Tech Digest go hands-on with the new HTC One smartphone in this hands-on video.

Packing in a 4.7-inch 1080p display, 1.7GHz quad-core processor, Android Jelly Bean OS, new "ultrapixel" camera tech and the HTC Sense 5 UI with Blink Feed, is it ready to face whatever challenge the Samsung Galaxy S4 can throw at it?

Out in March, expect to pay around £500 for the handset SIM-free.

Click here for our in-depth written hands-on review of the HTC One.

If you could turn any current TV show into a SNES-era RPG adventure, what would you choose? Breaking Bad maybe? How about Game of Thrones? Drugs and fantasy though - we've got our fill of those with GTA and Skyrim, right?

I'm after something a little more genteel. Something with a little more dignity, and 100% more tailcoat action.

I want Downton Abbey: The Game.

And, thanks to artist Bill Kiley (and without the aid of a time machine) we've got a glimpse of just what that 16-bit hit would have looked like.

From cigar hunting fetch quests to spoon-identifying mini-games, it'd have been a sure-fire Call of Duty beater. And listen to that chiptune soundtrack! I think I've just found myself a new ring tone. Hilarious stuff - check it out in the video above.

Some days here at Tech Digest, we come across things that aren't necessarily tech related, but that are so amazing that we can't help but share them with you. Today is one of those days: feast your eyes on The Live Action Toy Story Project.

Yep, you guessed it - it's the entire first Toy Story film, re-created in live action with real-life toys. It's the happiest, most wonderful fan-made labour of love I've seen in a long, long time. I defy you to hit play and not crack a smile uncharacteristically wide for a Monday morning.

The whole movie remake has been masterminded by just two guys, Jonason Pauley and Jesse Perrotta, who started the project back in June 2010 when they were just 17 and 18 years old respectively. Beginning by just shooting a few favourite scenes, the footage was so well received that they decided in September 2011 to commit to completing the whole film.

Taking over two rooms in Pauley's house to use as makeshift sets and building some characters that can't be bought from scratch, the film was completed back in August, but the pair feared potential legal action from Toy Story creators Pixar.

Last week the two approached Pixar with the movie, who were so impressed with the outcome that they've agreed to let the pair distribute the flick online. Nicely done Pixar.

It's really great fun. Line this up in your lunch break, kick back and enjoy!

More info on the project can be found here.

You can do some pretty outlandish things in the Grand Theft Auto games; diving out of helicopters and parachuting onto the top of a skyscraper, taking on the army armed only with a baseball bat, mowing down drug pushers in a tank.

It's great, which is why we're looking forward to GTA V so much.

What could possibly make us even more eager to play GTA V? How about if the star of the show was a magical horse named Poonikins?

That's what this clip of a heavily modded GTA IV teases at. We can't begin to express how barmy and hilarious this video is. A horse, with a baseball bat, on a flying motorcycle. It's like the GTA universe as re-imagined by the Monty Python crew. Click the video above to view it in all its surreal glory.

As for an actual look at GTA V? Check it out in the video below which reveals plenty of new details from the game, showing off train crashes, jet fighter dogfights, actual dogs, swamp-like regions, the strained relationship between the three main protagonists, a number of bank heists, a vertigo inducing skydive from a car falling out of the back of an airplane and a closer look at the most visually impressive Grand Theft Auto game yet.

No release date is available for Grand Theft Auto V yet, but we're expecting a Spring 2013 release.

Love it or hate it, global pop wildcard superstar Psy has broken a world record with his mental Gangnam Style video.

Now watched over 832.6 MILLION times, Gangnam Style has is now the most-watched YouTube video of all time. Psy takes the title previously owned by both Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber,

The video's successes have extended beyond the realms of the internet too, with the South Korean's mad horse dance even bagging the MTV Europe Music Awards "Best Video" category, not to mention the song itself hitting number one in 28 countries.

Expect to see that dance dominate Christmas parties across the land. Add a couple more views to Psy's count by checking out the video above.

LG are getting in the Halloween "trick or treat" spirit of the season with this awesomely mean prank, using their IPS Displays to scare the life out of some office workers.

The South Korean company installed their screens into a modified elevator's floor, running a video beneath its passenger's feet to make them believe they were about to fall to their death as the base of the lift crumbled beneath them.

Being an advert, there's no guaranteeing those who got "punk'd" aren't actors, but there's no denying that would be a pretty terrifying experience. Well played, LG, well played.

As well as showing how realistic their displays are, it's also not a bad advert for showing the durability of the screens; there's a fair few scaredy-cat jumps going on on top of those panels!

Check it all out in the video above.

Regardless of what you think about the ridiculously named Felix Baumgartner's (translates as tree gardener apparently) crazy stunt, there's no denying the guy has got some balls doing what he did.

Jumping out a balloon-powered space capsule from 128,000 feet, spinning apparently out of control for part of the plunge - yet still not passing out or screaming for your Mum - is a truly incredible feat. Personally I get a bit giddy on top of a kids' rollercoaster so I can't imagine what free falling at Mach 1.24 (833 miles per hour) at temperatures of -68 degrees centigrade must feel like. All on the 65th anniversary of Chuck Yeagar breaking the sound barrier for the first time - though of course he did it in a plane, the wimp.

Apparently Baumgartner, his sponsor Red Bull and YouTube have set another record too. During last night's stunt there were more than two million concurrent livestreams of the event going out around the world. The previous record for a single web video service was around 500,000 concurrent streams, which Google served up during the Olympics this summer.

You can see the whole thing here:

And you can see highlights here:

(By the way rumours of RyanAir's Michael O'Leary introducing parachute drop offs from aircraft as a way of saving on landing fees are completely unfounded)

For more information on the world record breaking jump go here.

Via TV Scoop

YouTube can be an amazing platform for musicians to showcase their tracks on. Love him or loathe him, Justin Bieber for instance used the video hosting site to find fame, going on to become a worldwide superstar at the tender age of just 15.

But for every success story, there are inevitably a hundred failures riding a wave of mediocrity down the drain and out into the great ocean of musical sewage. YouTube is a veritable goldmine of unintentionally hilarious music videos, and today here at Tech Digest we've been compiling our ten favourites. Some of these are well known virals, some of them have not enjoyed such widespread "acclaim". The one thing they all have in common? They're all truly, truly awful.

Jan Terri - Lose You Tonight

We'll kick proceedings off with a classic. Limo driver by day, Jan Terri's crooning vocal sees her turn into a rock vixen by night. By "vixen", we mean she sings with a shriek similar to that of a brawling urban fox after a night on the tiles round the back of the bins behind the kebab shop. Jan Terri apparently played at one of Marilyn Manson's birthday parties. Confrontational as he is, we can only imagine Manson had a soft spot for Terri's unique "having an argument with my own song" performance style. Keep an eye out for the shot by the sewage-run off too, a superbly apt location we feel.

Majela Ze Ze Diamond - Show Me Your Genitals

Firstly, a word of warning. This video, lyrically at least, is pretty NSFW. Call me prudish, but Majela Ze Ze Diamond, surely an internet star in the making, has a knack for slipping in the odd below the belt anatomical detail into the words of her songs. It all gets a bit hypnotic by the end, and by the 500th time Majela offers to show you her genitalia, you're all but ready to submit. Key line? "Men are good for money, sex and vagina". Indeed. Make sure to check out Majela's other "hit", Tickle My Vagina, when you're done.

Manakin - Something is Locked Inside of My Soul

Disregarding the musical "wizardry" going on in the background (which incidentally sounds more than a little bit like the theme tune to kids' dungeons and dragons TV show Knightmare), the real star of 70s rockers Manakin is their rather limber frontman and his collection of creepy masks that appear to be made of human flesh. Keep an eye out for Jerry Lewis at the end of the performance, his usually uber-professional TV persona stunned into a faltering mess. If Silence of the Lambs' Buffalo Bill were ever to start a prog-rock band, it'd probably sound a lot like this...

Maxine Swaby - Pardon Me

It's hard to put my finger on what makes Maxine Swaby such an important force in music today. Sometimes I think it's the "end of the pier" production sound her songs carry, other times how she brings some much needed glamour to the video's rural locales with her array of nautical-themed costumes. But the truth of the matter is, they don't call Maxine Swaby "The Voice" for nothing. YouTube commentator manbearpigisalive sums it all up far more eloquently than I ever could: "She sounds like she's being microwaved".

Rap Against Rape - What Did I Do Wrong?

In what is surely the most unintentionally unsympathetic treatise against rape of all time, Dublin-based Rap Against Rape attempt to fight sex crime with this banging 90's dance tune. "What did I do wrong?" cries the refrain. Going ahead with this ill-conceived mess for starters. Rumour has it this inspired the short-lived "Rape Against Rap" movement. Oh, and keep an eye out for Tom Selleck's cameo freestyle halfway through too.

Reh Dogg - Why Must I Cry?

With nearly 4 million YouTube views, Reh Dogg enjoys a level of notoriety few other "stars" on this list can lay claim to. A pioneer of "emo rap", Reh Dogg's lyrics deal with poverty and issues relating to accepting an unsatisfactory body image, as well as wanting to get with Asian women, and failing to get with said Asian women. He'd probably have a better chance sorting out that last problem if he didn't keep posting videos of himself all-but naked in the shower.

Anonymous 80s bizarreness...

Words cant really do justice to this one. While the initial purpose/meaning behind this video may forever be lost in time, at least we can all sleep safe in the knowledge that floral shirts, shorts, white knee-socks and red pumps are no longer considered a legitimate outfit for a full-grown man.

Steklovata - Novi God

Just like with the complete works of Shakespeare, give a gang of monkeys access to a bluescreen, the internet and infinite amounts of time, and one day they'll strike pop-gold with an MTV-defining music video. The problem with humanity is that offer the same parameters to four men and they'll settle with giving birth to the hellspawn that is Russian boy-band Steklovata, seen here with their hit "Novi God". That said, I'd choose Steklovata over Justin Beiber any day of the week...

Lori Watt - Chill in my Veins

I was in two minds whether or not to post this video, as I just couldn't be sure that mental illness, which isn't at all funny, didn't factor into proceedings somewhere along the line with this tune. Thankfully, for the sake of my soul, I've been reassured that Lori Watt is perfectly healthy, and just a shockingly bad musician. Amazingly, this was played on TV in New Zealand, supposedly without a hint of irony.

Speak - Stop the War

If only Hungarian rapper-cum-anti-war-philanthropist Speak had been around before all of history's greatest conflicts! We'd so be living in the post-nuclear apocalypse wasteland, overrun by mutants, that I've been training for my entire life! Oh, and just so you know for next time Speak, doves are the international symbol of peace, not white pigeons. An easy mistake to make when you're this damn cool though we suppose...

Well, forgoing the need for widespread high-speed broadband, advanced graphical user interfaces and any tunes other than A-Ha or the Beverly Hills Cop theme, it would have probably looked something a bit like this, command line inputs and all.

Check out more from SquirrelMonkeyCom's excellent YouTube channel here.

Thanks to Luke for finding this gem!

Here's a quick lesson in Laptop Usage 101: never, EVER leave your machine unattended in a public place. EVER.

For starters, it could be stolen, like anything of reasonable value. Potentially worse is the fact that someone could access your priceless personal information in your absence, getting all sorts of juicy, valuable details while you're away.

Or, the ultimate disaster; some plucky prankster could trigger a porno video to play at full volume at an inopportune time, making it impossible to close, nor hide your infinite embarrassment.

As seen in action here. The mark in question was targeted in a library too, a place only beaten in the silent embarrassment stakes by a funeral parlour.

You have been warned!

Via: Reddit

After far too long off our screens, Mad Men returns to TV this week, with Season 5 airing in the US on AMC Sunday 25th March and Sky Atlantic in the UK on Tuesday 27th March.

To get you in the whiskey-swilling, chain-smoking mood, The Fine Brothers (purveyors of interactive YouTube videos) have put together this amazing 8-Bit homage to both the series and the classic Choose Your Own Adventure books of the 1970s.

Rather than flicking through pages, the YouTube video full of embedded links to other clips, playing out the different paths of the branching storyline.

Comprising over 40 different segments, leading to three different endings, you can even play as Peggy, Pete and Betty, as well as the smooth-talking Don Draper.

It's hilarious, inventive and well worth a look if the first episode of Series 5 still feels a long way off.

Man, the prize for the latest YouTube competition is SO good, I was in two minds as to whether or not to post about it so I'd stand a better chance of winning it myself!

YouTube has today launched a new global competition called Your Film Festival, which will see one aspiring film-maker win $500,000 and work with Ridley Scott to bring their ideas to life on the big screen. For a budding film-maker, it really doesn't get any better than that.

In association with the Venice Film Festival and Emirates, those looking to win the prize are tasked with making the most compelling short film (under 15 minutes in length hosted on YouTube) that they can.

The best films will then be subjected to a public vote, with the winner getting the chance to turn their short film into a feature length one with guidance from directorial legend Ridley Scott.

You've only got until March 31st, so get cracking! Click here for more info.

Via: Shiny Shiny

I worry about dropping my iPad from about waist height, so I'd have had a heart attack watching the makers of the G-Form Extreme iPad 2 Sleeve drop their Apple tablet from OUTER SPACE.

It's all been done to prove that their G-Form Extreme iPad 2 Sleeve is really as rugged as it sounds. Strapping an iPad 2, nestled snugly in the case, to a weather balloon with a camera also attached, it rises to above 100,000 feet before plummeting towards the Nevada desert, hitting the ground.

AND SURVIVING THE FALL.

Is it the real deal? Is it fake? It's hard to tell. The case is made of a composite blend of PORON XRD and utilises Reactive Protection Technology to keep the iPad safe, which sounds so full of BS that it might actually be true that it can protect the tablet from such a fall.

Either way, the iPad was lucky not to land with the screen facing down onto all those jagged rocks, as that would certainly have smashed it.

If the video has done enough to impress you, you can pre-order one of the G-Form Extreme iPad 2 sleeves from Firebox now, priced £69.99.

As 2011 draws to a close, YouTube have revealed the UK's most watched clips on their video-sharing site.

Animal clips, memes and funny celebrity videos rub shoulders with upcoming music stars in the list, showing the massive range of eccentric content available through YouTube this year.

Topping the list is Ultimate Dog Tease, a wickedly funny clip of a dubbed pooch moaning over a lack of bacon. It attracted 74 million views.

This was followed by T-Mobile's Royal Wedding advert in at number two, and Charlie Sheen's madness re-edited into a pop song at number three.

"The 10 most-watched YouTube videos of 2011 show that around the world, whatever language we speak, there are certain things that bring us together around a computer screen or mobile phone: adorable babies, talented performers, and clever advertising," said the site's trend manager, Kevin Allocca.

Scroll down for the cream of the crop on YouTube in 2011:

1. Ultimate Dog Tease

2. The T-Mobile Royal Wedding

3. Winning - a song by Charlie Sheen

4. Nyan Cat

5. Michael Collings - Britain's Got Talent 2011 Audition

6. MasterChef Synesthesia

7. Diary of a Bad Man

8. Rebecca Black "Friday" (Brock's Dub)

9. Talking Twin Babies

10. asdfmovie

So what do you think of the UK's top YouTube clips? Have we missed out on a few glorious memes, or has the UK's online viewing taste been spot on? Fire away with your thought's below, and send you suggestions for YouTube gold along to our Twitter account, @techdigestnews !

So, Kim Jong-il, North Korea's super crazy dictator has died, suffering a heart attack on his heavily armoured train, aged 69.

While the international community now starts sweating over the nature of his son's succession in one of the world's most volatile, nuclear-armed nations, we've turned our attentions to Kim Jong-il's contribution to science fiction cinema.

Yep, Kim Jong-il was dab hand at sniffing out winning silver-screen action, and so in 1985, kidnapped South Korean director Shin Sang-Ok and his wife, actress Choe Un-Hee, and forced the director to make Pulgasari an anti-capitalist Godzilla rip-off. Kim Jong-il was the executive producer on the movie, though we're sure his input mainly consisted of cracking the whip.

Still, watch it in its entirety below! It's mental.

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Now, if you've just brought a brand-spanking new iPhone 4S (or a Samsung Galaxy S II for that matter), you're probably a) lamenting the loss of a sizeable wad of cash and b) wondering if it's worth insuring your expensive new toy. There's nothing worse than a fumbled phone smashed into a million pieces.

Independent warranty company SquareTrade have a bit of cash to flash about, and took it upon themselves to see which phone out of the iPhone 4S or the Samsung Galaxy S II would fare better when dropped from a range of heights, and at differing angles.

The results will scare you enough into ringing them up for a quote immediately after seeing this.

We wont spoil the surprise by telling you which phone came out of the drop test least damaged, but we're sure you'll be surprised by the outcome.

Click the video above to check out the test.

How's this for a geek pie? Mix equal parts Lego, stop-motion animation and gory shooter Gears of War in a pot. Bake. Slice. Post on YouTube.

What do you get? This amazing Lego Gears of War tribute. With roadie runs, chainsaw bayonets, Corpsers and the Hammer of Dawn.

While the chances of the next Lego game being in the Gears of War universe are, well, non-existant, luckily we still have the superb Gears of War 3 to enjoy.

Click here to read our review of the third part of the explosive trilogy.

Can you remember your life before knowing the Earth-shattering truth that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's dad?

Before Jar-Jar Binks pissed on your childhood, and before George Lucas turned the galaxy's most super-cool Sith Lord into a weepy pussy that bawls "NOOOOOOOO!" everytime the shit hits the fan?

Nope neither can we. That was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

Ahhh, to be young again. Like this four year old, who is just about to watch a mutilated Luke find out that the bully with a lightsabre is his dad, for the first time. It's priceless.

Microsoft's BUILD conference has thrown up plenty of info on the new Windows 8 operating system, not least of all how the platform will look when it hits tablets.

We'd yet to see a direct comparison against the tablet trend-setting iPad however. That is until now we mean. WinRumours have put together a video lining up the devices side by side, going into great depth over the course of ten minutes as to how the Windows 8 OS works compared to its iOS rival, detailing it's customisation options and how the "Live Tiles" first seen in Windows Phone 7 devices have been tweaked and tailored to fit a new tablet home.

Got to admit it, Windows 8 is looking pretty darn slick. Microsoft may well have got their cool back. That is, if they ever had it in the first place. There's mountains of potential here.

Not so sure about that brown carpet though.

Hit the video above to give it a look, and let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Unboxing videos are so passé. Who wants to see some guy open up a box and tell you how many pages are in the instruction manual? No-one, that's who.

Unboxing videos are boring. Extreme unboxing videos on the other hand, now that's something we can totally get into.

We travelled up to Skegness's Fantasy Island theme park, equipped with a hot-off-the-factory-floor Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone, hopped on a rollercoaster and put the handset's dual-core processor through its paces.

We'll have a full review of the phone really soon, so check back later for that. For now, have a laugh at our terrified expense as we hurtle around a loop-the-loop shouting tech specs next to a non-plussed schoolgirl.