The annual warm-up to Wimbledon - the Aegon championships at London’s Queen’s Club - started yesterday, with BBC providing coverage of the action on BBC HD. Britain’s great white hope Andy Murray is top seed in the competition following the withdrawal of world number one Rafa Nadal, so all eyes will be on him ahead of Wimbledon. The world’s greatest Tennis tournament is also set for the HD treatment courtesy of the Beeb - check it out when it starts on June 22.

Microsoft has announced an updated HD version of it’s Zune portable media player. Set to feature at next week’s E3 Expo, the Zune HD will support 720p video that can be output to an HDTV via a separate docking station with built-in HDMI port. The device also features a widescreen 16:9 OLED touchscreen with a resolution of 480×272, and will enable users to browse the internet over WiFi, stream songs from the Zune store. Microsoft are also promising to demonstrate how Zune will integrate with Xbox LIVE which could take the form of video or game downloads - will Apple be able to offer more when their expected iPhone revision comes out? Stay tuned. Or should that be zuned?

Freesat celebrated it’s first year on the market by announcing it’s well on the way to 400,000 sales, also citing the 70 hours of weekly HD content available, as well as the fact that nine out of every ten customers would recommend the service to a friend. Emma Scott, Managing Director of Freesat said: “We are thrilled with the progress we’ve made in the last twelve months. Reaching 400,000 sales as well as launching Freesat+ and a whole range of new Freesat products and services is a fantastic achievement in this competitive market. It shows that there is a real consumer appetite out there for high quality digital TV without monthly bills. With more Freesat channels and products to come and IPTV services such as BBC iPlayer due in the Autumn, we’re looking forward to a successful second year.”

See our exclusive interview with Freesat Marketing director Will Abbot in issue 20 of High Definition Review.

We chat to Kiefer Sutherland about horror movie Mirrors and his work as Jack Bauer on 24.

HDR: When did you film Mirrors?
Kiefer Sutherland: Between Season six and seven of 24, and we finished it on weekends when we started shooting Season seven.

HDR: Why were you interested in making this film?
KS: I really wanted to work with director Alexandre Aja and do a film in this genre. As an actor your desire is to illicit a response from an audience, and there is no better genre to do that in than this. I get very affected when I see films. I suspend my belief and let the film take me somewhere which makes me very vulnerable for a film like this, so it’s a lot easier for me to make the film than to watch it.

HDR: What’s the scariest scene in the film?
KS: Obviously the first time he looked in the mirror made me jump but the oddest thing is I know its coming, and I still jumped. Even just going through the building and waiting for something to happen is scary to me. Believe me, I’m the easiest person to make this movie for.

HDR: Tell us about the Mayflower department store. Where was that shot?
KS: We shot the film primarily in Bucharest, Romania. The former Communist leader Ceausescu had built this Academy of Sciences building that was never finished by the time he died in 1989. The building was really a testament to his ego so it hasn’t been used and there was a sense of abandonment you could really feel. It’s a cold war building and you could feel the weight of that and there was a musky quality to them. It was great to shoot in a real building rather than a set, because we could do 360 degree shooting.

HDR: What was the most demanding scene to film?
KS: The whole breakdown in front of the mirror, because it’s really easy to be really trite with something like that and the fact that I was looking straight into a mirror which really made the whole experience really weird.

HDR: How much did your father’s (Donald Sutherland) work influence you to make a film in this genre?
KS: I think he made one of the greatest pieces of cinema ever made with Don’t Look Now by Nicolas Roeg. That to me was an enlightened movie, and one of the scariest films I ever saw. I was way too young when I first saw that, about 16 or 17. But my father has done so many great films. I also thought the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers was fantastic. My interest in doing a film like this is when you have characters that you are invested in and then the horror elements come in. I felt Alexandre balanced that beautifully in the script for Mirrors.

HDR: You’ve seen the highs and lows in this business. What keeps you going?
KS: I love working. The only times I’ve had to stop is cause I couldn’t get a job. I wouldn’t call myself an artist; I feel more like a carpenter when I go to work. I love acting and creating a character is one of the most exciting things for me. 24 has been one of the greatest educations for me as an actor, because I really started to realize how much I didn’t know about the work. For the first time in my life I have gotten to work for seven years straight day in and day out. Acting is a muscle and to be able to train like that, making something that people are enjoying has been an unbelievable gift.

HDR: What else has the seven years on 24 taught you?
KS: I have an understanding with the camera, in a way I didn’t before, so there are some technical things that I didn’t know before, but more importantly there is the emotional quotient you just can’t put a price tag on…confidence. It’s hard to do anything right if your confidence is low or your self esteem is low. That was one of the things that attracted me to this character in Mirrors. He is at an all time low. He lost his wife and he can’t see his kids and takes a job he really doesn’t want to take but then he has to pull himself up by the bootstraps.

HDR: Do you ever go back and watch your movies on DVD?
KS: No. I have a hard time looking at myself. I have one mirror in my house. I remember seeing Stand By Me for the first time and thought my career was over. In my head I wanted the character to be different, so I was disappointed when I saw myself and then the movie was so successful, and people liked my character, so it became very clear to me that I’m the last person that should be watching my own work. I only watch 24 when we have to sort out a problem; otherwise I try to avoid it.

Mirrors is out now on DVD and Blu-ray.

The latest evidence that Virgin Media may be adding new HD channels has emerged in a report in the Wall Street Journal. Still no indication on what the channels might be, but a comment from CEO Neil Berkett fuelled speculation: “We’ll be launching as many as six high-definition channels in the third quarter,” he said. Virgin recently enabled access to HD BBC iPlayer content for V+ set-top box owners.