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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

Movies on the go!

Getting ready to go on a long road trip or a flight to far-flung dominions? I can't recommend picking up the Sony DVP-FX810 portable DVD player strongly enough. With this little guy by your side, you can put on your headphones, fire up your favorite movie, and pretend that the baby three rows down isn't out to get you with its incessant wailing.

Cell phone lessons from Hong Kong

I returned recently from a trip to Hong Kong and found a cell phone lover's paradise just waiting to be explored. Cell phone shops line almost every street, and no, I'm not talking about stuffy carrier stores with a limited selection of only what they want to sell. Rather, I'm referring to full-fledged gadget shops with an untold selection of manufacturers and models, many of which I'd never seen in the flesh. It goes without saying that the offerings are light years ahead of what we get in the United States, but also the entire cell … Read more

Designer e-book reader: Whatever

Talk about a niche within a niche. While we've become resigned to the persistence of designer special editions, no matter how eGregious, we've got to wonder how well this one can possibly do.

From the outset, the leather-bound Dooney & Bourke Sony Reader eBook has three disadvantages. First, Dooney & Bourke doesn't have the cachet of higher-end labels; second, e-books in general have yet to take off; and third, it's being marketed as a "special Valentine's Day edition."

An e-book reader for Valentine's Day? How utterly romantic.

Where are all the Wiis?

Well, it's been a nice couple of months since the launch of the Nintendo Wii and the PlayStation 3. After the predictably massive crowds and instant sell-outs of the systems on launch day, stores have had plenty of time to restock and get the new next-gen systems back on their shelves. Unfortunately, that hasn't quite been the case.

The Nintendo Wii is still almost impossible to find, and this is a surprising frustration for guys like me who decided not to wait in line for hours to get one at launch. After some legwork and a number of … Read more

A bounty of budget Sony shooters

Sony has some new cameras on the way, and they're all strangely similar. The company just announced the Cyber-shot DSC-W35, W55, S650, and S700, four sub-$200, 7-megapixel point-and-shoot cameras. They're simple, inexpensive models with the standard complement of snapshot features, including a top sensitivity of ISO 1000 for low-light and high-speed shots.

The Cyber-shot DSC-W35 and W55 replace the DSC-W30 and W50 in Sony's Cyber-shot W-series of ultracompact snapshot cameras. At just more than five ounces with battery and memory card, they're light and easily pocketable. They both use 38 to 114mm-equivalent lenses and include … Read more