Stories by: Alan Stafford

Racking your brain for the perfect gifts for the celebrities on your holiday shopping list? These unique tech products will make life bearable for in-the-spotlight types like Paris, Lindsay, TomKat, and Brangelina.

Corel VideoStudio Pro X2 is a great video editor for those with underpowered PCs. And our review shows it's a pretty good choice for those with fast systems, too.

Who needs a big hard drive when everyone's videos will eventually live online?

An HDTV is just a TV with a pretty picture until you add a few important accoutrements. The dozen add-ons shown here will greatly enhance your HDTV watching experience.

Standard-definition video is going the way of the HD DVD player -- or is it?

Pinnacle Studio is far from our favourite video editing application, but Pinnacle's VideoSpin, a new, free editor based on Studio, does a pretty darn good job.

A new version of Corel video editing app lets you edit AVCHD footage -- but only if your PC is powerful enough.

Compared to Panasonic's sleek [[Prodid:3346]], the Canon HV20 HD camcorder looks a bit ungainly, mostly because of the large tape mechanism grafted on to one side. It records 1920 x 1080-pixel HDV-formatted high definition footage to Mini DV tapes, whereas the HDC-SD1 records in AVCHD format to SDHC Cards. However, it has more features and costs quite a bit less than Panasonic's model, and despite its size, they both weigh about the same.

Video editing applications are starting to accept high-definition footage. But you may need to crank your PC up a notch: The shipping versions of Corel's Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus and Pinnacle Systems' Studio 11 Ultimate require serious computing horsepower for editing in high def.

My biggest question about Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe's new AU$345 photo management and processing application designed for professional photographers, was: Why do I need this instead of some other Adobe application?

The Panasonic HDC-SD1 is a camcorder that can capture outstanding footage, but you can't edit the video just yet.