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Home / News / Stuff’s ultimate Olympic viewing setup

Stuff’s ultimate Olympic viewing setup

Spruce up your living room with the finest in spectator gadgetry – warning, try to ignore the price tags

Ennis, Cav and Bolt aren’t the only ones who’ll be limbering up for the Olympics. Get your telly setup in shape with this world-class kit…

Panasonic 
TX-P65VT50B

Panasonic 
TX-P65VT50B

£4690

iPad 64GB

iPad 64GB
panasonic.co.uk

Your barbecue guests will want a big screen to crowd around, and this 65in beauty fits the bill: it’s a plasma, which means wider viewing angles than on LCDs. The active-shutter 3D has excellent resolution and motion handling, so Usain Bolt won’t go too blurry if he breaks another record.

£660

Virgin Media 
TiVo 1TB

Virgin Media 
TiVo 1TB
apple.com/uk/ipad

Twitter addicts will 
appreciate the pundit-eclipsing commentary available via Zeebox (£free, iOS and Android), which looks brilliant on the iPad’s Retina Display. Of course, you can also use catch-up services such as iPlayer to stay in touch with the games while you’re out and about, either via a Wi-Fi hotspot or 3G.

£50 + £32/month

Onkyo TX-NR5009

Onkyo TX-NR5009
virginmedia.com

Virgin’s worked hard on its Olympics offering. You’ll be able to watch all 24 of the BBC’s live sports feeds in HD, and there’s plenty of 3D from the Beeb and Eurosport 3D. A roomy 1TB hard drive and three tuners mean you can watch one event, and record two more – 100 hours’ worth.

£2700

Monitor Audio Apex

Monitor Audio Apex
uk.onkyo.com

Onkyo’s flagship is the 
gold medallist of the AV receiver world – it’s got THX certification, support for nine speakers and over 1300W of power. Run it with front-height and front-wide speakers for max stadium atmospherics, then watch its Imaging Science Foundation-approved video calibration fine-tune your picture. Lovely.

£3500

Ligne Roset Petite Sieste Indiana Leather

Ligne Roset Petite Sieste Indiana Leather
monitoraudio.co.uk

The gorgeous Apex range looks stunning, and its metal alloy drive units give it the accuracy and clarity you’d expect of the hefty price tag. The price covers the basic 5.1 system plus an extra four Apex A10 satellites for a 9.1 setup – if you’re going to fill your room with speakers, better make them pretty.

£1640

heals.co.uk

Not all recliners are hideous ’80s throwbacks. The curvy Petite Sieste is a lounge icon with posterior-pleasing memory foam, and a hidden footrest that flips into a ‘relaxed’ position or a fully horizontal ‘siesta’ mode. A shoo-in for a win at the Armchair Olympics 2012.

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Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home