Witchdoctor

01/10/2026

Sony will sit out CES 2027, breaking a run at the show that goes back to 1967. No booth, no press conference, no affiliates on the Las Vegas floor. The official line is a strategic pivot: Sony is leaning into entertainment (games, anime, film and music), its intellectual property, and the tech that supports creators, and away from big consumer-hardware showcases. The timing is telling. It follows the quiet death of the Afeela EV, the Honda joint venture that anchored Sony's recent CES presence, and the sale of a controlling stake in its Bravia TV business to a TCL-led venture, with Sony keeping design and tech duties but handing TCL the majority. PlayStation rolls on, naturally, branching into monitors, headphones and speakers. But if the PS6 does land next year, it won't be unveiled at CES. For a show Sony helped define, that's a genuine shift in the wind.

01/10/2026

Window cleaning robots used to be a novelty — now they're genuinely useful. Ecovacs' W3 Omni ships with a self-cleaning base station that scrubs its own pads between runs, so you're not hunched over a laundry sink wrestling with grotty microfibre cloths. At $1,299 it's a serious piece of kit, but the review suggests it earns its price tag.

https://www.witchdoctor.co.nz/2026/ecovacs-winbot-w3-omni-review/

01/10/2026

Show of hands: who still has a box of cassettes they can't bring themselves to throw out? Bonus points if one of them is a mixtape someone made you. Extra bonus points if you still know the order of the songs.

30/09/2026

Your stereo system is in a house fire. Everyone's safe, and you can grab one piece of gear and one record on the way out. What are you carrying?

30/09/2026

JustWatch, the guide 50 million people a month use to work out which of 1,500-odd services a given film is buried on, is becoming a streamer of its own. JustWatch TV launches in October, and New Zealand is in the first wave rather than the usual afterthought. It lives right inside the existing guide across web, mobile and TV apps, so there's no separate app or sign-up, with a free ad-supported tier, rentals, and an ad-free subscription. The clever bit is that it isn't a land grab: the catalogue is shaped by a decade of tracking what people actually search for, including titles they can never find, and the model is happy to either serve you the film on JustWatch or point you to whichever service already has it. Viewers can even request titles to bring in. Launch partners include Paramount, New Regency, Fremantle, Bleecker Street and Vortex Media, with more to come.

28/09/2026

Philips' new Hue Solo Lightstrip promises premium ambient lighting without needing a Hue Bridge — Bluetooth straight out of the box, 16 million colours, 1,700 lumens, and an app that's genuinely one of the best in the smart lighting business. Pat Pilcher stuck some up and mostly loved it. The catch? No corner connectors included, which is a baffling omission for a strip clearly designed to wrap around things. Fine for straight runs, fiddly for anything else. $129 and reviewed at the link. 💡

PAT PILCHER loves his light strips but he finds that there are a few quirks as well as some genuine advantages to the new Philips Hue Solo.

25/09/2026

Wing was a terrible singer. So terrible that she was great. Gary Steel pays long-overdue tribute to New Zealand's most unlikely international phenomenon — a performer who turned every conventional measure of musical ability on its head and somehow won the world. Read the obituary that needed to be written. 🎤

https://www.witchdoctor.co.nz/2026/wing-takes-flight-a-long-delayed-obituary/

25/09/2026

Today is the day! 30 years of good times

25/09/2026

We've got the latest announcements for the uppings and comings and goings for all your musical tastes. Come see who's on tour and get your tickets!