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Register Hardware: Register Hardware reported earlier this month that images had been spotted on Nokia’s Polish website of two new phones, called the 7610 and 7510. Each were tagged with the “Supernova” name, but as quickly as the images crash-landed on the Polish website, they mysteriously disappeared. But Nokia’s now confirmed the existence of both, and added two more handsets into the mix: the 7310 and 7210.

The latter two candybar phones are near identical in appearance and rival each other with their two-megapixel cameras. The 7310 sports a TV-out port, which could be handy for playing games on your telly, and, should you get bored of that, then an FM radio and MP3 player are included for musical entertainment.

Whilst 7310 fans will be able to change the phone’s cover to match their outfit – thanks to the Xpress-On covers – anyone opting for the 7210 gets the benefit of an SD memory card slot for expandable memory.

The 7610 slider is the superior snapper of the Supernova series, because it has a 3.2-megapixel camera, whilst the 7510 has a two-megapixel grabber. Admittedly, the 7610’s zoom capability is only 8x digital zoom, so it’s nowhere close to rivalling Sony Ericsson’s C905 but it puts up a good fight with a dual-LED flash.

The slightly lower spec 7510 is the only clamshell of the group, but it features “magical light effects” that Nokia states includes an outer display that stays “hidden-until-lit”. Although the bundled 512MB Micro SD card won’t last you long, the integrated Assisted GPS should guide you to a store where you can buy a larger capacity card.

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Techradar.com: It seems that Pioneer isn’t content with updating its Blu-ray range, as its home cinema setups have been overhauled too. The new range is titled the LX01BD, LX03BD and LX03.

The LX01BD comes with two compact combined front/centre satellite speakers and two rear speakers. While the LX03BD and LX03 comes with a ‘sound bar’ called the Front Stage Surround function that sits directly alongside the TV for what Pioneer calls, “the most neat and elegant integration that frees up space and eliminates the potential issues related to running cables to the rear or your room.”

Also included in the setup is a sub-woofer. In the case of the LX01BD, this is a subwoofer-receiver with dual-drive subs, which enables more powerful handling of lower frequencies. The LX03BD and LX03 comes with a compact, yet powerful A4 size down firing subwoofer with acrylic glossy black top.

For the first time in Pioneer’s history, the company offers Blu-ray capabilities to its home cinema system range.

The LX03BD and LX01BD both house the BDP-LX08 stand alone design Blu-ray Player. The LX03 makes do with a standard DVD player.

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Trusted Reviews: While RIM’s BlackBerrys may be vastly outselling the iPhone at the moment, it will have to multiply that by around 600 per cent to catch Samsung. The reason of course is Samsung sells far more devices at the mid and lower ends of the market and does it with some style, as its latest handset demonstrates superbly…

The ‘Sleek’ (presumably nothing to do with the Creative MP3 player of the same name, despite styling similarities) is a minimalistic brushed metal candybar with a touch of the RAZR in it.

Thankfully however all Motorola similarities stop when we remember Samsung does know how to kit out a handset so you’ll get 3.2Mbps HSDPA connectivity, a 3MP camera with LED flash, 2in QVGA display and 1GB of internal memory backed up by audio and video playback, html browsing, an FM tuner, Bluetooth and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

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Crave: The Philips micro hi-fi has a new spin, this time with wireless music streaming implemented using Bluetooth technology.

The BTM630 is designed to work seamlessly with any Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone, media player and laptop. With an inbuilt microphone, it will also double as a handsfree speaker which automatically toggles between voice calls and music playback.

For added versatility, the BTM630 has an iPod dock integrated right on the chassis and a sleek slot-in CD player. These will free you from the constraints of a mobile device’s limited battery life, plus the added advantage of true fidelity offered by CDs.

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Forbes: Shareholders of Japanese consumer electronics maker JVC and audio visual equipment maker Kenwood approved at a meeting on Friday a plan to merge the two companies on October 1, the companies said in a joint statement.

The two companies formed a strategic alliance in July last year, when they also agreed to consider merging their operations under a single holding company. Their management teams reached the merger agreement on May 12 this year.

JVC, an affiliate of Panasonic maker Matsushita Electric Industrial, produced Japan’s first television set and was also the pioneer in making VHS video recorders. But JVC has been struggling due to a lack of popular products in the digital consumer electronics market, where price competition is getting fiercer.

JVC President Kunihiko Sato will become president of the merged entity, which will be called JVC Kenwood Holdings.

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Trusted Reviews: For close to a year Shure has pretty much dominated the market when it comes to in-ear headphones. From the low-priced SE110′s and SE210′s, through the SE310′s and brilliant dual driver SE420′s, to the top-of-the-range triple driver E500PTH’s (now available as the SE530s) whatever your budget, Shure has an earphone to suit it. However, recently, the Shure party gate has been crashed by a relative newcomer called Klipsch.

Now Philips is also throwing a new offering into the ring to fight it out with Shure, in the form of its SHE9850′s. The last pair of Philips in-ear headphones we looked at were the noise cancelling SHN7500′s and we weren’t exactly enthralled, deciding that we preferred the Shure SE210′s. We did, in fact, suggest that if Philips could get similar drivers into a decently-priced package then it could have a winner on its hands.

However, with the SHE9850′s, our suggestion seems to have been heeded. In a nutshell they come in at a price that rivals the SE210′s and should, by also using a single driver, offer audio quality that is at least comparable to the three Shure models below the SE420′s.

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I4U News: Pinnacle has announced a new USB HDTV tuner stick for the PC. The device is about the size of a flash drive and is called the Pinnacle PCTV HD Stick and a HD Pro Stick is available as well.

Both devices can support HD resolutions up to 1080i and only require connection to a USB port.

The tuners utilize ClearQAM tuners to OTA HD programs. Both sticks are compatible with Windows Vista and XP MCE. The small tuners are ideal for users looking for mobile TV viewing.

The HD Pro stick adds the ability to view current analog programs, has a FM tuner and can receive signals from a cable or satellite box and camcorders.

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Financial Times: Sony Ericsson warned yesterday that it would only break even in the second quarter because of disappointing European sales of its mid and high-end mobile phones.

The profit warning – its second this year – demonstrates the Japanese-Swedish joint venture’s continuing problems, but also indicates how mobile phone sales are suffering from the global economic downturn.

In the first quarter it reported a 47 per cent year-on-year fall in pre-tax profits to €193m on sales down 8 per cent to €2.7bn.

The mobile phone maker indicated at the time that its second-quarter results would also suffer, but investors were still surprised by the warning.

Sony Ericsson’s warning has dashed any remaining hopes that global handset sales might bounce back this year.

According to research firm Gartner, global sales fell 16.4 per cent in the first quarter year-on-year, the first recorded annual fall.

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CrunchGear: A research team from the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials of prestigious Tohoku University in Northern Japan announced it has found a way to multiply the amount of data that can be stored on a DVD or CD by a factor of 9.

It is claimed the result was achieved by shaping the pits on a DVD’s surface, which are usually flat, like “V”s. The researchers say a V-shaped pit can hold as much data as 2^9 flat pits, making the development of 42GB DVDs possible.

This fascinating technology has two main drawbacks. Firstly, the new super discs cannot be used in existing CD/DVD drives. It is secondly impossible to apply the new technology to Blu-ray discs.

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Audioholics: There are two ways to look at a report filed by the Entertainment Merchant Association: somebody is really excited and optimistic about Blu-ray, or the fact that everyone already owns a DVD player means that it will still take 4 more years before consumers are buying into new technology at a rate that exceeds the replacement rate for set-top DVD players – presumably including existing and new game consoles which sport the embedded technology.

Either way you look at it, 2012 is not exactly a number that breathes life into the trudging road Blu-ray is undergoing to achieve market saturation.

The report states that nearly 9 million high-definition discs were sold in 2007. That’s a 1.6 percent marketshare, meaning people are currently 98.4 times more likely to buy a DVD over a Blu-ray disc.

Still, one would think DVDs can’t last forever. While there were 12,177 DVDs released in 2007, down from a peak of 13,950 in 2005, this may have something to do with a stalling economy rather than any sort of indication that the DVD is beginning to lose its luster.

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Techradar.com: The BBC has started test transmissions of a new technology that will bring HD broadcasts to Freeview inside the next 18 months.

As reported on the WotSat blog, the BBC is using the brand-spanking new DVB-T2 compression – with the BBC’s Research & Innovation testing a prototype DVB-T2 modem that they have developed.

Although current Freeview boxes would be unable to process the signal, the technology’s arrival could bring HD quality broadcasts to the terrestrial airwaves – following on from Freesat’s free to air HD channels.

“This technology will make it possible for anyone to watch hi-def TV through their aerial in just a few years’ time, and it just proves how important it is that the BBC continues to do research and development for the benefit of us all,” What Satellite and Digital TV Editor Alex Lane told us.

The BBC is taking the lead on the standard after it was approved by the European DVB engineering group in March.

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Electronista: Sony prepped its PlayStation 3 audience with official details of its official Bluetooth headset. To be packed in with the retail copy of SOCOM Confrontation, the earpiece works with any game or software that supports voice chat on the console and includes extras that aren’t always standard with most headsets for cellphones, including a mute button to prevent unintentional noise outside of normal use and a USB charging cradle to power the headset either from the PS3 or a computer.

The earpiece should also work outside of the PS3, though most details of the headset outside of its core features haven’t been revealed by Sony. The company cautions that the headset is still a work in progress and could change before its release, which should be timed along with SOCOM and will receive both pack-in and stand-alone pricing closer to the game’s launch date.

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