News written by Dave Horvath (January, 2008)

Sony has announced today that they have successfully produced a read/write Blu-ray laser that is only 3mm thick. This new thin laser was developed in cooperation with Nichia and can read dual layer media, including those that use organic dyes. Sony says by reducing the size and the complexity of the laser assembly, production costs will go down and ultimately amount to cheaper players for consumers. The first device planned to incorporate this new laser assembly will be a 9.5mm thick laptop available later this year.

Cost savings come from a simpler manufacturing process that will yield dividends in mass production, while other features include the ability to handle dual-layer Blu-ray Discs and disks with organic dye in the recording layers. Organic disks can be churned out from existing DVD production lines, thereby adding up to saving across the board.

Anybody who witnesses an OLED TV in person will remark on how vibrant the colors are and what a wonder these televisions are to behold, but the organic materials they use within the set degrade rapidly over time, giving some potential future consumers an edgy approach. Well, those fears will soon be quenched as Toshiba has sided with Matsushita to effectively double the lifespan of an OLED TV. Earlier prototypes would only sustain clear pictures amounting to about 40 percent less than a standard LCD HDTV.

By inserting a metal inside the OLED TV, one which was prototyped at 20.8 inches, they can deliver the light from polymers in the substrate out through the glass surface more efficiently than current OLED standards. In the end, all this means that the brightness needed can be halved while maintaining the same picture quality and effectively doubling the unit's lifespan.

Earlier OLED televisions have been rated to approximately 30,000 hours of life, or 8 hours per day for 10 years. With the joint venture between Toshiba and Matsushita, it appears they want to appeal to even the most frugal television shoppers by delivering a set that should work for many years to come.

Ever since movie giant Warner Brothers defected and sided with the Blu-ray camp, its been an uphill battle for those involved with rival HD-DVD. Just weeks after the announcement of WB switching sides, NPD data shows that hardware sales for HD-DVD came to a virtual halt. The NPD Group recorded Blu-ray as having an astounding 93% sales advantage.

According to raw data provided by NPD, consumers bought just 1,758 HD DVD players the week of Jan. 12, down from 14,558 players the week before. In contrast, consumers bought 21,770 Blu-ray Disc machines, up from 15,257 the previous week. The NPD however, would not confirm or deny the actual sales figures and labeled them as proprietary.

Analysts such as Steve Baker say that although this defection was definitely a hard blow to HD-DVD, he added the caveat that its still too soon to tell whether this is the start of a trend. Baker was quoted in saying, "It’s always very dangerous to make long-term assumptions based on one-week sales data."

Baker also noted that strong marketing pushes by Sony and Sharp to include Blu-ray players along with HDTVs haven't helped the cause. "And we haven’t seen the results of Toshiba significantly dropping the price of their set-top players" Baker said. "One week just doesn’t give us enough data points to say something is going on for the long term. It only tells me in one week something happened."

Folks over at Equinux have given Apple users something more to cheer about with the introduction of their Tubestick hybrid USB digital and analog TV tuner for the Macintosh computer. It comes in the well known Mac white and houses two individual receivers for both digital and analog television transmissions. These two receivers are capable of allowing users to watch digital over-the-air HDTV broadcasts, digital QAM or analog signals.

Equinux took great lengths to ensure the design would be aesthetically pleasing as the Macintosh computers. Its sleek white with semi-curved edges and has a minimalistic design theory. Each Tubestick comes with a matching white antenna for receiving the transmissions. The antenna is plug and play with the device. Users will not have to worry about screwing in an antenna as it just snaps into place, ready to go.

No information has been given as to the price of this unit, but you can expect it to go on sale this February in the US.

According to an internal memo at retail giant Best Buy, the store will no longer stock and distribute the 80GB Sony PS3, thereby moving the console closer to a single SKU retail option. According to the memo, the store will no longer carry the product after January 28th of this year. The unverified memo reads, "The 80GB version of the PS3 is going closeout and won't be replaced at this time. Only the 40GB version of PS3 will be sold in Best Buy stores at this time."

This move as a whole would completely dismiss backwards compatibility for future PS3 owners from ever being achieved. As known in the past, the 40GB model saved money by going with a different motherboard which did not include the architecture needed for backwards compatibility for PS2 games. Of course, PS1 games are still playable via the digital download service they offer. If this memo serves as a direction that Sony wishes to take with future sales, it would mean that Sony has given up on supplying backwards compatibility to its customers.

To further substantiate this, North America is the only region that still a multi-system lineup. Japan and the UK have already dropped the higher capacity models in favor of the cheaper 40GB model. Earlier last year, Sony had dropped the 20GB and the 60GB model from their lineup, leaving only the 40GB and 80GB respectively.

Bolstering three new LCD televisions to its Aquos X line, Sharp has announced its thin 3.44cm (at the thinnest part) architecture. Loaded with many features HDTV lovers want in their sets, these new sets come in 46-inch, 42-inch and 37-inch displays.

These televisions are being marketed for people who desire to hang their television on the wall as they would a painting and not be put off by the thickness of current television sets. The X Series also adopts a discrete component configuration that separates the display section from the tuner section. Users can connect the display section simply and easily via a single cable. Housing the tuner as a separate component also eliminates the time and effort involved in turning the back of the display section to make connections with the antenna cable or peripheral equipment.

Features include

• Industry's thinnest Profile at 3.44cm
• TV contrast of 15,000:1 and 12-bit BDE color value rendering
• double-speed (120-Hz Frame rate conversion) full-HD LCD technology
• Thin-profile 3-way 8-speaker system and 1-Bit digital amplifier
• All models are compatible with AQUOS Familink that enables operation of a connected AQUOS Blu-ray Disc Player simply and easily

In an announcement by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM), the company has secured carriage for its MGM HD channel on Verizon's FiOS TV service, bringing feature film hits from the MGM library to Verizon FiOS TV subscriber households in full high definition splendor.

"The response to the MGM HD Channel, even in today's crowded and challenging marketplace, has been very encouraging, especially as consumers validate our belief that HDTV owners value movies along with sports as HD's greatest viewing proposition," said Douglas A. Lee,
Executive Vice President of Worldwide Digital Media for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. "We are one of the only services available 24/7 in full 1080i HD."

MGM HD will be rolled out in late 2008 across all of the Verizon FiOS TV systems including California, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas and Virginia.

Backed by the world's largest modern film library, consisting of more than 4,100 film titles and winner of 209 Academy Awards(R), MGM HD has a distinct advantage over the competition in the expanding HD marketplace. In addition to classic MGM theatrical hits, MGM HD will be the ultimate resource for serious movie fans, offering viewers an array of original programming and new content.

Effective immediately Vudu will drop the price of its video-on-demand Set-Top Box by as much as 25 percent to battle with the recent resurgence of interest in rival AppleTV. Down from its original asking price of $399, Vudu can be had for a scant $295. Any customers that have purchased the set-top box in the past 30 days are also eligible for a $100 movie credit by contacting the company's customer support line.

When Vudu was initially released in September of 2007, it had distinctive advantages over AppleTV. Such features as movie downloads that didn't require a PC to be attached, instant-on playback, high quality video and content from major movie studios gave AppleTV a lot to live up to. Steve Jobs, in his keynote address listed a few features that have apparently made Vudu a little concerned about its competitors.

Apple had promised to match all of the features on the Vudu box as well as slash the price of the 40Gb model to $229 and the 160Gb model came down to $329. Both units were $299 and $399 respectively. In addition, the Apple unit can access the likes of YouTube and stream media from any networked PC in your home directly to your television.

Music sold worldwide had a substantial decline in 2007 and fell faster than 2006 even while digital distribution sales have been seemingly soaring. As is the usual argument, the industry is claiming that they need to adopt a model that better protects against piracy if they are to reclaim sales of music.

Digital distribution sales rose some 40 percent in 2007, but it wasn't enough of a margin to offset the decline in physical media sales. With how fast and sharp CDs fell off the market, the industry as a whole is looking at a 10 percent loss overall. In response to this, industry leaders are contacting Internet Service Providers and encouraging them to take a stronger stance towards allowing the rampant illegal file sharing that occurs over their networks. They wish to discuss plans to either disconnect those who upload music or provide a medium to prevent the download of illegal music. Most ISPs have been reluctant to give into these types of suggestions, but the industry hopes they will take note of a recent move by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The President has mandated that Internet traffic is to be blocked to those found to be frequently downloading illegal wares.

Currently only able to stream to select devices including the Apple iPhone and Helio, YouTube is looking to open up the mobile phone market by launching its YouTube for Mobile plan. The company hopes to offer its service to the many different cellular phone companies that offer high speed data services to its clients.

Dwipal Desia, mobile product manager of YouTube says, "It's basically the full YouTube experience you can get on the desktop -- on the phone. We expect it to get fairly popular from our past experiences."

As stated before, only the iPhone and Helio have full featured access to YouTube's content. Other companies such as Verizon and Vodafone feature a scaled down version to its clients. YouTube wants to change this to allow all the features to as many mobile consumers as they can reach. There are also plans in the works for allowing users to upload video straight from their phones to the YouTube website, thereby opening up a whole new experience for videographers.

Touting its newest service as the world's largest free music service, Last.fm has signed deals with record labels to pay royalties towards their catalogs of music. The four big labels have all signed as well as over 150,000 independent labels. Users of this service will be able to listen to each Track, streamed, up to 3 times for free. After that, if the consumer likes what they hear, they'll be obligated to purchase it.

If users of this service decide to buy the song after the introductory period, they will be provided direct links to several music services out there, including the likes of iTunes and Amazon. Last.fm will share profits of these sales and that is how they predict they can pay for the cost of running such a service.

One of the original founders of Last.fm before it was sold to CBS, Richard Jones has said, "We want to make music available free and legally to whoever wants it, while rewarding the artists at the same time." He was later asked whether users would not prefer to own music and be able to put it on a portable player rather than just being able to stream it, he said, "The way people consume music is changing - sometimes you just want to listen to it there and then."

After announcing the addition of the Skype service to the Playstation Portable, Sony has said that it will be forced to delay the launch of the Skype enabled PSP in Japan. The delay seems to stem from a problem with the microphone not meeting the specifications of Skype.

Earlier this month, Sony said that PSP users will be able to download the Skype software and use it along with an active Wi-Fi connection to make world-wide phone calls. The receiving end of these phone calls would have to be other Skype enabled PSPs or people running the Skype software on their home computer.

Apparently, Skype rollouts outside of Japan will go along as planned as the headsets don't fail to meet the specifications in other areas. It is unknown when Japanese PSP users will be able to experience Skype on their handhelds.

Source:
Reuters

Though the record labels would have a heart attack if anyone sanctioned the ripping of music files from a compact disc to your hard drive, it appears the the Intellectual Property Minister, Lord Triesman in the UK feels that the laws against ripping the contents of your legally purchased CD should be changed. He bases his thoughts on the need for the industry to keep up with the times.

Lord Triesman submitted a formal proposal for dissolution of the laws which were welcomed with caution by music industry bodies. The proposal is open for review until April 8th of this year. These changes would apply only to those copying CDs for personal use and not with any form or intent to distribute. Additionally, the proposal has stated that the owner of the CD is not to be permitted to sell or give away the original once the copy has been made. The proposal warns, "To allow consumers to copy works and then pass on the original could result in a loss of sales."

BPI, one of the recording companies, stated that it supports the proposal and what it stands for, but urges caution in the interest of allowing too many freedoms that could further hurt sales. Another group, The Association of Independent Music thinks the proposal is not robust enough and is paving the way for CDs to become obsolete within the next decade. They stated that once the CD has been made obsolete, you will then open the floodgates of rampant piracy and file sharing.

In an all out stalemate of a format war thats been waging for the past few years, it appears that with the recent developments from the HD-DVD camp, supporters of Blu-ray are already claiming their victory in this war is upon them. Touting the shift in support from Warner Brothers as well as talks of Paramount jumping ship, Blu-ray camp believes this will be the tipping point at which HD-DVD sinks into oblivion.

Andy Parsons of the Blu-ray Disc Association has already stated, "It's much clearer to consumers now which of the formats is going to prevail." He added at the CES 2008 show that, "We still have a little bit more work to do before we can say the format war is over." Howard Stringer, chief executive of Sony isn't so quick to jump on the victory bandwagon. He states that his victory banners will fly when the time is right.

In North America, Blu-ray has outsold HD-DVD by a margin of 2-to-1. HD-DVD camp now appears to only have a foothold on Universal Pictures. Since the forced cancellation of their CES appearance, its unclear what the future of the HD-DVD format will be.

The CES trade show in Las Vegas is the place where companies get to flex their muscles in both products that are coming out shortly and ideas that will shape the future of consumer electronics. Intel has decided to address the latter in their latest keynote at this year's show.

Paul Otellini, chief executive of Intel announced that they will begin sometime in the second half of 2008, shipping single integrated circuits that will allow digital video recorders and other TV connected consumer devices the ability to run web applications much like a PC. During the keynote address, Otellini demonstrated Intel's system-on-a-chip platform codenamed Canmore which includes an Intel processor tightly integrated with other hardware for processing high-definition video. This in turn means resolutions of 1080p, multi-channel surround-sound audio, and 3-D graphics are all possible on one chip.

In addition, the integrated circuit would include security, a memory controller, and input/output technology important to consumer electronics, such as HDMI.

At the CES show this year, it appears Samsung wants everyone to know why they're one of the leading edge designers in next generation televisions by unveiling three econcepts that could change HDTV viewing as we know it.

Unveiled at the show, Samsung brought out two of their latest OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) displays as well as an ultra-thin 52" LCD panel and the mother of all resolutions: The Quadruple Full-HD LCD television. Each display was brought out with the intention of showing off Samsung's innate ability to combine high resolution images and sleek designs.

"OLED and quadruple full-HD technologies represent an entirely new paradigm in picture resolution technology," said Dr. Jongwoo Park, president of Digital Media Business, Samsung Electronics. "This is a level of clarity that is in some cases four times beyond current industry standards yet retains the slim fits and light weight that have made our models preferred among consumers."

OLED is no stranger to being displayed by manufacturers at trade shows, but Samsung is the first to provide a fully finishd OLED television set complete with a sleek design that could potentially be sold to consumers. The
finished products will weigh approximately 40 percent less than other LCD TVs of the same size and have a contrast ratio of 1 million to one, color gamut of 107% and brightness of 550nit. Samsung will begin commercial production OLED TVs around 2010.

The Consumer Electronics Show is well known for showing off innovative and creative new gadget that eager consumers can get their hands on, and this year is proving to be no different. New York based Hauppauge, well known for TV tuner cards for PCs has introduced what appears to be a very handy device. The world's first USB TV tuner, the WinTV-HVR-950Q.

The new USB tuner stick can be used as a portable TV tuner and can be used to watch and record clear QAM digital cable TV on a laptop or desktop PC. Not only that, it can also be used to watch and record NTSC analog cable TV and over-the-air ATSC high definition digital TV.

Bundled with the USB stick is a credit card sized remote control so you dont have to fumble with keystrokes or mouse clicks to switch channels on your television stream. If the size of the remote is a problem, there is an optional full size remote control as well.

The new WinTV-HVR-950Q supports Hauppauge’s SoftPVR and SoftMCE software MPEG-2 encoders. SoftPVR and SoftMCE are software based MPEG-2 encoders which allow the recording of analog NTSC cable TV onto a PCs hard disk in a compressed format without needing a expensive hardware MPEG encoder. These encoders enable WinTV-HVR-950 to be compatible with Windows XP, Vista Home Basic plus Vista Media Center.

The world's second largest music company Sony BMG this month will become the last of the big four recording companies to drop DRM protection schemes from its music downloads. Sony BMG announced today that beginning on the 15th of January, they will offer gift cards available online and in retail stores that will give consumers the ability to download MP3 music from their library that is free of DRM protection.

Consumers will also be able to download full albums digitally, receive a gift card number and redeem the DRM-free album through their MusicPass website. Currently, only US retail outlets such as Best Buy and Target will carry these gift cards.

"The introduction of MusicPass is an important part of Sony BMG's ongoing campaign to bring its artists' music to fans in new and innovative ways, and to develop compelling new business models," said Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG president.

This type of move is no doubt in direct relation to the recent reports showing that physical media music sales have plummeted while digital music sales have risen. Companies like Apple have been urging music labels to drop the DRM practices for quite some time in efforts to boost digital sales. With other record labels dropping DRM from their library earlier, it seems obvious that this has had an impact on the market.

At the Consumer Electronics Show going on in Las Vegas, Nevada this week, San Jose, CA based SyncTV will demonstrate a proof-of-concept device that will play downloads, including 1080p HD video content on a television set. This device is just one example how SyncTV is planning on integrating itself into consumer electronics as well as Windows PCs, Macs and Linux PCs. SyncTV's approach is that they will remain an open platform, thus allowing third-party hardware manufacturers to utilize their standards for consumer electronics market penetration.

SynTV itself, a subsidiary of Pioneer, is an unlimited download service started in November 2007 as a private beta application. The service allows its subscribers to download entire series of television broadcasts for one low monthly fee. Aside from just subscriptions, SyncTV also offers rental and purchase of select television shows. The program is set to go into public beta Q1 of 2008, in which pricing and Channel lineups will then be announced.

Ringing in the new year with another lawsuit wasn't high on Steve Jobs' list of things to accomplish, but one frustrated iPod user thought it was the perfect gift.

Stacy Somers and her team of lawyers filed a federal anti-trust complaint in the Northern California District Court in San Jose on New Year's Eve because she's upset that her iPod will not play Microsoft encoded or Apple encoded DRM songs. The details of the suit alleges that, "Apple has engaged in tying and monopolising behaviour, placing unneeded and unjustifiable technological restrictions on its most popular products in an effort to restrict consumer choice, and to restrain what little remains of its competition in the digital music markets."

To be more specific, the lawsuit points at the PortalPlayer media chips that the iPods use to Decode MP3 and WMA files. Since Apple intentionally turns off the WMA encoding on these chips due to the fact that they refuse to pay Microsoft's licensing fees, the complaint states that Apple is crippling her system intentionally. The complaint goes on further to state that Apple is abusing their market share by only playing music that is encoded in their own FairPlay DRM.

STMicroelectronics, one of the world's largest producers of system-on-chip solutions for digital TV and the world's largest supplier of silicon chips for set-top boxes has announced a new hardware platform that supports worldwide standards. The DTV150 is a new cost-saving hardware platform that provides demodulation, MPEG-2 high-definition and standard-definition decoding, full HD video processing, high quality audio, and video switching (picture-in-picture capabilities) for integrated digital TVs worldwide. This highly-integrated solution is built around ST's new STi1010 single-chip IDTV processor, which provides the capability to
use the same chip for both digital and analog broadcast decoding, and for video TV processing.

The new platform achieves a balance in the trade-off between performance and cost, giving iDTV manufacturers the ability to produce sets that meet worldwide standards, with high-quality full HD displays, while reducing the Bill of Materials.

The core of the Chipset is the STi1010 processor which operates at an 80nm CMOS process technology. This provides the unification of analog and digital on a single chip. It
supports displays up to 1080p (1920 x 1080), including full 1080i de-interlacing using ST's 3D contour sensitive de-interlacer (CSDi) to enhance picture quality. Other features of the chip include embedded HDMI, dual LVDS output and a USB 2.0 Hi-Speed interface for JPEG and MP3 playback, and capability for decoding AD (Audio Description), Dolby Digital, and AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) audio streams.

DVD renting giant Netflix has paired together with the folks over at LG to bring consumers a new Set-Top Box that will download movies and television programs over the Internet. The device will be built by LG and distributed by Netflix. Current Netflix subscribers will pay nothing extra for this service.

The box is squarely aimed at competitors like AppleTV and Vudu box. Netflix also hopes to take on cable companies with their many DVR type options for more of a dominance in the home theater market.

Netflix currently offers a video Streaming service and its customers have shown they favor the service, having viewed over 10 million movies and television shows since the service began. Netflix does however hope that the ability to stream to your television with one box will boost the appeal of this service entirely. Netflix has currently spent upwards of $40 million to build and maintain their streaming video service.

This market can appear shaky to some as the main competitor, AppleTV hasn't caught on as the Cupertino company would have wanted. Relying on devices like the iPod and iPhone, Apple states that only 1.8 million AppleTV devices have been sold to date.

Eight of the major high-definition product manufacturers out there have for some time been working on wireless baseband specifications for high-definition video transmission. The people over at Intel, LG, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), Samsung, Sony, NEC, Toshiba and SiBEAM, have officially sanctioned the WiHD 1.0 specification and hope to roll out this specification to Adopters beginning early this year. Additionally, since the October 2006 WirelessHD announcement, it has grown to include 40 Early Adopter and Promoter companies as well as technical support with regards to content protection for WirelessHD 1.0 from the Motion Picture Association of America and technical support for DTCP content protection from the Digital Transmission Licensing Administrator (DTLA).

Wireless HD or WiHD is a wireless high-definition interface standard that runs at the unlicensed 60Ghz frequency band. Not only is it the first format to potentially offer wireless HDMI type connections, but its the first consumer focused 60Ghz technology. Once developed into consumer devices, it can feed a wide range of products from HDTVs to camcorders to gaming consoles.

Announced today, Cyberlink Corp, makers of the well known Power DVD software suite have officially been certified by the Blu-ray Disc Association to support playback of BD-Video profile 1.1 specification. What this means to viewers is that their software will now support multiple video streams from Blu-ray sources for the ability to have picture-in-picture during playback for video and documentary footage simultaneously.

"CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra has been acknowledged for various standards for high-definition video support including BD-ROM Profile 1.0, BD+, AVCHD, and HD DVD," said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink. "Now with PowerDVD Ultra certified for BD-Video Profile 1.1, we ensure users the best Blu-ray movie experience on PCs."

PowerDVD Ultra offers the following key features:

• Playback of high-definition Blu-ray Disc, and HD DVD movies
• Support for next-generation disc features, like Picture-in-Picture movie mode, networking, interactive BD-J and iHD, bookmarks, and advanced disc navigation
• New audio technologies with support for Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD technologies
• Optimized performance for playing high-definition video content using graphics cards featuring NVIDIA PureVideo, ATI Avivo, and Intel Clear Video technology

Browsing through Sony's affiliated website shows an interesting tidbit of information for fans of their handheld gaming system, the PSP. There appears to be suggestions that they have worked a deal with Skype to bring communication over the handheld a reality.

There really are no details at the moment but there is clear mention on their CES website, which could turn into an official announcement when the Consumer Electronics Show kicks off on January 7th.

As quoted from their website, one of the features of the new PSP includes "Call friends, talk trash to fellow gamers or catch up with acquaintances via Skype for PSP system."

Source:
Sony CES Click the controller icon on the flash presenation for more information