Producer Robert Rodriguez and director Nimrod Antal screened first-look footage of Predators Friday night for 200 or so lucky attendees on the opening night of the South by Southwest Film Festival and Conference, then talked at length about returning the franchise to the character-driven feel of 1987's classic Predator.

Its the latest buzzword in tv systems, 3D is the new thing that will make your eyes literally ‘pop out'. But before you go out and buy the latest 3d tv set, listen to the wise words from Avatar director James Cameron.

Microsoft is to launch its UK video-on-demand service today with hundreds of hours of programmes, including Skins, Kingdom, Faking It and Waterloo Road, and has promised that online high-definition viewing will follow.

Sony Computer Entertainment America announced that purchases and rental of HD movies from the 6 major studios, namely, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution are available on the Playstation Network video delivery service. This news simultaneously crowns the Playstation 3 as the first game console with HD movies from those studios.

So 3D is ready for its close up . . . right? Well, maybe not. While the industry players have hammered out technical standards that allow many 3D-ready components to work together -- any 3D Blu-ray player should work with any 3D television, for instance -- they haven't established one for the new type of 3D glasses that work with the sets.

With the DVD business continuing to fall down the rabbit hole, movie studios are looking for new ways to boost revenues, and "Alice" may be part of the solution. This weekend Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" will re-write the rules of the game, opening the door for more experimentation with the home entertainment model down the line.

Overused term though it is, convergence is creeping into pretty much all electronic devices these days. We all know the PC and telco sectors are converging, but we have to add consumer electronics into that mix too. A good illustration of this is an announcement from Samsung, that its LED 7000 and 8000 2010 models will come with Skype software embedded, to allow users to make voice and video calls through their tellies.

Movies in 3-D are becoming such big moneymakers that Hollywood studios are cramming them into the nation's theaters, even though there aren't enough screens available to give each film its fullest possible run.

Alice in Wonderland isn't as popular as a Tiger Woods confession, it seems. MySpace hosted a live stream for the movie last night, with streaming video partner Ustream counting almost 400,000 views over the evening.

Football fans will be able to watch World Cup games via their iPhones following the BBC's decision to launch an app ahead of the tournament.

It's hard to believe that YouTube, which now streams more than 1bn videos a day, only registered its domain name five years ago

Johnny Depp goes deep on his Mad Hatter character in the new Alice in Wonderland clip, “The Mad Hatter is unpredictable,” Depp says. “Like a mood ring, his emotions are right on the surface."

Contrary to its reputation for emptying wallets, Apple has been on a price-chopping spree. First came reports that if iPad sales tank, Apple would lower prices to regain already waning consumer buzz. Now Apple is considering lowering the cost of iTunes TV show downloads to $1, according to the Financial Times.

Once known simply as 'plasma screens' in the collective consciousness, the 42-inch size is where the flatscreen dream started in the late 1990s – and where it's still at its best.

Multicore processors, quad HD, lenticular lenses and more.

Samsung has revealed it excepts the sales of 3D TVs and memory chips to explode this year. It expects demand for flat panel TVs and other products to soar this year as the world recovers from the recession.

Just as new high definition TVs were marketed as 'HD ready', expect the first wave of 3D-capable sets to wear a '3D Ready' sticker.

The largest maker of LCD television displays by volume, Samsung Electronics announced today in a press release that it will be the first company to begin the mass production of panels used for three-dimensional TV displays, in both LED and LCD High-Def formats.

The BBC has been granted provisional approval for the BBC to introduce copy protection for content on the Freeview HD platform.

Even viewers who have recently bought the latest "HD Ready" televisions with built in Freeview could find that HD Ready does not really mean exactly that.