Looking at the biggest stories on BetaNews from September, 1 - 7, 2013. This was a week packed with news from IFA in Berlin -- lots of big announcements to whet our appetites for the coming months. LG's G Pad was revealed as a potential competitor to the Nexus 7 and iPad mini, while Acer was found to be proudly showing off its new R7 notebook complete with innovative Ezel hinge that allows for a range of working positions.

IFA was also where Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note 3 as well as the Galaxy Gear smartwatch which will allow us all to live out our Star Trek dreams. It wasn't long before Note 3 pre-orders were being taken. If you've noticed that phones are getting bigger and bigger, the same is certainly true of tablets -- the Panasonic Toughpad 4K is a staggering 20 inches from corner to corner.

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Ever since consumers flocked to HD flat-screen television the manufacturers have been busy hatching plans for the next get-rich-quick scheme. With 3D pretty much in the toilet, the next scheme to get consumers to all fork over their money yet again is 4K. Also known as ultra HD, the spec has twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of the current 1080p format, with four times as many pixels.

Today that vibrant 4k future moves a step closer with the official announcement of HDMI 2.0. The specifications bandied about in the announcement are eye-popping. "This latest HDMI Specification, the first to be developed by the HDMI Forum, offers a significant increase in bandwidth (up to 18Gbps) to support new features such as 4K at 50/60 (2160p), which is four times the clarity of 1080p/60 video resolution; 32 audio channels; as well as dynamic auto lip-sync and extensions to CEC".

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The Kindle Paperwhite is the most successful e-reader ever, and Amazon is updating the range with the sixth generation of the Kindle family. It's the "All-New" prefix that aids identification, but aside from the name, there's a new display, faster processor and a raft of new features for readers to use. In terms of appearance, there are few differences to its predecessor, but the display is where things are most noticeable.

New display technology gives a higher contrast ratio and Amazon claims that pages are "virtually indistinguishable from a physical book". No new version would be complete without an extra turn of speed, and the latest Kindle Paperwhite doesn't disappoint, offering a processor running 25 percent faster than in the previous model. The touchscreen has been upgraded with a tighter grid to help improve sensitivity and accuracy.

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You may well not have heard of it -- and even if you have, it's even less likely that you've used it -- but Microsoft's Tag service is to close two years from now. In a statement on the Tag website Microsoft says that it is issuing a two year termination notice in accordance with its Terms of Use and that the service can be used as normal for the next 24 months.

For anyone to whom Microsoft Tag is an unfamiliar name, and this is likely to be a large group, this is -- or perhaps was -- Microsoft's alternative to the QR code. Scan a tag from a magazine or advertisement and you can access content such as websites, videos and more.

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Right now in Edinburgh, the Fringe festival is taking place. Billed as the world's largest arts festival, this three week long extravaganza is home to the weird and the wacky, the silly and the serious, the new and the inventive. But what it's really known for is comedy; it's where many household names took their first steps on the road to fame, and huge numbers of big names come back year after year.

Thousands of shows take place in bars, basements, theatres, on street corners -- just about anywhere you can think of. The Fringe is famous the world over, and the Scottish capital swells in size as performers and fans travel from not only around the UK, but from all over the world. Sadly, not everyone who wants to make it to the festival is able to do so. Google thinks it has the answer in the form of the Hangout Comedy Club.

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Problems playing certain video or audio files on your PC? For a number of years now, K-Lite’s collection of Codec Packs have been the answer, making it possible to play most popular media formats. And now, with the launch of K-Lite Codec Pack 10.0, users will find it even simpler to play the formats they need.

Version 10’s headline feature is the incorporation of 32-bit and 64-bit codecs in a single package for convenience and flexibility, while the new version includes some universal filter updates, including LAV, xy-VSFilter and Icaros.

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Google's Chromecast streamer may not yet have set the world on fire but it is earning itself quite a following. Part of the device's appeal is its low price -- just $35 for a fairly capable plugin streaming unit -- but there are times when only free will do. CheapCast is a free app that turns virtually any Android phone or tablet (running Android 2.2 or above is the only requirement) into a Chromecast.

The app is a fairly early beta, but in terms of replicating what Chromecast has to offer, it does a reasonably good job. CheapCast does nothing, yet, to address many of the complaints about Chromecast -- such as the inability to easily stream local content -- but it does mimic the Google device's casting capabilities for the likes of YouTube and Google Play.

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Web automation service IFTTT just gained itself a new channel, adding support for no lesser an establishment than the New York Times. This means that if you don’t want to have to keep checking the NYT website to see when there is a new article in the Science section, you no longer need to. In a couple of steps it's possible to create a recipe that will send you an SMS, email or some other form of alert.

As with many of IFTTT's other channels, the New York Times has various possible triggers. In addition to the addition of an article to a particular section, recipes can also check for popular' articles, Critic's Pick movie reviews, new additions to the Best Sellers list and the addition of new events.

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Reaching double figures is a big landmark in anyone's life, and it's no different for the Pirate Bay. The website that the authorities love to hate, and ISPs are forced to block, is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Rather than munching on cake, washed down with a few sodas, the torrent site is marking the occasion by releasing its own web browser -- imaginatively named PirateBrowser.

Announced via Twitter, the browser is essentially a customized Firefox installation and it will come as little surprise that it has been tweaked to bypass restrictions that prevent people from accessing the site. The browser is currently available for Windows -- although Linux and Mac versions are in the pipeline -- and it comes complete with a bundled Tor client and proxy tools.

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Roku customers have no shortage of viewing material, and the list continuously grows, most recently adding Demand 5 for customers in the UK. That only adds to features such as the numerous channels and premium services like Amazon Prime, Hulu and Netflix. But now, the little set-top box grows by one more option.

Today the company announces the launch of Redbox Instant, giving users one more choice for movie watching, popcorn munching fun. Again, this adds a minor fee to the monthly bill for customers, though it is still likely still less demanding, even with all features, than your cable or satellite tab.

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It is the same old story in households consisting of more than one member. The Netflix account is a family thing, but not all members have the same tastes and can sometimes post vastly different reviews of the same flick. This is what Netflix describes as "Honey, you ruined my Netflix". Now the company aims to right this problem.

Eddy Wu, of Netflix tells us "many of you have had similar experiences, where you sat down to find something great to watch on Netflix, but it looks like your spouse has been binging on those teenage supernatural dramas you can’t stand, or your kids have filled your viewing history with animated sheep".

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For most of us the digital revolution started some time ago. Working in journalism for nearly 15 years means that I have seen things change enormously, but even back in the late 1990s it was clear that the web was where it was at -- or where it was going to be. Newspapers and magazines have had to adapt to fight for ever-decreasing audiences in a changing market. But not everyone has been moving at the same pace, or has quite the same idea about how things should work.

The ease of self-publishing and the low overheads associated with running a website, in conjunction with the always-on, instant updateability of the internet has seen the sales of newspapers and magazines dropping off. Most titles have gone with the flow and have developed an online presence, but the need for publishers to make money is at odds with the widely held belief that everything online should be free.

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While cloud storage is all the rage nowadays, there is still demand for a reliable physical back-up medium. True, consumers already have access to CD, DVD and Blu-Ray writable discs, but they simply do not offer enough storage space -- low cost, high megapixel cameras and HD video cameras have contributed to an increase in file sizes.

While some may point to low-cost hard disk drives and flash drives, they are simply not reliable enough to store life's precious memories. Also, in addition to personal use, there are professional needs for archiving large amounts of data for business. Today, Sony and Panasonic announce that they are teaming-up to meet the demands of home-users and businesses with a 300GB optical disc.

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Pornography has been in the news a great deal, and David Cameron's bid to make online porn "opt-in" has sparked a fierce debate in many quarters. The apparent aim of the proposed measure is to protect children and the responsibility has been moved squarely to the door of ISPs, just as with access to torrent sites. But is this fair?

The Internet is an important element of democracy. It should be a tool for free speech, free access to information and the ability to communicate worldwide free of charge. Freedom is at the heart of it. Creating a two-tier Internet in which some people are able to access all content, and others can only access a portion of it flies in the face of what the world wide web is all about. It is also dangerous.

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Extracting a series of frames from a video can be a great way to summarize its contents, but getting the precise results you need is often a challenge. We recently looked at Free Video to JPEG Converter, for instance, and while the program was easy to use, it had limited extraction options.

If you need more power, then you might prefer the free Video Image Master Express. It provides a host of ways to define exactly how your frames should be extracted, and as a bonus it can also combine still images of your own into a simple video slideshow.

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