Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

Music broadcaster (although it’s been a long time since MTV’s core channels could be classed as music programming) MTV has confirmed today that it plans to launch a HD TV service in the UK by the end of 2008.

MTVNHD will be a 24-hour service originating in Poland, with a mix of bought-in and original programming, including extreme sports, music charts packages and live concerts.

MTVNHD will also broadcast a block of programming from sister network Nickelodeon, including Spongebob.

Availability of the channel is unconfirmed at the moment, but Sky HD is almost certain to be included. Virgin Media and Freesat HD customers will have to wait and see.

After a delay of almost two months, O2 UK has today confirmed the official pricing for the iPhone handset on PAYG.

£399 will get you the 16Gb model, while £349 buys the 8Gb.

As part of the deal, you get free Wi-fi and browsing for the first 12 months - but it’ll be £10 a month after that.

No word on how fair their fair use policies are, but £349 for a gizmo as easy to use as the iPhone, even for use as a PDA and web browser, doesn’t seem that unreasonable.

Scan’s Great White, as shown to the left, has won the coveted Custom PC Dream PC 2008 award, beating competition from HP and Armari. Armari’s machine technically wasn’t fully entered, as the magazine chose not to fully review it since the submitted computer was a prototype not available for mass production.

Custom PC has had a Dream PC competition dating back to 2004. Previous winners include SavRow in 2004 (for a water-cooled machine featuring a single core Athlon64 and GeForce 6800 Ultra, a spec that cost several thousand pounds at the time and would be outgunned by a £500 laptop today), Armari in 2005 and Vadim in 2006. Scan’s back-to-back wins in 2007 and 2008 make the firm the first supplier to win twice.

Scan’s beast is based around the following spec:

• Silverstone TJ07 super tower case, finished with extensive chrome plating and laser-etched Great White logo. Various sections of the case are lit with white LEDs to give it a slightly more upmarket feel.
• nVidia 790i SLI motherboard
• 1kW Corsair PSU
• 3 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1
• Extensive, custom-manufactured water cooling equipment from Aqua Computer and Alphacool
• Core 2 Quad Q9650 - overclocked to 4.4GHz from its stock 3GHz speed
• 2×2Gb Corsair Dominator DDR3
• 3 XTX GTX 280 graphics cards with 1Gb of GDDR3 RAM each, GPU clocked at 670MHz and RAM at 2500MHz
• 64Gb OCZ SSD - 2.5″ device with 143MB/sec read and 93MB/sec write
• Panasonic slot-loading DVD writer
• Panasonic slot-loading Blu Ray writer as well
• X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty sound card
• KillerNIC M1 network interface card with 400Mhz processor
• Vista Ultimate 64bit
• 24″ Zalman 3D monitor

How does it perform? In a word, fast. Custom PC unfortunately don’t provide extensive benchmark results but they claim to have seen it perform their standard video encoding benchmark to within a couple of points of an overclocked Skulltrail rig.

Price? That’s the tricky part. If you want the best, you can’t compromise - and that means paying Scan a total of £11,162.49 inc VAT. Reckon you could build better for less? What would you change? Leave your comments and let us know.

Apple’s paper-thin notebook machine has received a fairly major software update, reports The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Accessed via the usual updating system within OS X, the patch addresses issues with video playback as well as - primarily - issues with heat. The CPU cores in the MacBook apparently don’t idle as they should out of the box - resulting in the slimline unit running very hot with extended use.

If you’re an Air user rushing out to install this, the update comes with a word of warning: if you’ve installed a third-party workaround like CoolBook, uninstall it before running the update.

TechRadar reports that the N79 and N85 handsets first captured in spy shots in June have finally become official.

To the left (shown bearing the N00 markings as in the original leaked photos) is the new slider design, the N85. The phone appears to be a baby brother to the new flagship handset, the N96, with a 2.6″ OLED screen, GPS, FM radio and 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens. The N85 will be delivered with a free 8GB memory card.

Over on the right is the new “candybar” phone, the N79. Bundled with a 4GB memory card, the N79 packs in all the same features as the N85, and sees the return of the old Xpress-On replaceable covers that owners of the old 3210 handsets will not-so-fondly remember.

Contract-free prices are reported to be €350 for the N79 and €450 for the N85. No word yet on when these will hit the UK networks.

Samsung’s Armani Paw LCD TV is available in 46 and 52 inch screen sizes with a cabinet designed by the man himself. The TV is currently only available in Korea, but features 120Hz picture processing and built-in RSS feed support. Price? If you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it.