about-electronics.eu

Bloomberg: Ken Kutaragi, the developer of Sony Corp.’s PlayStation game console, stepped aside from day-to-day management of the unit after production delays forced the company to slash shipment targets.

Kaz Hirai, head of the U.S. game division, will take over as president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., the Tokyo-based company said in a statement today. Kutaragi, 56, will become chairman of the unit.

Sony Chief Executive Officer Howard Stringer is counting on the PlayStation 3 to revive a company that has lost almost half its market value in the past six years. Kutaragi, a 30-year Sony veteran, in September cut 2006 shipment targets by half because of parts shortages.

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ElectronicsWeekly: The UK’s four major broadcasters have called for HDTV to be run on the terrestrial TV ahead of the region’s analogue switch off in 2012.

Trials of HDTV on terrestrial by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five have just finished in London, and nearly all (86%) of trialists expected to see HD services within three years, well before analogue switch-off. Nine out of ten believed that the four broadcasters should be at the forefront of HD developments.

“It’s clear even from this small trial that audiences increasingly expect us and the other major broadcasters to offer high quality HD programming on Freeview in the future,” said Seetha Kumar, head of HDTV at the BBC.

The problem is that HDTV takes four to five times the bandwidth of existing standard definition digital TV. The BBC has demonstrated terrestrial HD at 10Mbit/s with MPEG4, and the trial used standard MPEG4 HDTV boxes from Humax and ADB with digital terrestrial TV (DTT) front ends.

The Digital TV Group (DTG) is investigating the use of a polarising approach that could be used to deliver HD services alongside existing broadcasts. This is one of the options or the second generation of the DTT specification by the international DVB standards group, but would require a new radio receiver chip. This is not likely until 2009 at the earliest.

“Technically, the trial has more than fulfilled our expectations. All major technical hurdles are behind us,” said Simon Fell, director of technology at ITV Consumer.

However, the likelihood of HD services before switch-off is low. “We have previously said that the spectrum allocation [after analogue switch-off] will be market led so if there is a demand for HD then that will be what it is used for,” said a Government spokeswoman.

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TG Daily:  Philips yesterday announced that it has sent its one millionth Ambilight TV off the production line. Compared to regular LCD TVs, Ambilight devices emit ambient light out of the sides of the TV frame.

In harmony with the 10th anniversary of its first flat-panel TV, the one million milestone for Ambilight TVs shows that there is consumer demand for a TV that sets itself apart from the rest of the market, said Philips.

Rudy Provoost, the company’s CEO, remarked, “This demonstrates that Ambilight has clearly become a hit with consumers – it not only enhances the overall viewing experience but it also makes watching TV easier on the eyes.”

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Engadget: iPod car integration has long since gone from being mythic desire to nearly stock feature, but plugging an iPod in via USB and it works - that’s still a pretty fresh experience.

Alpine’s forthcoming iDA-X001 iPod / media-ready receiver promises just that having been “designed and developed with input from Apple.”

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DigiTimes: Sony will increase its global LCD TV shipments to over six million units for fiscal year of 2006 (ended in March 31, 2007), up from an original forecast of six million units, amid strong worldwide sales.

For more info, please visit Digitimes.com

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T3: Check out Nokia’s latest offspring – four fun-sized phones packed to the gills features.

First up, the 6300 (pictured below), packing all of Nokia’s standard mobile gubbins in a shell just over 13mm thick. Clad in chic stainless steel, its “organic curves” make it the “evolution of the modern monoblock” according to Nokia. So there.

The 6290 is an altogether different beast. Crammed inside its clamshell are the guts of a true smart phone, running Nokia’s S60 3rd Edition and hopping on 3G networks with ease. Smartly designed quick keys on the cover mean you needn’t fiddle with its flip action for the most common queries.

The all new 6086 is a slight disappointment specs wise. Nokia’s touting it as a cameraphone, but with a measly VGA camera it’s hardly a challenge to megapixel mobiles. It’s a slick little number on the outside though, clad in an all metal case and it’s quad band too, so the perfect partner for frequent travellers.

Last is the 2626, a budget blower with a colourful exterior. Nokia’s slipped in an FM radio, and slapped a range of coloured shells on for good measure, there’s anything from “Fiery Red” to “Spatial Blue”, as well as the obligatory pink. Something for everyone then.

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Ecoustics: If size were not a factor and budget were limitless, building truly awesome loudspeakers would be easy. One can imagine (and purchase) close approximations to the perfect speaker. For most of us, however, reality intrudes. Realistically, we need speakers sized to fit into our media rooms (leaving space for a nice bigscreen TV and one, or preferably more, people). And some of us would prefer not to tap into our home equity to meet our entertainment needs. As a result, we need speakers that are comfortably small and reasonably priced. Tannoy, no stranger to the realities of loudspeaker building, honed that equation and brought forth the HTS 200 home theater speaker system.

Priced at $999 (about 760 euro), the HTS 200 comprises short and slender towers, small but not tiny center and sats, and a comparably abbreviated subwoofer.

Plus:
•Bright, lively sound just right for some listeners
•Excellent transient response with good clarity
•Tastefully designed small cabinets will delight decorators

Minus:
•Bright, lively sound too much for some listeners
•Surrounds a bit bass-shy for the towers
•Diminutive sub hits only 5 on Richter scale

Full review?

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Financial Times: Hm. Seems Microsoft hasn’t got it quite right with Version 1.0 of its Zune player. No one thought the first Zunes would leave much of a dent, a blemish or even a pin-prick in the iPod’s unassailable market share – but the early signs do not look good measured against even those modest expectations.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the Zune player had fallen to number 95 in Amazon’s list of 100 best-selling electronic gadgets in the US at what is a peak moment in the Christmas sales season. That puts it somewhere below the American Red Cross’ emergency radio and Logitech’s advanced universal remote.

Even more of a concern for Microsoft, Creative’s 30GB Zen Vision and SanDisk’s 2GB flash player make it into Amazon’s top 25. Zune was meant at least to provide some serious competition to other MP3 players as Microsoft works out how to take on Apple with future versions. (…)

Update:  seems like Engadget has got a completely different story on Zune…

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Heise: Siemens’ struggling network division is even hard for Nokia to stomach: on Tuesday, the world’s largest cell phone manufacturer lowered its earnings forecast for the next few years. At an investor conference held on Tuesday in Amsterdam, Nokia said its operative margin would probably be around 15 percent. Up to then, 17 percent had been expected.

Nokia said it lowered its forecast due to the greater dependence on the redesigned network division Nokia Siemens Networks, which will have a much lower margin than the cell phone division. A few months ago, the two companies resolved to merge their network divisions. The joint operation will reportedly go into business in January 2007. Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo expects slight growth in this field of business over the next few years. The operative margin will be around ten percent.

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Yahoo: Nintendo sold 600.000 units of its new Wii video game console in the first eight days after its release in the Americas,

At $250, the Wii costs half as much as the cheapest version of Sony’s PlayStation 3 console, which went on sale in the United States two days before the Wii hit the market.
The consoles are also being hawked on Internet auction sites such as eBay for several times their retail price tag.

“We’ve shipped retailers several times the amount of hardware the other company was able to deliver for its launch around the same time — and we still sold out,” Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said in a statement.

Sony has not revealed how many PlayStation 3 consoles it has sold in North America so far, but has said it aims to have shipped 1 million units by the end of the year.
Microsoft has shipped more than 6 million of its Xbox 360 since launching it in November 2005.

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The Red Ferret Journal: BluScreen is a real life ‘Minority Report’ type concept application which will beam advertising at us based on preferences stored in our Bluetooth enabled mobile phones.

The idea is that we set a preference saying that we like, say, MP3 players and receive a ‘reward’ of a discount if we accept a personalised advert beamed at us any time we pass a relevant shop window display.

It’s quite interesting actually, and takes targeted advertising to a whole new level.

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Pioneer Europe announces the DVR-940HX-S. Or as they put it: A digital library in your living room.
“Your personal video recorder with extreme 500GB storage capacity. Record, play and store all your digital media in a single place in your living room: multi-format DVDs, CDs, digital photographs and music.
It’s an advanced media centre with integrated digital DVB-T tuner, high-end video processing and scaling to 1080p video format via HDMI. So you get the very best in full high definition picture, no matter the source.
With one touch recording and copying, it’s extremely easy to use. Download and edit your camcorder footage, rip CDs, and upload photographs and MP3 music. You can even print your photographs via a compatible printer.”

Recommended retail price: 1.999 euro

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