Having been next to the Bond street station since July 1921 HMV the famous music store has just reopened in its new location. Not that they've moved very far. The new HMV is almost bang opposite their original location. So it's just a hop across Oxford Street with the address changing from 363 Oxford Street to 360 Oxford Street.

However, the shift has meant that HMV have been able to maintain their innovative and pioneering outlook. In an attempt to stay ahead of its nearest rivals - Tower Records and Virgin Megastore, the new store comes equipped with state of the art equipment. The store itself is almost twice as big as its predecessor and is situated on three floors including a lower ground floor. You'll find 50,000 Rock/Pop titles and 60,000 specialist titles including Classical, Jazz and Country. There is also a dedicated singles department as well as 25,000 video and DVD titles and 5000 computer games.

Now more on the new technological innovations. In the DVD/video section you'll find a DVD Cinema Area where movie clips and trailers are shown through the day. The screen measures 15 by 12 sq. feet and surround sound audio is also present. You don't have to stand and watch, as there are a bunch of extremely comfortable seats lined up, much like a mini cinema. The management also plans to show entire films but will most likely stick to old classics rather than showing new releases in their entirety - probably to minimise the possibility of people using the place as a free cinema. Nevertheless, the DVD Cinema is the focus of what is United Kingdom's largest DVD department.

The new store also come equipped with 70 new Scan Activated Listening posts. These allow you to hear selected chart albums before you buy them. All you need to do is to scan the barcode of the album under the provided scanner and hey presto. While at the moment only the top 40 album tracks are available the eventual aim is to widen the range to include all audio titles available in the store. You can also check to see whether a particular title is available in stock by directly accessing the stores database through the computer customer information points. The most interesting innovation is HMVs experimental Virtual Music Store. Using the Virtual Music Store you are able to select individually chosen tracks via digital 'browsers'. These are then pressed in store onto a 'blank' CD. The end product is a tailor made CD with only the songs you want to hear and the whole process only takes a few minutes.

At present there are 2000 tracks available on the digital browser and HMV hope to add 100 tracks every week. It costs though - £2 per track with a minimum of 5 tracks and a maximum of 10 per CD. At the moment, HMV is definitely some way ahead of either Tower or Virgin Megastore. So drop in and enjoy the experience.

Visit them online