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Sony Ericsson goes on a diet

Sony Ericsson has always blazed its own path when it comes to cell phone design, but now it appears the company finally is joining the slim-phone party. Gizmodo posted images of the new Sony Ericsson W880 Ai, a razor-thin (pun intended) candy bar model that should have its formal debut this month. Expected features on the triband (GSM 900/1800/1900) phone include a 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, 3G (UMTS) support, and a digital music player. Of course, our friends in Europe will be the first to get the W880 Ai, and we have no idea if it will skip across … Read more

No life support for the Aibo

Poor Aibo. Derided since its birth in 1999 as too expensive, which it was ($2,000), the robotic pup was put to sleep rather unceremoniously six years later.

Now we hear that Sony won't even release a driver or develop any other software compatible with Windows Vista for the pooch, according to Akihabara News. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Walkman finds it's easy being green

The Walkman isn't dead, contrary to popular belief, at least in the world of anime. Sony is selling a special green edition of its once-royal brand that features a sleepy-eyed Japanese character of the same color (not Kermit). Other than its "Gachapin" theme, the Walkman E series is a standard MP3 player of modest capacity (512 and 1GB storage for $113 and $137, respectively). For those prices, we think the least they could have done is make the earphones green too. But you do get a super-kawaii felt case and carrier.

Sony may look to cut PS3 price

PlayStation 3 price cuts already? That's what Sony may be eyeing in a bid to break even on the console by the end of fiscal 2008.

According to the Associated Press, Sony senior vice president Takao Yuhara said that while no specific plans have been made, the company is considering reducing the price as a way to boost sales. "We may look at the price as part of our strategy to expand the market when the timing is right," Yuhara said.

Sony had already reduced the price of the PS3 in Japan prior to launch. But with … Read more

Sony joins band for wireless audio

When we began out campaign for wireless home audio systems, little did we know how many others shared our opinion. Even big-name companies are joining the fray, the latest being Sony.

Its VAIO WA1 "Wireless Digital Streamer" lets you "stream music from your PC and listen to it where you want--be it the bedroom, kitchen or anywhere else in the house," according to TechShout. The $350 device is a bit steep for our taste, but that's Sony for you. Our only question is: What took them so long?

PS3: Final nail in SACD's coffin?

Much has been made of how the PS3 is Sony's not-so-secret weapon in the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war. But I actually held out some small hope--call me naive--that the PS3 might be able to breathe some new life into Sony's near-dead, high-fidelity audio format, SACD (Super Audio CD), which competes with another near-dead, high-fidelity audio format, DVD-Audio.

In case you hadn't heard, the PS3 supports playback of SACD discs. There aren't a whole lot of SACD discs out there, but I happen to own five of them. I made an effort to find them the … Read more

Sony updates PS3 firmware to fix bugs and add features

I woke up this morning and clicked on the System Update icon on my PS3 and lo and behold, the rumored 1.5 firmware update was available for download. Unfortunately, Sony doesn't offer a change log saying exactly what the firmware update does, but there are plenty of tidbits out there on blogs from PS3 enthusiasts.

The biggest issue that the update fixes involves backward-compatibility with PSOne and PS2 titles, some of which looked like garbage on HDTVs when played on the PS3. Titles that didn't support 480p output exhibited loads of artifacts and jaggies. Allegedly, all that'… Read more

Your next best TV is here

Now that we know which teams are going to the Super Bowl XLI, those of you who have been waiting for a good reason to upgrade your TV will have a little less than two weeks to do so. These four models below all got good ratings from our editors, and our readers also rave about them. However, it might be easier to decide whether you will want to root for the Colts or the Bears than picking one of these four great TVs. >> Mitsubishi WD-65831 >> Pioneer PDP-5070HD >> Sony KDL-40XBR2 >> Samsung LN-S4096D