-Fi network.
- There must be a lot of kids without friends IRL, as apparently one in five kiddywinks meet people off the internet in person.
- Not only are Apple hiding your email address and password in the DRM-free tracks, but also 360k worth of hidden data - possibly iTunes library data, a watermark of the AAC encoding, or a bunch of ET Atari cartridges. Probably.

When several of us Tech Digest writers were present at Bill Gates' keynotes speech at CES in Las Vegas and saw a brief display of what we now know is Surface, which Dave announced earlier this morning, none of us realised it would be released this year.

Heck, we thought we were looking at the sort of space-age technology that comes hand-in-hand with flying cars and bite-sized pills for every meal.

Instead, Surface will be released into the wild (well, commercial wild, anyway) this Winter, where T-Mobile, Starwood Hotels, Harrah's casinos and gambling-company IGN will have first access to this exciting new way of computing.

Creative has announced the availability of its Xmod Wireless music system that connects directly to a PC via USB and streams music wirelessly around the home using its Xtreme Fidelity quality-enhancing technology.

The Xmod Wireless connects to a PC and speaker system without the need to install drivers. The included X-Fi Wireless Receiver is then connected to a speaker system elsewhere in the home, up to 100 feet away, and can then be streamed between the two stations.

More on the Wi-Fi / radiation story, in advance of the BBC's Panorama show to be screened later this evening. As one of the companies putting Wi-Fi into the homes of millions of Brits, you'd expect BT to have views. And so they do.

"BT is absolutely committed to ensuring the technology we install is safe," says Steve Andrews, the company's chief of mobility and convergence. "Speculation about health issues in relation to mobile phones, mobile base stations and related wireless products is still very much in the public eye and we take these concerns surrounding very seriously, ensuring we monitor the latest research available."

He goes on to point out that BT's work with local councils in the creation of 'Wireless Cities' shows that the company is "very conscious of our responsibility to the public, employees and customers".

Tonight's Panorama is sure to have much of the consumer tech industry glued to their TVs, to evaluate the BBC's evidence about the potential health risks of Wi-Fi networks. My column earlier on today looked at the issue from a concerned new parent's point of view, but I've also been finding out what industry figures think.

"I think it is the industry rather than consumers who should be taking the lead as part of responsible risk management," says Jim Lawler, CEO of Exradia, which makes products designed to protect people from the potentially harmful effects of man-made electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from mobile phones and other wireless devices.

Yes, his business is based on people being worried about these EMFs, so he might be biased. On the other hand, it's his job to understand the issues around this technically-complex subject, so his views are certainly worth hearing.

Stuart Dredge writes...

As I write this, I'm upstairs at home, connected to the internet via my home Wi-Fi network. The router sits downstairs next to the TV, and right now my three-week-old son is sleeping just a few feet away from it. Rather than providing for his future welfare, is my work actually frying his brains with Wi-Fi radiation?

Over-the-top? Sure, but I bet there are plenty more people around the UK thinking along those lines today. Tonight, the BBC is screening an episode of its Panorama current affairs programme on the health risks posed by Wi-Fi networks, particularly in schools. The programme claims that in some schools, radiation levels are up to three times the level pumped out by mobile phone masts.

We have featured devolo's home networking kits previously, but if you were impressed, you might well have struggled to find one on the high street. Well, all that should change, with the company signing a distribution deal to sell the kits in PC World.

It's good timing too. With concerns about Wi-Fi networks (albeit unproven), devolo's system of networking via home cabling could be perceived as a safer alternative. Other from the company’s latest dLAN 200 AV starter kits include data transfer rates of up to 200Mbps, a reduction in cabling and improved transmission quality compared to wireless set-ups, which can be affected by walls and ceilings.

Will Head writes...

If you're protective of your internet and live in Worcestershire, then you'll need to keep it locked up after a second person was cautioned for using a Wi-Fi connection without permission.

Neighbours in Redditch raised the alarm after seeing a man using a laptop in his car parked outside a house, according to the BBC. Earlier in the month a woman was caught doing the same thing - although she'd cunningly thought to put cardboard in her car windows so as not to arouse suspicion. Because a car with shoddily blocked out windows wouldn't make anyone think you were up to no good.

With many houses having a wireless network and more than one PC (or Mac) in the house, it seems sensible to expect wireless printers to become the norm. Lexmark certainly think so, with the majority of its new inkjet printers going wireless, including the first two models to hit the market - the Lexmark X4550 Wireless All-in-One and the Lexmark Z1420 Wireless Colour Printer.

Just follow the set-up instructions and they will sit on your network, accessible by all the computers in your home. The X4550 has a printing speed of up to 26 pages per minute black and 18 ppm colour, as well as offering photo printing, copying and colour scanning. It's priced around £99.99.

Acer has launched the Altos easyStore, described as an "intelligent" network storage solution suitable for small office and home network environments.

The Altos easyStore provides up to 2TB of storage capacity using 4 high capacity drives. Through a web interface, the storage capacity can be configured in a RAID configuration, providing security that valuable data will not be lost. It can also be used in a mixed OS – Windows, Mac and Linux.

Alongside the iPod dock, Sony has also unveiled another stylish add-on for the Bravia home theatre range - the TDM-NC1 Wi-Fi client.

The image might give the impression of a large cube - but it's actually just three inches in size. Fire up your PC, attach the cube to your Bravia system via the digital media port and you can stream your digital tunes from your computer to your home theatre over your home network.