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GadgetCandy: This radio from Roberts wraps up the latest gadget goodness in an old world package that looks fan-DAB-ulous in the boudoir, parlour or hearth…
Call us romantic, but here at GadgetCandy we like a vintage look to our technology – but only if the innards compensate by building in the hottest features out.

Roberts Sound 78 radio fits the bill perfectly. Inside the wooden cabinet you’ll find DAB, as well as a 3-way speaker system that can suck tunes from your ‘Pod through an input auxiliary socket.

It’s a cinch to use too, with brushed silver controls on the front enabling you to tune into your favourite station at the touch of a button. Close your mitts around its carrying handle over at robertsradio.co.uk. The dashing DAB will set you back £120 (182 euro).

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Reuters: Japan’s Sony will launch the high-end version of its PlayStation 3 (PS3) game console in Europe on March 23, but it said on Thursday it has no plan at the moment to offer the basic model there.

Last September, Sony delayed the European launch of the PS3, Sony’s most important strategic product this business year, to March from November due to a production glitch, missing the critical year-end shopping season in one of its key markets.

“We will focus on the launch of the one with a 60 gigabyte (GB) drive and have no plan now to introduce the 20 gigabyte model,” Sony Computer Entertainment spokesman Satoshi Fukuoka said. (…)

The electronics and entertainment conglomerate started selling both the high-end, 60 GB hard-disk drive model and the basic 20 GB model in Japan and North America last November. The high-end machine is already outselling the 20 GB console, whose storage capacity can be used up quickly with games featuring high-definition graphics, so Sony’s decision to concentrate on the 60 GB model is a natural move, analysts said.

It will sell for 599 euros, and will also become available in Africa, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand on March 23. (…)

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Yahoo: Rabid video gamers could get some help keeping in touch with the outside world this weekend as Nintendo Co. launches an online news service through its popular Wii console.

The Wii News Channel, scheduled to debut Saturday, will primarily feature top news stories and photographs from The Associated Press. Consoles with a broadband Internet connection and the Opera Web browser will be able to access the free news channel, which will offer AP news in multiple languages. Japanese-language news will come from a separate agency. (…)

The AP will supply news for the Wii in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German, and Swiss-German.

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EETimes: The iPhone is clever in design and has some nifty capabilities, but the combination mobile phone and digital music player isn’t a smartphone, a market researcher said Thursday.
Much of the media has placed Apple’s device, unveiled this month at the Macworld conference in San Francisco, in the same category as gadgets like the Palm Treo, the Motorola Q, and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Pearl. But the major difference between those devices and the iPhone is the fact that Apple’s gizmo is closed to third-party applications.

“Therefore, we must conclude at this point that, based on our current definition, the iPhone is not a smart phone; it’s a very high-end feature phone,” says Philip Solis, an analyst for ABI Research. (…)

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The Register: CeBIT, one of the world’s biggest technology and telecoms trade fairs, has admitted it will radically restructure the show in 2008 with more focus on B2B and less on novelties.

The new CeBIT will also be a day shorter. CeBIT is expecting a €6m loss this year due to declining visitors and exhibitors. Big spending exhibitors such as Konica Minolta, Lenovo, BenQ, Nokia, and Motorola have all cancelled.

Future CeBITs will have three major themes: business, public sector and residential for retailers and hobbyists. However, the show will still be open to the general public during the weekend.

This year’s show will also have a more business-like feel, the organisers claim. Almost 6,000 stands from 70 countries will be at the show, which runs 15-21 March in Hanover.

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Gizmodo: Mac users keen on mastering their own Blu-ray movies can finally get started thanks to MCE’s internal Blu-ray drive. It supports 50GB dual-layer discs and ships now for $699 (around €540).

The drive also includes Roxio Toast 8 Titanium, which enables you to write Blu-ray discs from both Finder and Toast itself.

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DigiTimes: Samsung said its plasma shipments fell 13.8% to 560,000 units in the fourth quarter of 2006, down from 650,000 units in the third quarter.

Plasma shipments from the maker totaled 2.3 million units in 2006, compared to 2.1 million in 2005. Despite the rising shipments, revenues of its plasma business dropped nearly 10% to 1.57 trillion won (about €1.06 billion) last year, noted the company.

The Korea-based company expects to grow its plasma shipments by nearly 61% to 3.7 million units in 2007, with the over 50-inch segment to account for 47% of the shipments, compared to only 23% in 2006.

Samsung SDI predicted an oversupply situation in the first half of 2007 due to competition from the LCD segment and seasonality.

In other news, LG recently said its PDP shipments dropped 36% sequentially to 580,000 units in the fourth quarter of 2006 due to sever competition from LCD technology in the worldwide 40-inch-class TV market.

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DigiTimes: When LG launched its combination Blu-ray, HD DVD player at the recent CES exhibition, it signaled an exit strategy from the “war of the high-definition DVD formats,” according to research firm ABI Research.

By creating a player that will accommodate both HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs, the Korean manufacturer may have created a precedent that the rest of the industry will have to follow.

ABI Research forecasts that such universal players will become the norm, not the exception, benefiting confused consumers unwilling to commit to one DVD camp or the other.

“We believe that universal players will come to dominate the high-definition DVD player market,” says Steve Wilson, ABI Research’s principal analyst of consumer electronics.

Samsung is expected to release its own universal player soon, and others, including large CE vendors, may follow suit before long. ABI Research forecasts sales of 2.4 million players in 2007, rising to 55 million in 2011.

Many observers expect that the demands of supporting both formats would significantly increase the price of universal players.

However, he cautions, market growth will remain slow until prices fall. “The universal player market is still in its early stages, and developers are trying to maximize their revenues. The bill-of-material (BOM) price will start to fall once fully integrated chipsets reach the market. There will be downward pressure on prices for players of all types: ABI Research believes that prices will have to drop below US$200 before true mass adoption takes off. That should happen by 2009.”

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Cellular: The European Commission’s proposed regulation to cut the cost of using mobile phones abroad (“roaming”) was discussed at a hearing held by Parliament’s Industry and Internal Market committees on Tuesday with representatives of the private sector, NGOs and the Commission itself.

MEPs and speakers generally agreed with the idea of Europe-wide price caps for wholesale and retail roaming prices to cut charges for customers.
Parliament’s rapporteur Paul Rübig stressed the need for more transparent retail prices for roaming – the fees you pay for receiving or making calls via mobile phones while travelling abroad. Both he and the Internal Market Committee draftsperson Joseph Muscat, supported a so-called “push system”, that would give consumers roaming price information in an automatic text message received on their mobiles as soon as they entered a different country. Roberto Viola of the European Regulators Group emphasised that regulation should quickly achieve substantial price reductions and tariff transparency and be fair and flexible.

(more…)

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Electronista: German Bluetooth specialists ANYCOM have announced the FIPO, an upcoming bridge device for iPod docks. Instead of enabling iPod content to be played elsewhere, as one might expect, the FIPO actually permits any Bluetooth-enabled music player — including a cellphone — to stream audio through the dock.

Once paired, the player and the FIPO can then exchange control commands, such as play, pause and track skip. This works both ways, such that buttons on a car stereo, for instance, can change tracks on a phone. The FIPO will begin production for Europe and the US on February 15th and cost about $99 (76 euro).

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T3: We know Nintendo’s planning special editions of the Wii. For a start they’ve promised a DVD playing version will hit Japan before too long, but now it looks like they’ve got designs for a HD version up their sleeves too.

Trouble is, the head honcho of Nintendo America doesn’t see the point in releasing it until more people have HD-ready TV sets.

Speaking to GamePro, Reggie Fils-Aime said: “83 percent of households do not have the means to produce the kinds of visuals that high definition devices require… We’re intensely interested in better technology, but sometimes our definition of the right technology is different from other peoples’.”

It’s not the first murmur we’ve heard of a HD Wii from Reggie. Last year he let slip that Nintendo faced “tough choices” about not including HD in the Wii at the design stage. Here’s hoping we see an upgraded console eventually, although by the sound of it that won’t be any time soon.

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