From IFA with love: Crave goes wild in Berlin

It's always the same: you wait ages for the world's first 200Hz TV and then two come along at once. It was all about the televisions at IFA 2008: bigger tellies, faster tellies, little tellies in other tellies. Kodak even put a telly in a digital photo frame that also had an iPod dock and great big speakers. Crave succumbed to TV fatigue pretty quickly, wandering dazedly past even the biggest screens without a second look. After two days on the show floor the only thing that could grab our jaded attention was the hypnotic robo-music of Animusic, or, failing that, the Iron Man trailer for the squillionth time.

But occasionally we stumbled across something so ludicrous it penetrated the gadget-fog, like the street dancers connecting with the emotion of, er, big tellies at the Panasonic stand, or the dancers on stilts at Samsung, or the people dressed as robots every-bloomin'-where.

Being young and rad, we loved the Canon halfpipe. Apparently the 'freecording' slogan sounds even more ridiculous in German than it does in English, because the philosophy of being all extreme and rad and shooting things differently because we're young and extreme and rad is called Freefilming over here. Which isn't even a pun and is therefore rubbish.

Anyway, the skaters were a bit pony, but the BMXers were sick. That means good, we're reliably informed by people familiar with the matter. For more of the good, the rad and the smutty, click through the photos. -Rich Trenholm

Best hyperbole ever... ever!
Hyundai may have had its stand raided by customs officers, but we feel trading standards officers could have a field day here too. Apparently Grundig and JVC have both achieved 'perfection', so everybody else may as well take the rest of the day off and go back to messing about on Facebook.

On a similar note, Samsung headlined with the slogan 'Revolution begins with crystal design', which must have had all those former East Berliners slapping themselves on the forehead and saying "Of course! That's why it took us so long to cast off the yoke of Soviet oppression -- we didn't start with flat-screen tellys!"

Quantum of nonsense
The Sony stand was a giant wonderland of utter bewilderment, generally too dark to see and covered in mirrors when you could, which was the last thing your dazed and red-eyed Cravers needed. Just when you thought it couldn't get any more ludicrous, a collection of Rollies bimbled into view like out-of-control skutters. Still, seeing the Quantum of Solace trailer blown up to the size of a large yacht had 'win' written through it like a stick of rock. A stick of rock James Bond uses to beat a henchman to death, before quipping, "Looks like I rocked his world." Or, "He should have chosen the hard place." Or... quick, click next photo or we'll be here all day.

It's not easy being green
The Blue Man Group must have been busy, so this accessory manufacturer decided to boost its eco credentials instead.

None more black
Anyone familiar with technology shows may have been confused by the disproportionate number of teenage girls in emo black wandering around. A new demographic discovers the wonder of technology no-one will ever buy? No, there were some bands on in the Sommergarten. Here we see the doomy Goth-lite stylings of Eisblume. Just out of shot: tech fans paying absolutely no attention whatsoever.

If you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?
Great Scott! Amid a number of Ferraris and other such dullard cars, here's a true automotive legend, the time-travelling DeLorean from Back to the Future. This replica was being used to promote... actually, if it's not being used to promote a time machine powered by a nuclear waste-disposal system called Mr Fusion, we don't care. Now, click the link for the next photo to make like a tree and get outta here!

It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage
If a time-travelling DeLorean can be used to promote some random tech manufacturer, then so too can an adventuring archaeologist who probably never used anything as advanced as a pocket calculator in his life. Indiana Jones whips the crowd into a frenzy, while journalists practise their sand bag-switching idol-snaffling technique in minibars across Berlin.

Look, nerds: girls!
Philips' floaty floral prints scored high in the style stakes, amid a refreshing lack of scantily clad nerd-candy booth babes. Which of course means we just had to look harder. Kenwood didn't get the no-objectification memo with its uniform of short shorts, and the less said about the body-painting booth the better. This airbrushed lovely was simultaneously the best and worst bit of stand promotion at the whole show: everybody had seen her, yet no-one knew what she was promoting.

Penthouse tech
If you thought that was bad, here's the Penthouse stand. No, we have no idea either.

BDSM HDTV
And if you thought that was bad, you may want to sit down for this one... So you're outfitting your sex dungeon and you decide that leaving that Tory MP you met in the public convenience chained to the wall for several hours is a bit cruel. Why not stick a telly in there for him? But if the rose or piano blacks just don't co-ordinate with your wipe-clean BDSM benches, you can turn to Galactic and its interchangeable leather television covers. Practical and sexy -- just like the Crave team.

We are the mods
Right, that's enough smut. Much more wholesome is a competition held among amateur modders, who knocked up some kerrazy PC and gadget casings. On the top left, looking like a Rod Hull fever-dream, are Arthur and Oscar. This Craver's favourite is the Pharaonenradio, an Egyptian-themed Lego creation, top right. Bottom left is the military-themed Feldradio. Finally, bottom right, is a very, very big gun from Unreal Tournament.

How much for extras?
We're above making fun of other people's English: they can't help being born foreign. Instead we'll cover Philips' invention of the personal voice massage, which sounds ace. We'll have Mariella Frostrup, please.

Right, that's quite enough of that. See you next year!