Netflix announces "significant" expansion into 6 European countries-- Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Luxembourg will get access to the video-on-demand service sometime later this year.

The above mentioned countries will join the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands in access to subscription-based on-demand programming on multiple devices. Little else is known, since the company says it will provide "further details, including pricing, programming and supported devices at a later date."

Currently Netflix has 48 million subscribers in over 40 countries, and says it serves over 1 billion hours of programming per month. In Europe it will get to compete against the likes of Sky Deutschland's Snap, Vivendi's Watchever, ProSiebenSat.1's MaxDome and Amazon Instant Video.

Fast Company magazine shares this news: "A new campaign for Samsung's Ultra HD curved TV stitches together moments from iconic films into one giant reaction shot."

Created by the ad agency 72andSunny, "The Curve Changes Everything" campaign uses outakes from Back to the Future, Jaws, Zoolander, Gravity, Field of Dreams and other films.

The agency worked with director Rian Johnson (Looper and Breaking Bad) and Oscar-winning cinematographer Claudio Miranda (The Life of Pi) to create the spot.

Samsung itself says curvy screens "allows for a more uniform distance from the eye to the entire surface of the screen, so it perceptually widens the field of view, enveloping you into the content you love."

In the US Best Buy is pushing the "home theatre experience" with an expansion of the store-in-a-store concept-- Sony gets pop-up stores in 350 Best Buy locations, while Samsung adds 500 outlets to its previously established presence.

Within the Best Buy outlets the two companies will be selling their biggest and loudest home entertainment products, namely UHD/4K TVs and the audio systems.

The stores-in-a-store also get staff in the shape of "knowledgable and friendly" Blue Shirts and company experts.

Outside the Sony/Samsung areas Best Buy is also tweaking its home theatre sections with large screen TV showcase areas, grab'n'go shopping for small- and mid-size TVs and soundbar listening stations.

So Amazon was truly working on a console-slash-STB after all-- the online retailer turned hardware maker reveals a spearhead in the invasion of the world's living rooms with the Fire TV.

Rumours on the Amazon STB have been going on since April 2013, with Bloomberg first reporting of a Roku/Boxee-style device in development at the company's Lab126 hardware division.

The finished products looks like a small matte black box adorned with a simple Amazon logo. It runs on the latest version of Amazon's forked Android build (aka "Mojito") and carries a quad-core processor, Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB RAM and dual-band dual-antenna wifi. Pushing output are HDMI and optical audio ports.

Media content comes via Amazon's own Instant Video and Prime services, as well as Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Pandora and iHeartRadio, among others. An interesting-sounding "ASAP" feature predicts the shows users are most likely to watch, pre-caching them for instant viewing.

Active Thermal Management (ATM) offers a cooling solution for both rack installations and closets with shelf-mounted systems-- Dual-cool, a two-mode cooling system effective for both applications.

The system moves heated air to either attics or adjacent areas via 1.5m of flexible tubing.

When used in a rack installation the Dual-cool mounts on rack rear rails, taking no front rack space. It is 2U high and 18cm deep, and mounts easily behind a shallow component near the top of the rack.

Denon and Marantz join the Crestron Connected family, with select AV receivers from the two brands getting native integration with Crestron automation products following a Crestron-D+M partnership agreement.

Crestron Connected is an out-of-the-box receiver integration solution. It uses standard ethernet cable and eliminates the need for separate software modules. Installers can easily customise AVR interfaces for source switching, volume control and internal control via AVR system setup menu.