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It may be way too early on Monday morning to get you pondering the inner workings of your IQ and EQ, but nevertheless here's this new gizmo from our favourites Brando. It's a puzzle supposedly designed to improve both of those measures of intelligence, working in a sort-of, but not quite, Rubik's Cube kind of way. The idea is that as you twist and wiggle the the cone-like wings of the puzzle, trying to match up the colours on each face, you're working on your right brain (with spatial reasoning and mental imagery) and your left brain (strong nonverbal logic). Both halves of my brain are currently stalled and needing a coffee, but then maybe a spin with this toy would perk me up just as well. Available now for US$14.90. [Brando]

You may think that weve gone a little Foxtel crazy over the past few days, and you'd probably be right, but that doesn't mean that we've forgotten the regional peeps who use Austar instead. Okay, we did forget, until we were kindly pointed in the direction of Austar's MyStar service by reader David. Then we remembered all about you regional folk.

Available now to all good most Austar subscribers, MyStar is a 160GB PVR box like the original iQ. Except with one huge boon - it has a free-to-air tuner built in which lets you record, watch and even browse the EPG for channel 7. In fact it has two FTA tuners and two satellite tuners, letting you do the whole record two things while watching something else thing.

You get support for Dolby Digital surround sound, closed captioning and component connections on the back, although sadly no HDMI. But it is only an SD box, so quit your complaining.

It costs $49.95 to install (and it needs to be professionally installed), with an ongoing monthly subscription fee of $14.95. And in case you can't tell from the above picture, its one chunky looking box. But true beauty is on the inside, right? Right?

[Austar MyStar - Thanks David!]

After yesterday's unveiling of Foxtel's HD+ service, I thought it would be a good idea to take a closer look at the channel menu. Some of you were disappointed by the selection of only four dedicated HD channels. In reality there's a little bit more on offer than just four channels, and a plan to roll out even more channels next year. Hit the jump for  a closer analysis of the HD offerings.

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This year's shaping up to be the year Australian TV fans finally gets treated like mature, responsible adults. For example, after years of negotiations, we now have our very own free-to-air EPG that works with pretty much and PVR to let you record the shows you want to watch at the click of a single button.

We'll also see TiVo launching in time for the Beijing Olympics, and Foxtel is finally entering the HD era with their new Hi-Def iQ box.

Unveiled on their HD blog at the end of last year, we now know that the new box will have a 320GB hard drive, support MPEG4 compression, have HDMI connections (praise Jesus) and is a bespoke model manufactured by  Pace just for Foxtel.

Aside from that, we can expect four dedicated HD channels focussing on sport, movies and documentaries, plus access to Channel 10's Hi-Def offering through the iQ. But the best news is that it can't be far away — I received an invite to a media briefing on January 30th for the box's launch. As soon as I know more, so will you

Foxtel HD blog