News written by Dave Horvath (January, 2007)

Published from Media Create, reports show that Sony's Playstation 3 console has shown a sharp decline in sales and had its worst week since its launch in Japan.

Media Create published a report showing Sony only selling some 25,531 units for the week of January 14. Although, Media Create also reports that the entire console sales for that week were relatively poor. Total sale of all three consoles including the PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii is estimated at 128,274 units which accounts for the lowest week since Nintendo entered the race on December 2nd. Individually, the Wii sold 93,708 units during the same week, while Microsoft managed to sell 9,035 of their year old consoles. Microsoft's surge in Xbox 360 sales can be attributed in part to the Japanese release of Blue Dragon bundled with the console.

Sony representatives replied to the report saying that Sony had shipped 1 million PS3 units to Japanese shelves on January 16, therefore the numbers do not reflect accurate information. There is a stark contrast between 25k units and 1 million units actually sold. Media Create backs up its data by saying they collect data from over 3,000 shops around Japan and extrapolate their data based on their findings as nationwide figures.

There's been so much buzz on the Internet lately over Apple's newest gadget, the iPhone. With whats being touted as the perfect merge between smartphone and personal audio device, the iPhone hits the market at a steep $500-$600 price tag. According to research company iSuppli, that figure looks to make Apple as much as a 50% profit on each iPhone produced. Apple appears to be betting on the brand loyalty of Apple enthusiasts to make their profit dreams come true.

"iSuppli estimates the 4GB version of the Apple iPhone will carry a $229.85 hardware BoM and manufacturing cost and a $245.83 total expense, yielding a 50.7 percent margin on each unit sold at the $499 retail price," said Andrew Rassweiler, senior analyst for iSuppli. "Meanwhile, the 8GB Apple iPhone will sport a $264.85 hardware cost and a $280.83 total expense, amounting to a 53.1 percent margin at the $599 retail price," he added.

This, of course is nothing new to Apple, as the iPods themselves have been found some time ago to be priced at least 45% over their build cost. With the recent lawsuits facing Apple, perhaps they need this margin to pay off their high priced lawyers. Additionally, the brand has achieved such superstar status that people will pay just about whatever price tag they put on their products. Analysts state this price point for the iPhone puts Apple in a prime position to lower the price and still gain a profit.

Thanks to a collaboration by big music labels and possibly stemming from lawsuits like the one filed for libel by Sharman Networks back in June, P2Pnet.net owner John Newton has announced that he will now entertain offers to buy his company for serious offers above $30,000.

On John Newton's website he cites companies like Warner Brothers, Sony BMG and EMI, to name a few, for increased pressure on his advertising contracts to not support a site that gave a voice to copyright infringement. A few of his advertisers that helped pay the bills to run the website pulled out due to the increased pressure from the music industry, which left Newton with no other avenue but to sell. Additionally, it appears Google doesn't want to be affiliated with P2PNet.net either as they have blocked the website from participating in Google Adsense.

Newton states that donations from loyal readers has totalled a modest $2,000. I'm sure you can imagine that amount wouldn't account for much of the operation costs, at least for anytime to come. Newton also stated that he never intended P2PNet.net to become a business, but he hopes that selling it could mean that a group could nurture the website into what he believes it can be. He's expressed preferences for someone who is P2P friendly to purchase the site, so it doesn't go away. If things don't go the way he wants them to with the sale, he says he will offer up the domain name alone for sale with no content.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) released a statement that online music sales have doubled in profit this past year, reaching an astounding $2billion (£1billion) and roughly 10% in overall sales. This may be good news to some, but the IFPI believes that illegal file sharing of these music files has not allowed them to reach the "holy grail" of music sales since CD sales have fallen off the map.

The IFPI 2007 digital music report showed that 795 million digital songs were downloaded legally last year, up by 89% from 2005, accross some 500 legitimate download services.

The IFPI believes that online music sales could become a rich quarter of the worldwide market in sales by 2010. With that they have stated that they would like to see more of a crackdown on illegal file sharing.

IFPI chairman John Kennedy said, "The pace of transformation in our industry is breathtaking, but at the moment the holy grail is evading us. I would like to be announcing that a fall in CD sales is being compensated for by an equal or greater increase in online and mobile revenues. But that is not yet happening on a global basis."

The IFPI said some 30,000 class action lawsuits against file-sharers has helped give some edge to their war on piracy, but have urged ISPs to assist them by now allowing such file sharing services to be setup on their servers.

People in the peer-to-peer sharing scene shouldn't be the least bit unfamiliar with possibly one of the biggest name in Bit Torrent, Isohunt.com. In an all out assault on stopping the spread of illegal content, the Motion Picture Association of America launched a police sting on the ISP that housed the servers providing data transmission for the search engine.

This attack came without warning and all of the servers which housed databases of information have been seized for evidence against the company. Isohunt's servers were housed in the US where they were legal territory for the MPAA to pick them apart with copyright infringment laws.

Isohunt had become a target for the MPAA approximately a year ago when they filed a lawsuit against the company that alleged massive accounts of copyright infringement. There is some speculation that this shutdown is a direct result of that legal action, but the MPAA has yet to announce victory on their website, as they're usually very quick to do.

In a statement on their website, Isohunt administrators posted this "Lawyers from our primary ISP decided to pull our plug without any advance notice, as of 14:45 PST. No doubt related to our lawsuit brought by the MPAA, but we don't have more information at this time until people responsible comes to work tomorrow. We will be back in operation once we sort out this mess with our current ISP, or we get new hardware ready at our new ISP."

When you think of video conversion for your iPod or your PSP, you often think of one of the many available software solutions to do the job for you. The thought of a portable hardware device doing the job in a quarter of the time is often not at the forefront of your mind. The company ADS Tech is hoping to change your mind.

Announced for $79.99 is the "industry's first hardware-based H.264 conversion solution for PCs" all in a nice small USB flash drive package. ADS, with their Instant Video To-Go states its newest USB drive will convert MP4, MP3, AVI, WMV, MOV, RM, JPG, TIFF, and MTP, via a two-step procedure to get your videos ready to play on your personal media player. ADS claims the device can take a 100 minute MPEG2/VOB file and convert it into a 320 x 240 H.264 file in approximately 20 minutes. If this device works as well as they claim, that could be a handy little gadget to keep around.

The ADS Instant Video To-Go should be available right now on their website right now for a retail price under $80.

Source:
CNET

In an attempt to steamroll their format into the basis of standarization for next generation DVDs, Toshiba has just submitted its latest creation. A triple layer HD-DVD capable of holding 51Gb worth of data. This is in addition to the previous single and dual layer HD-DVD disks with storage amounting to 15GB and 30GB of data, respectively. It appears they've taken direct aim at rival Sony's 50Gb Blu-Ray disk in hopes of wowing consumers with it's sheer size.

This increase was achieved by the ability to cram 17Gb worth of data to each layer, which is more than they had anticipated when they announced back in May of 2005 that they were in development of a 45Gb solution. Industry leaders state that the previous 30Gb capacity was more than enough to fit full 1080p movies plus loads of extras on one disk. From what can be seen, it appears that Toshiba has intiated a "mine's bigger than yours" contest.

The only catch in all this is current generation HD-DVD players will not be able to read data from these new larger capacity disks, so early adopters may be in for a shock when they find out they're stuck with "only" 30Gb capacities.

Source:
Register

High definition solutions provider Meridian announced at CES that it has come out with an iPod docking station capable of broadcasting your media in true 1080p on your HDTV. The MV-D1 is an almost entirely polished red device with curious looking Source, Format and Connect buttons, complimenting the standard Volume keys. Inside the MV-D1 is an integrated Marvell's 88DE2710 digital video format converter which handles upscaling the images from the iPod screen to your big screen.

Meridian states that the device will take any standard definition or high definition video and convert it to a true 1080p resolution for optimal viewing. Output happens via an HDMI connector which is in charge of cleaning up the digital noise in the picture and sending a good clean signal to your television. Powering this unit is easy, as you can connect to a standard AC outlet or provide power through USB. Finally, the unit contains digital audio out for a true HD experience.

Pricing and availability hasn't been released yet, but don't expect Meridian to make people wait too long.

Source:
Engadget

In an announcement that is sure to make independent movie buffs pretty happy, Apple has just inked a deal with the Sundance Film Festival to allow thirty-three short films to be downloaded via iTunes. Films will cost approximately $1.99 per download and will be available January 22nd. Additionally, these films can also be streamed for free on Sundance's website on January 18th when the festival begins.

"Streaming on our site is not the same as owning, and there seems to be a world out there for both," said John Cooper of the Sundance Institute.

The films will be available on the website for a period of three months and then taken down. A majority of the money received by Apple's iTunes service will go to the film makers involved in the movie. The remainder of the money will be split between Apple, The Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film cable channel. Only 33 of the 71 short films are expected to be released for download, however there may be room for more if demand is shown. There has been no plans to include full length independent films available for download.

Sundance Film Festival founder and actor Robert Reford said, "I have felt, from the earliest days, that if people really care about independent film, they should pay particular attention to short filmmakers, who are the best indicators of what is coming down the creative pike."

There are some who may remember a little while back when the Recording Industry Association of America attempted to sue NY native Patricia Santangelo. The case got a lot of media attention because Mrs. Santagelo was adamant that she had no illegally downloaded any music as the RIAA had claimed. By not settling with the RIAA and taking her case to court, she was able to show the judge that she did not download any music illegally and if her children had, in fact, done so that its the file-sharing programs that should be blamed. The case was dropped and Mrs. Santagelo won her case. The RIAA released a statement that their pursuit would not end there.

The RIAA issued two new cases against Patricia Santangelo's children, Michelle (20) and Robert (16). Although nothing seems to have been ruled against Robert, Michelle did not fair so well.

Judge Stephen C. Robinson of United States District Court has ordered Michelle Santangelo to pay some $750 for each of the 41 songs she was accused of illegally downloading. The total bill coming to $30,750 for a mere 41 songs shows that the RIAA has some very pursuasive legal entities on their side. I'm not sure where the $750 per song figure came from, but the recording industry doesn't even make close to that if the music were purchased legally.

United States Senator Dianne Feinstein is at it again. Just a little bit ago, Senator Feinstein had entered a bill into Congress called the Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music Act (PERFORM Act). What this act's main goal was; was to target the current practices of satellite radio broadcasters and their lack of protecting from users streaming and recording music of which they have not paid for. Both Sirius Radio and XM Radio sell devices that allow you to record music from their satellite streams, but they do not allow you to transfer music off of the device. Feinstein and the RIAA feel this is not enough.

Sirius Radio pays a premium license fee for the recorded music and XM Radio does not. PERFORM suggests that the licensing fee should be a universal thing no matter where or when copyrighted material is broadcast.

The Act is also targetting webcasters who provide a music stream of licensed music. The bill states that there is a need for copy protection against the groups listening to the streams and making a digital copy on the fly. The bill suggests that webcasters do not broadcast in DRM-less MP3 format, instead be forced to broadcast proprietary formats that contain DRM for the licensed materials they use.

Just as the once illegal music sharing giant Napster was about to announce itself on the auction block, AOL swooped in to the rescue and signed Napster as their exclusive music subscription provider. The result of this have sent Napster's stock skyrocketing some 10.2%.

Plans for Napster is to replace the current AOL Music subscription service which sees some 350,000 paying subscribers. Additionally, since AOL purchased an online music service provided by Circuit City back in 2005, those customers will be rolled into the Napster envelope as well. Playlists, member stats and everything associated with the account will be converted in hopes to keep the transition as smooth as possible to the current subscribers.

Napster as it was once known isn't the same Napster as today. Having falling under the pressure of lawsuits for illegal file sharing, Napster closed its doors in 2001, only to be re-opened in 2003 by the new parent company, Roxio. Roxio kept the name Napster and began open trading on the market in 2005. Its possible that the nearest competitor with Napster, Apple's iTunes service may be the reason why Roxio was looking for purchasers, however now the partnership is expected to fuel new inspirations in the company.

For those of you that remember the old format battle between Betamax and VHS and how it compares in many ways to the current format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray; it seems that history may be repeating itself even further. One facet of this is the fact that the adult film industry was not licensed for release on Betamax and can be attributed to a major reason why the format lost to VHS. According to There Joone, founder of Digital Playground and supplier of a multitude of HD adult films stated that none of the Blu-Ray supporters would press disks by his company based on its content. Being blacklisted by the disk manufacturers, and in a sense by Sony forced Joone to sign deals with HD-DVD producers.

Joone has stated that he wanted to provide content on Blu-Ray, but the Blu-Ray copying facilities in the United States refused to comply with his wishes. Joone also stated that the copying companies unanimously said that Sony had issued a warning to any company who produces pornographic material on a Blu-Ray disk would lose the Blu-Ray license.

According to the Blu-Ray Disc Association, there doesn't appear to be a problem with the content that Joone and Digital Playground hope to provide on Blu-Ray. Marty Gordon, vice chairman of Blu-Ray Disc Association US Promotions Committee stated "The BDA welcomes the participation of all companies interested in using and supporting the format, particularly those from the content industry. We look forward to working with any content providers interested in providing their audience with [the] best possible high definition home entertainment experience." The BDA officially welcomes the adult film industry, but it appears that possibly the adult film industry may not welcome the BDA.

Tired of constantly being hounded and caught in the middle of a brutal piracy debate in their native Sweden, The Pirate Bay has come up with an alternative plan to provide shared content to the masses without prosecution or interference from any government body. They want to become their own country.

Yes, The Pirate Bay has decided to take donations to purchase the man made, independent nation of Sealand off the coast of the UK. They believe that in Sealand, they will be able to claim themselves as an independent sovereign nation free of jurisdiction and share digital content with no one bothering them.

The owners have setup a domain name to advertise their interest in the tiny man made nation of Sealand. They promise that participation in "making history together" will guarantee you high speed VIP downloads through TPB's website.

Of course, no other countries in the world currently recognize Sealand as a nation and there is bound to be ramifications to come of this, should it ever go through, but you have to give credit to TPB for originality. I, for one, support their idea just for the sheer ingenuity of it and hope that when they do buy the island, they arrive in a huge pirate ship, flying a Jolly Roger and wearing puffy shirts.

In a report listed in Finnish business daily, Taloussanomat, Nokia's head of multimedia, Anssi Vanjoki said Apple's iPhone is impressive but their goals are not set very high.

Apple unveiled their slick new iPhone on Tuesday with its large display, unique multi-touch interface, iPod compatibility and smartphone features. Vanjoki stated, "It is quite an interesting product but it is lacking a few essential features, such as 3G, which would enable fast data connections." This comes from a company who's in direct rivalry for mp3 enabled cellular phones.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs stated in his keynote that he looks forward to capturing just 1% or 10,000,000 of the total cell phones forcasted to sell worldwide by 2008. Nokia retorted in saying that objective doesn't seem very high. Vanjoki added that Apple's innovative product will give an additional boost to the market but only proves that Nokia's business strategy was right.

Nokia has sold some 70 million MP3 enabled phones last year but analysts say Nokia's efforts only account for a small amount of total sales. It would appear Apple is up for some stiff competition. With their $499-$599 pricepoint and bling-o-plenty, the real test will be if consumers prefer glitz over real-world usability.

Film production company Warner Bros. had announed they have come up with an answer to the war waging between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Their answer was TotalHD. A disk capable of holding information for both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats. Billed as a bridge between the next-gen format gap, they were able to get retail giants such as Best Buy and Circuit City to carry movies burned onto this dual-format disk. The pretense was that consumers wouldn't have to remain confused about which format to choose, now they've got a viable option for either format.

Warner Bros. grasped their hands together in celebration that they just may have come up with a peace offering for the format war and stated, "It behooved us to figure out a way to transition (consumers) from standard definition to high definition DVDs." They went on to say that they do not care how the transition happens, so long as it does. There are others however, in the industry that don't share the same enthusiasm as Warner Bros.

Critics and other industry leaders say that this doesn't solve anything and only adds a third next generation media format to further confuse consumers as to which is the best option to buy. They went on to cite poor sales numbers in next-gen devices due to gunshy consumers not wanting to adopt a soon-to-be defunct media format. WB does not believe this will pose a problem. A spokesman stated that this format war is much like the video game market where consumers expect different formats and their solution takes away the fear from the consumer that they might buy the wrong format.

Many experts in the field of digital technology held a discussion at this year's Consumer Electronics Show over the future of Digital Rights Management and what direction it needs to go in order to succeed. There has been a debate going on for over 5 years over the virtues and necessities of DRM technology associated with digital media such as music and movies. There appears to be an agreement between the panel that DRM needs to reach some sort of standardization as digital consumption becomes more and more prevalent today.

DRM which was originally employed to protect copyrighted materials in music has become a lot more conveluted as consumers purchase and download more than just music these days. Experts agree that a standard employed by one organization supplying one form of digital entertainment is not necessarily best suited or in the best interest of everyone for a different form of entertainment.

Apple and Microsoft both employ DRM technology on their media, but in different ways. Apple is hellbent on protecting the media downloaded by their successful iTunes service, but at the price of only allowing said media to be played on Apple's own iPod. Microsoft takes a different spin on it with its Windows Media DRM by allowing files to be transferred to multiple third-party devices with the licensing of a program called Plays for Sure. In contrast, however, Microsoft's own Zune product is the only device that will play media downloaded from the Zune Store.

Pathological lawsuit junky firm Fenner Investments out of Richardson Texas is at it again. Fenner was once made slightly famous for their claims against such companies as Alcatel, Cisco and Nokia in saying each firm violated Fenner's copyrights by stealing their "method and aparatus for managing a communications network for mobile users". All proceedings of those lawsuit attempts were either lost or thrown out of court. It seems like now, Fenner is upset with a certain trio of game console developers.

Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have all become the latest target for Fenner Investements. Fenner now claims that the controllers used on each of the three company's designs utilize a method that was patented by their company some time ago. Taken in part from the court document, the claim states the following patented method was infringed upon. "The joystick port interface includes an integrated circuit receiving an analog joystick position measurement signal and outputting a digital pulse signal to a processor which signifies a joystick coordinate value. The integrated circuit includes a pulse generator and a bidirectional buffer circuit. The bidirectional buffer circuit receives the analog joystick position measurement signal and selectively discharges an RC network capacitor which provides this analog measurement. This implementation provides a joystick port which uses low-voltage CMOS VLSI structures which can interface a conventional high-voltage joystick with the processor."

In an announcement by Sony about their next-gen Blu-Ray disks, they've released some potentially interesting news about their copy protection standards.

At the Consumer Electronics show held in Las Vegas recently, Sony executives told onlookers that future Blu-Ray disks will be a bit more lax on the DRM standards and allow you to copy the contents of the disk to a hard drive and/or media device for alternative forms of viewing. There was no talk of, but its fairly easy to surmise that they've come up with a way of stacking DRM technology on the files copied off of the disk, in efforts to thwart piracy.

Sony representative, David Bishop stated, "Sony Pictures Entertainment will include portable files on Blu-Ray DVDs that can be transferred without a download. It's not currently part of anything on our current release schedule, but we'll probably roll it out sometime this year."

Source:
Eurogamer

Global leader in network device manufacturing, Cisco isn't very impressed with the latest offering from Apple. Shortly after the Keynote Address by Apple CEO Steve Jobs where the new iPhone was announced, Cisco got themselves in a fit over what they feel is their trademark.

Cisco's VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) telephone systems use the term Iphone quite regularly. Cisco claims that Apple's launch of their iPhone is a direct violation of their trademark and has issued a lawsuit to protect their rights.

When asked about the latest developments, an Apple representative was quoted in saying, "We think Cisco's trademark lawsuit is silly. There are already several companies using the name iPhone for Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) products." Makes you wonder if that silly Apple representative just opened his company up for those several other companies to try and get a piece of the action.

Apple further responded with, "We are the first company to ever use the iPhone name for a cell phone, and if Cisco wants to challenge us on it we are very confident we will prevail."

Cisco had entered talks with Apple about the fair use of the trademark, but had never formally given permission to use it. Cisco stated that it was under the impression that Apple would release a public statement regarding the trademark, but did no such thing prior to launch of their product.

What happens when you're a game system developer and you take the most ergonomically correct controller and strip it of one of its best features, the rumble strip? What happens when you take it a step further by integrating technology previously announced by your competitor? Why, if you're Sony you get honored with the Technology and Engineering Emmy Award.

Sony's controller design for the PS3 is the Sixaxis controller which is wireless, rumbleless and features motion sensing capabilities much akin to rival Nintendo in their Wii system. It recently was handed an Emmy award for its unique design. This comes on the eve when Sony announced it reached its goal by providing 1 million PS3 units on US shores by the end of 2006.

"The overwhelming consumer demand and critical acclaim for PS3 is testament of the platform's strength and the industry's desire for a true next-generation entertainment system," stated Jack Tretton, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America. He went on to say, "The full potential of this powerful machine has yet to be realized. What you've seen so far is just a taste of what will be on the table for 2007 and years to come."

Currently at MacWord Expo, CEO of Apple Steve Jobs is giving his press announcement to thousands of enthusiastic Macaphiles. One announcement that made everyone stand and cheer is the official announcement of the Apple iPhone.

Details are extremely sketchy right now as they are literally talking about all the details as this report gets edited. From what we can tell so far, it has a fully integrated "next-gen" touchpad display that requires no stylus and claims to be the most accurate yet, named Multitouch. Additionally, the iPhone appears to run its own version of Mac OS X as the onboard software, giving it a rather robust choice of options in a phone. Animated desktops and menu screens, launchable applications, music playback, iPod integration, calendar and many more very useful items. There also appears to be integration of iPhoto where you can expand or minimize photos on the screen simply by pinching them in your fingers. Additionally, Steve Jobs showcased integration with Google maps to give different views of major cities as well as directions. One could surmise that this also gives the iPhone Internet access as seems to be standard fare with cellular phones these days.

Do you ever find yourself wondering how you plan on decorating an entire wall in your house with one single monstrous object? Have you ever wondered what you'd do with all that left over money just accumulating in a trust fund with nothing to spend it on? Do you only feel comfortable watching your favorite program if you're seated 35 feet away from the screen? If you've answered yes to any of these questions, Sony has got a solution for you.

Sony has just announced the release of its biggest Bravia HDTV to date. The KD-70XBR3 70" LCD flat panel television is the newest to roll off the Sony floor. Advertised as one of the first HDTVs to impliment the xvYCC, the newest color standard capable of transmitting 1.8 times more colors than standard RGB, dubbed x.v.Color by Sony, by way of HDMI 1.3. Some of the features include 120Hz "MotionFlow" anti-blurring technology, coupled with 10-bit video processing and Triluminos LED backlight. This set features 7000:1 dynamic contrast ratio with DRC-MFv2.5. (Digital Reality Creation Multifunction v2.5 is a standard developed to ensure that picture will not degrade depending on what resolution it is set at, as well as dynamically convert standard definition pictures into high definition.)

Already known for its presence in the high definition arena, Korean company Samsung is looking to delve into the wild, wonderful world of cellular phones. They've contracted deals with Internet giants Google as well as Yahoo to bring out mobile internet ready phones with vendor specific applications built right in.


There's a Google phone in the works that will integrate Google specific icons in the phone's software, giving it access to specific applications like Google's search feature, Google Maps including map, satellite and hybrid, as well as Gmail integration for mobile emailing. Samsung expects that with this deal, phones capable of interacting directly with Google applications could fall into consumers hands during the first half of 2007. No mention has been made as to which carriers may provide these phones or the prices of the devices themselves.

In addition to the Google deal, Samsung has also signed with Yahoo in a similar fashion. Allowing full integration, complete with custom icons to Yahoo Mail, Search, Messenger and My Yahoo. These phones are expected to reach some 60 countries worldwide.

In the time leading up to this year's MacWorld Expo, there have been quite a few internet rumors flying around questioning the launch of a phone integrated iPod solution from Apple. Early pictures and videos sprang up on the internet touting good times to come with fans of Apple products. All the while, Apple has respectfully declined to comment on any production of the fabled iPhone, iTalk or whatever name the latest internet buzz was calling it.

Industry is buzzing again in saying that Cingular and Apple may announce as early as today their inked collaboration on a phone product for consumers to enjoy. Its already no secret that many Cingular branded phones are compatible with Apple's iTunes service, so it would only make sense they would collaborate on an actual device.

Although Apple representatives are still very tight lipped about confirming any deals with Cingular or plans for an iPod phone product, many industry leaders are expecting the press announcement by Apple's Steve Jobs at the MacWorld Expo to contain all the information people have been talking about.

Sony revealed at CES today that it would like to further integrate its way into your living room with its new VAIO VGX-TP1. The aim of their latest product is to merge the capabilities of your TV with the capabilities of your PC.


This tiny, round, new device from Sony comes packing decent internals given its rather minute size. Sporting an Intel Core Duo processor rated at 1.8Ghz, 300Gb HDD, 2Gb DDR RAM, TV Tuner, integrated graphics, 802.11g wireless and loaded with Windows Vista, its clear to see that its rather competant for multimedia duties.

Its main responsibilities will be to record, pause or rewind live TV, including high definition or standard definition broadcasts. In addition, with it's wireless capabilities, you will be able to stream media across your network and broadcast to your TV and access various Internet features such as email.


The PC will ship with a remote control, wireless keyboard and retail for $1600. Look in stores during the month of March for this product to hit the shelves.

Source:
PC World

While Bill Gates may have stepped down as the head honcho of Microsoft its no secret that he still has some say and loyalty to the company that skyrocketed him to the richest man in the galaxy. With this said loyalty it comes as no shock that he issued a statement in the latest Microsoft press conference that he believes the Xbox 360 will dominate Sony's efforts in the latest round of the console war. Makes you wonder if the former owner would ever talk bad about his own product. I don't think I'm alone in thinking he wouldn't.

Gates admited that he did not like playing back seat to the Sony Playstation during the reign of the PS2 with a "big, clunky box that cost more and having less titles". He stated it wasn't much fun being in that situation and he feels now that the roles have been reversed. With the 360 having a full year ahead of the PS3, Gates believes there's an edge that can't be ignored.

Additionally, Bill Gates announced that the changes rumored with the Xbox 360 stem from the fact that Microsoft is aiming to turn the Xbox 360 into a set-top box with the fledgling IPTV technology. IPTV is a streaming television that Microsoft has tired many times in vain to get off the ground, but has never been able to topple the likes of cable and satellite providers.

In a push to gain the upper hand in the format war over rival Blu-Ray, Toshiba announced at this year's CES that it will lower the price of its entry level 1080p capable HD-DVD player, the HD-A20 to a scant $600. The other two players in Toshiba's arsenal are the HD-A2 and HD-XA2 which carry price tags of $500 and $1000 respectively. Although the HD-A2 is cheaper, it also does not support the full HD 1080p resolution.

The Full HD experience is what Toshiba hopes will grab consumer's attention with this model. Even though it is not their cheapest model in the lineup, they're hoping that the 1080p feature will push people above and beyond what their 1080i capable HD-A2 has to offer. Of course, I'm sure they wont mind you picking up the $1000 model, the HD-XA2 either. Although the only discerning feature that can be found is the inclusion of the latest HDMI standard, 1.3. Dubbed as Deep Color, HDMI 1.3 claims to be a leap above and beyond HDMI 1.2, which is all that is equipped on the 2 lesser Toshiba models.

Source:
PC World

Europe's largest electronics maker, Philips Electronics NV unveiled a slew of home theater goodies aimed at making your TV watching experience a full immersion experience.

One ambitious product is their single speaker surround sound option. Tagged with a retail price of $999, the single ambient speaker from Philips is said to produce booming surround sound without the need for multi-speaker setups.

Also showed off at the CES show were a few "Ambilight" flat panel televisions which cast light on the wall behind them depending on whatever color is showing on the television screen. This amBX system has been shown before but Philips seems to be integrating this into more of their product line.

And possibly the most innovated product in their CES display is the wireless HDMI hub. Broadcasing in Ultrawideband high speed radio standard it will effectively free home theaters of the confines of cables. Usually 2 meters is all you've got to work with when standard cables are employed, however this wireless hub will allow you to stream your media throughout your house, giving you various options for device installation.

Finally, billed at a mere $149 has unveiled its latest DVD effort that has a built in iPod video docking station. Philips claims to be the first to provide a DVD player capable of streaming your iPod content onto your television via a DVD player.

Touted as one of those pieces of software that would just never come to market, TiVoToGo on a Mac seemed about as distant as a non-vulnerable version of Windows. But TiVo has teamed up with Roxio to bring Mac users the ability to seemlessly transfer TiVoToGo programming to their OS X machines and convert them, if so desired, to iPod compatible media.

Billed at $100 and available immediately, Toast Titanium for Macintosh OS X will contain the necessary software for transferring your TiVo programs to your Mac. Representatives from TiVo said coding for the Macintosh was more difficult than they had expected. The problem seems to stem from the conversion process from TiVoToGo standard to things like iPod formatted media or even media converted to burn to a DVD. Apparently conversion of that level is not simply straight forward on a Mac. This lead the group at TiVo to seek out the help of Roxio with their Toast product.

The company recognized that there are other "Mac hacks" that do the same thing for them, but they state that this will be the only official TiVo on a Mac software on the market and simply using these third-party "hacked" software packages violates the TiVo terms of service agreement.

Netgear has uncovered details regarding their latest home theater networking device, the EVA8000. Touted as a direct upgrade to last year's EVA7000. For those who may not remember the EVA7000, it was a device giving wireless capabilities to stream media from a PC to your home entertainment system. The EVA8000 improves in the way of 802.11n wireless technology (almost 10 times faster than the current 802.11g standard). In addition to improved wireless, the device adds an HDMI port for easy connection to your HDTV. There's also a quite curious feature that states built-in support for YouTube content.

Netgear will add support for many different audio and video formats and comes packed with just about any connector you could possibly hope for. SCART, S-video, component, composite, and SFDIF digital audio round out the available connection ports. The unit will support "Full HD" with support for 1080p content.

Interestingly, the unit will allow you to stream iTUnes DRM protected content from your Windows PC, but will not allow you to stream from a Macintosh.

Just like the earlier model, the unit has USB ports for compatibility with flash drives and mobile digital media players, such as iPods. Netgear also says the unit has a unique "follow the user" technology where if pause is pushed on one unit and play is pushed on another in the house, the content will resume from wherever the user is at the time.

In a recent interview, UK Minister for Creative Industry and Tourism Shaun Woodward stated that in order for the UK to remain the third largest video game industry, they need to develop an academy for training future developers. Woodward feels that if no such academy exists, the UK will lose its foothold just behind the US and Japan in the video game industry and lose out on many creative minds or ideas in the video game market.

Woodward told the magazine Financial Times, that the "best way for the video games industry to have the talent and the skills it wants is to move into the hot seat itself; to come to the government and say 'we want to put some money into an academy.'" He sites similar academies such as those developed to inspire burgeoning musicians or film makers as a good model for his video game academy.

Woodward hopes that such and academy with government backing could add a sense of legitimacy to the video game industry that is somewhat lacking. He also hopes that the focus of video games can be turned from just regurgitated mindless shooters to deep, thought provoking stories that give a true impact to the gamer.

Source:
ARS Technica

On the eve before the Computer Electronics Show, the Consumer Electronics Association stated that overall consumer electronics sales have jumped 13 percent in 2006 which could set the market up for a record $155 billion dollars. These figures record everything in the industry from iPods to mobile phones and everything in between.

Television sets are expected to continue to be the big sellers this year. With falling overall prices of both LCD and plasma displays, coupled with an estimated 19 million units of both displays shipped onto store shelves over the course of the year, expect $26 billion of the overall revenue to be taken up in this category.

The other electronic genre setting the market on its ear is that which includes the likes of Apple and Microsoft. Digital music players have all but replaced standard CD players as the mobile audio unit of choice and the market has reflected that well. Various MP3 player companies plan on bringing out units to grab their own market shares in this category and overall store shipments are expected to be in the range of 41 million units; up from 34 million units in 2006.

Next generation video game consoles, GPS units and personal computers will round up the rest of the big hitters this year. If the long lines prior to the launch of any of the video game systems are any indication of demand, its easy to see how this market will certainly sell well. Also, more and more vehicles are being outfitted with GPS units and PCs are expected to get faster and more appealing as Big Redmond begins to aggressively push its Vista product on the masses.

News from the IDG World Expo came in on Friday announcing the replacement for what was one of the biggest video game expositions in the world, E3. Planned to kick off its first annual show on October 18th of this year, E for All or Entertainment for All, promises to bring a better show to the video game industry.

IDG World Expo has already created an E for All website and encourages visitors to visit and learn about the E3 replacement and advices everything that registration will begin in the Spring. The venue will remain the same, the Los Angeles Convention Center.

IDG World Expo stated that the show will allow consumers to "test-drive the latest in games and gadgetry, as well as purchase products they enjoyed." Many events are already in the works for this year's show such as a concert playing video game music, tournaments with some of the hottest games on the market, a job fair and many other family friendly events. They've planned so many things that they have decided to expand the show into the LA Live arena, directly connected to the LA Convention Center.

E3, which was decided to end in August of 2006 faced many complaints from industry leaders that the show had grown too large for its own good. Plans were in the works to allow a much smaller show to take place for only those who were high-level media and developers. In November of 2006, that idea was scrapped and the E for All ideals took shape. Offer a venue where consumers can truly enjoy the newest and developing products in the video game industry. Now geared as more of a consumer-oriented even instead of an industry expo, E for All appears to be quite a good thing for video game consumers.

Pioneer of the HD-DVD side of the high definition format war between rival Sony's Blu-Ray, Toshiba has uncovered details regarding its first ever HD-DVD drive for the desktop PC.

Toshiba had taken their time with a desktop implementation of the HD-DVD drive, seeing how the notebook variant has been out for a little while now. The wait will be over in approximately a month when the SD-H903A is unleashed to the masses. The normal fare of options you'd come to expect are in this drive, with read/write capabilities on HD DVD-R media as well as support for DVD and CD read/write abilities. Toshiba claims this drive will have "outstanding resolution, dynamic contrast and vivid colours", provided you have a high definition monitor to reap the benefits. No price has been officially announced, but you can be sure, with current trends, they wont be popping up in the average machine anytime soon.

Source:
Tech Digest

Once touted as the most popular music sharing community, only to be thwarted by the likes of Metallica and the RIAA, Napster has faced many hardships in its lifespan. Since going "legit" and competing against the likes of Apple's iTunes, their meager market share in the digital music distribution business had many wondering if Napster was even still around.

Recent sales figures have shown that 2006 was a pretty good year due to a change in marketing strategy and hiring of an investment bank, UBS. Revenue figures show Napster brought in some $28 million thanks to its increase in subscribers by 48,000, bringing its total subscriber base to 566,000. Early analysts had only predicted Napster to bring in $27 million due to a 0.5% decrease in Napster shares during trading.

Napster's biggest struggle these days is going up against 80% market share holder, Apple. Napsters service is not compatible with the iPod in the same way as iTunes, so they've yet to come up with an interesting enough strategy to bribe iTunes enthusiasts over to their eager servers. Napster subscribers downloaded some 500 million songs during 2006; a stark comparison to iTunes 1.8 billion songs sold since its 2001 launch. There still are ripple effects that remain to be seen with Microsoft entering the foray with its own Zune product.

Reports coming out of Phuket Thailand are saying that a seven year old British boy, Conner O'Keeff was electrocuted Saturday when attempting to plug in his power adapter for the Nintendo Game Boy into a hotel outlet. Details are sketchy right now as Thailand police are still doing a complete investigation, however police state that Conner had still be wet from swimming earlier when he attempted to plug in the game unit.

Police say that Sunset Beach Hotel in Patong Beach, Phuket, Thailand holds no blame on the incident and that it can be surmised that the boy either attempted to plug in or remove the power adapter and made a fatal connection with the water on his skin to the power outlet.

UPDATE: Nintendo of Europe has issued a statement regarding the tragic incident. "Nintendo wishes to offer its sincere condolences to the family of Connor O'Keefe," reads the statement. "Details of the accident are currently unclear so we are unable to make any further comment at this stage," it added.

The news was picked up by several UK newspapers who gave it the headline "Killed by Game Boy."

Source:
The Register

Stavanger Norway was the site of a P2P crack down in which a 16 year old boy was arrested and charged for operating a hub on the popular Direct Connect P2P software. The boy, who's name hasn't been released on the account that he's a minor, ran a hub called Stavanger Dragon Hub in which reports state some 7,000 movies, 150,000 songs and 20,000 video clips were shared illegally.

Initial reports claim that the boy could receive up to 60 days in jail and fined the amount of NOK4000 ($644) for the alleged crime. The prosecuting lawyer for Simonsen, regional representatives for the MPAA, stated that the boy's parents could also face a yet undisclosed six figure penalty for failure to properly monitor their child's activities while on the Internet.

Marte Thorsby of the IFPI stated that his firm believes the boy was fully aware of his actions and hopes these charges send a powerful message to parents to actively become a part of their children's online affairs.

Source:
The Register

Recently, a few photos have popped up on the Internet of a very interesting change in Microsoft's latest console, the Xbox 360. From what inside sources say, the next generation of consoles to come out of Redmond will feature a true HDMI port on the back of the newest version, codenamed Zephyr. This HDMI port will give the 360 the much needed capability of true digital 1080p support. Aside from this, further updates include a cooler 65nm processor, and a new 120Gb hard drive.

There's no word yet on whether or not the new HDD will come inside the new bundle, but its regardless a welcomed change for Xbox enthusiasts. One much needed upgrade that has no word of actually coming to light is an internal HD-DVD drive. It'd make the package a lot cleaner, but appears to have missed the boat on this revision.

Prices are expected to remain the same on the console to keep the competition with Sony and Nintendo stiff, and these changes are expected to hit the shelves soon. No official word has been released yet, however.

Source:
Engadget

Adobe announced today that they will demonstrate their DVD editing bundle, Production Studio at the MacWorld conference next week. What this means is Mac OS X users will be treated to the tools Adobe has created in applications like After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Encore DVD, and Soundbooth.

This software suite will be available for Macs running the Intel architecture and will appear on shelves mid-2007. An updated Windows version is expected to appear around the same time. There has been no pricing scheme announced at this time.

Premiere Pro, Encore DVD, and Soundbooth will also be available individually for Intel-based Mac users and there is currently a free beta version of Soundbooth available for download.

Source:
PC World

Dubbed as a "first of its kind presentation", collaborators WiMedia and DaimlerChrysler Research plan on displaying a gussied up Mercedes-Benz R500 SUV at CES next week. Armed with high definition LCD displays in the headrests, they plan on showing some of the merits of the Ultrawideband (UWB) USB technology created by Intel and Alereon.

Capable of transmitting a claimed 480Mbps of HD data, the USB device seems well equipped to properly transmit high definition clarity to displays via a mobile device. Which mobile device they will use to house the HD content has yet to be reveiled, but it serves as an interesting time in the long standing quest to further distract people from paying attention to the road in front of them.

Source:
Engadget

Movie rental giant Blockbuster announced that it has officially closed its last store in Peru. Faced with slumping sales and a continuing loss of a customer base forced the rental outlet to close the doors of all stores within the country of Peru. Just two years ago, El Comercio said Video International Peru operated some 12 Blockbuster franchises. Now there are none.

A Blockbuster representative stated that piracy can be blamed as the biggest factor in the closing. In a part of the world where pirated DVDs can be purchased on the corner for $1 instead of rented at Blockbuster for easily double the price, its no wonder they closed down. Blockbuster executives confirmed that their Peruvian presence is gone and they have no plans in the future for additional developments within the country.

Source:
Reuters

A while back, electronics giant Samsung was praised for developing the World's smallest LCD panel. Now, once again, the folks at Samsung have something to be proud of. They have developed the very first dual sided LCD panel capable of displaying independent images on either side simultaneously.

This is achieved by Samsung's own double gate thin film transfer technology. This may seem foreign to you, but think of your flip phone. Most commonly there's an LCD display on the inside and if you opted to get the call screening display on the front, that's an additional LCD display powering the front side. These are two independent gates displaying what the processors tell it to, taking up quite a bit of room on your phone. The result, the somewhat bulky flip phones we have today. What this technology allows us is to have a single LCD display with two gates, so phones can be made sleeker and thinner than before. The two gates operate each pixel and call the liquid crystal within the display for use depending on its transmissive or reflective attribute. Now word yet on what this technology could possibly do for the home theater market, but poses some exciting questions.

The display itself is a scant 2.6mm thick, 2.22 inches wide and supports 220x340 resolution with up to 256k colors. While this may not sound that impressive for specs, the thin dual sided display could mean great things for mobile display units. Expect to see the fruits of Samsung's labor by July of this year when they'll begin appearing in mobile devices near you.

One of the newest P2P clients to hit the scene is called BitTyrant and comes at the community with a fresh angle. Reward those who upload and damn those who do not. The program has been developed to monitor the swarm and compare upload speeds. If you have a group of say, 10 peers who's collective upload is 15kbps then all of the sudden, someone connects to the tracker with 35kbps upload capabilities, the client will dynamically throttle the lesser uploaders and give priority to the person who's uploading faster. This essentially sounds great... for the person with the bigger up pipe. Sure, if you unlock your upload, you could gain priority and a slightly better download speed from the tracker, but if you're one of the people who cant upload any faster, you get shafted.

While great in concept, it is poor in execution. Rewarding those who share properly in a community P2P application that is all about sharing is a great idea. Just not at the expense of the entire community. What this would create if BitTyrant were adopted on a large scale by P2P users is a general dissatisfaction for the Bit torrent protocol and could eventually lead to its demise. The only positive that can be pulled from this model is the fact that people who intentionally throttle their upload speeds will be throttled right back. However, it doesn't seem like that would be enough to risk the entire swarm suffering because of a few users connecting with a limited DSL connection.

A small division within Hitachi has partnered with US digital home technology provider Blue Peach to offer the new NAS Digital Media Server. What this server does, is offers digital media administrators the ability to further manage their digital content for user consumption.

With this new system, users will be able to tag videos and music on a digital media server with dynamic text, earmarks and other forms of identification. These earmarks can be used for more concise internet searches and easier browsing from a user's perspective for which content they're looking for.

According to Hitachi, serveral new filters can be put in place that will further give users the ability to find exactly what they're looking for. For example, users can search music files on a website that fit a certain beat or tempo, filter out movies that have an MPAA rating higher than PG-13, or use progressive text searching allowing search results to be displayed dynamically depending on what is typed in the search string.

No world yet as to when we shall see this technology implemented on media favorites such as YouTube, but expect more robust search features in the near future.

A now defunct little known company founded by three Hollywood executives, Intertainer is filing a lawsuit for patent infringement against iPod developer Apple, the widely used search engine Google and the online digital media community Napster. The suit was filed Friday in Texas against the big three Internet heavyweights under the grounds that they all violated a patent held by Intertainer. Intertainer claims to have created, developed and patented the way in which digital media is distributed through cable and phone lines.

Developed in 1996, Intertainer claims that they were the first to provide a way in which digital media can be packaged for public consumption and shared over the Internet. With corporate backing (back then) from Microsoft and Intel, Intertainer looked to have a pretty good service on their hands. The company, however was forced to shut its doors in 2002 and as a result, filed an anti-trust lawsuit against rival Movielink. This investigation led to nowhere and was eventually dropped in 2004. In August of 2005, the portion of Intertainer still functioning as a company, although no longer with any financial backing from Microsoft or Intel, took out a patent for the technology used to manage and distribute digital media. This makes one wonder why it took 9 years for them to realize they should patent their ideas, if they are in fact their own.

Early reports have hit the internet over at Crave showing that the HP lineup for this year's Consumer Electronics Show is devoid of any displays with the vaulted DLP configuration. Even after receiving awards for the technology, it seems HP has ditched the DLP route with a statement saying that what is currently on the shelves will be the last of the DLP units with HP technology.

Instead of focusing on DLP, HP has shifted gears and will promote, at this year's CES, their MediaSmart LCD displays. These displays feature things like Windows Media Center Edition installed on them and WiFi capabilities for streaming HD content from your PC.

If all that WiFi business isn't for you and you just want a plain old HDTV, they'll also be displaying two new 1080p displays sans MediaSmart, three 720p and two unspecified plasma displays.

Source:
Engadget

Santa Clara, California based Analogix Semiconductor announced Wednesday that it has developed its first receiver chip for their high definition interconnect, DisplayPort. Looking to become the new standard of connection devices for high definition televisions, component devices and computer monitors, DisplayPort offers lower power consumption, low pin count and license free connection. This trumps rival connection standards DVI, HDMI and VGA standards. With 10.8 Gigabits/second data transfer and WQXGA (2560×1600) resolution over a 15-meter cable, DisplayPort packs a very attractive package for the future of high definition.

Also, wildly attractive for the next generation hardware providers is the support with DisplayPort 1.1 to use HDCP. High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is one of the newest DRM standards to hit the scene. Developed by Intel this copy protection standard requires a license to be implimented and controls audio and video as it travels over DVI, HDMI and now even DisplayPort.

These receiver chips, due to start production in April will initially be aimed at high end graphics cards and monitors packaged in certain computer bundles. Adoption of this standard into other venues will be a bit further off.

Once thought of by the music industry as a hotbed for intellectual property lawsuits, podcasting looks to be given a little break when it comes to creative design. Sony BMG has announced that it will allow companies to integrate their licensed music into their podcasts for purpose of marketing. Of course, big Sony wont go down without some greenbacks in their pocket, so as long as you pay them what they feel is fair, you're free to use their music in your podcast.

A few companies have already taken advantage of this generosity. Ford and Chrysler both are paying Sony BMG a flat rate fee for license of their music for one year in their podcast advertising. The consumer benefit? These podcasts are free for download and will never expire. So, if you'd like to watch your advertisement propoganda mixed with your favorite beats, feel free to do so at your leisure at the expense of large organizations.

This in itself is a pretty big step from the point of view of the music industry, as it is not a huge secret that many of the podcasts can be stripped of their music and then, in turn, distributed DRM-free on P2P networks. This fact is why podcasting itself was high on the watch list for many record labels. I suppose that as long as the recording industry feels they're getting paid again for already released music from someone, they don't have to waste time and money tracking down those dirty podcasters who potentially leave their intellectual property open for mass public consumption.

A newly discovered vulnerability in Apple's Quicktime application could allow your computer to be open to specific attacks. Currently unpatched, this vulnerability appears to effect version 7.1.3.100 for the Windows client and is reported to effect the Macintosh OSX version as well.

The vulnerability uses a flaw in the RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) handling part of the code. If a user were to retrieve a streaming video that contained more than 256 bytes in the "src" portion of the URL, this would then compromise the machine. A successful attack then allows malicious code to be processed on the user's computer. No word yet on a patch.

Source:
Secunia

During 2006, Google's newest plaything YouTube was hit with multiple lawsuits and threats from record labels and other media providers interested in protecting their intellectual properties online. In response, YouTube had promised that it would implement its own anti-piracy software by the end of the year that would filter content on their network and seek out copyrighted materials. This could, in-turn, keep both parties happy and record labels wouldn't feel their artists are being exploited through an Internet community without paying their "proper" dues. Regardless of the fact that a social network would be the best place to get lesser known artists into the limelight by allowing users to put a clip of their music on their personal site.. but I digress. YouTube seems to have dropped the ball.

YouTube has announced that it will not be deploying its content management system anytime soon and has refused to comment on details as to why they were unable to launch only saying that they've been testing with media companies since October. This may not sit well with some companies such as the Japanese firm who stated they will pursue legal actions if they did not impliment something by the end of the year. This action could be viewed by them as yet another way for YouTube to dodge requests to respect their intellectual property.

Although automobile giant Ford refuses to comment right now, Microsoft has announced that they inked a deal to enter project Sync where Ford models will have an integrated version of Windows inside the car.

A recent report shows that Ford is expected to reveal details about Sync in the CES show on January 6 and North American International Auto Show in Detroit on January 7. What Sync appears to be all about is integrating computing into your daily life. Since most of us spend much more time in our cars, it only makes sense to integrate the other part of our life into it. It's expected to pave the way for further GPS projects, media downloads, navigation updates, traffic conditions, email and the like. This technology is expected to be available in select models later in 2007 and further available to all Ford models by 2008. Partners Lincoln and Mercury are also slated to get the same treatment.

All of this sounds like wonderous technology and a fine integration, however I'm not sure if my insurance company will cover me if I'm attempting to download porn in my car and smack a tree browsing screencaps. Then comes the famed Blue Screen of Death. Lets hope that Ford doesn't plan on using this computer integration to control any aspects of the vehicle as a normal automobile ECU does. Imagine the horror when you go to apply the brakes and you get a STOP error on your windshield.

A recent report released by US Market Research firm NPD shows that Microsoft may have won the console war this holiday season with its Xbox 360. The year old console was found everywhere, filling shelves while the two newest contenders into the ring were fighting to keep supply up to the level of demand.

The numbers released in a CNBC video report appear to possibly be a tad optimistic. They claim that since the beginning of November and through the holiday season, Microsoft has sold 2 million units compared to the 1.8 million units sold by rival Nintendo and a meager 750,000 units sold by Sony. However, with the tally going from the beginning of November and the fact that Nintendo didn't release until the 19th, the numbers appear to be a bit one sided. Who's to say what would have happened if Nintendo had an additional 19 days to put products on shelves. We may have seen a different king crowned this holiday season.

Source:
The Register

Entertainment gadget guru Apple is gearing up to be a powerhouse in the court room, much like it is in the mobile audio market. Faced with what usually plagues many companies once they make it too big, Apple will defend its business practices from multiple angles in 2007.

In response to a lawsuit filed back in July over Apple's DRM practices where they were being sued for claims that the anti-piracy practices of Apple force consumers to use only music downloaded from their iTunes service. Apple failed to get that case out of court and now faces a class action lawsuit for creating a monopoly with iTunes.

In addition to their digital music woes, Apple also faces investigations which could lead to lawsuits over how it has been handling stock options within the company. Its been reported that Apple back-dated stock options, failing to account for them and making false financial claims.

Oh, they're not done yet. One of two cases that will come by their lawyer's desks soon; PhatRat claims the Nike-iPod combo was their idea and is suing Apple for patent infringement. Also, a class action suit claims that the labor board in the G4 book fails too much for public consumption.