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Electricpig: If you’re keen on buying new Sony kit any time soon, you might have to save a little longer. The company just announced it’s cutting 5% of its global workforce, and even plans to increase prices of its products to stave off financial troubles.

The Japanese firm said: “Sony intends to adjust product pricing to mitigate the impact of the appreciation of the yen, curtail or delay part of its investment plans, and downsize or withdraw from unprofitable or non-core businesses.

“Furthermore, Sony plans to realign domestic and overseas manufacturing sites, reallocate its workforce and reduce headcount.”

It’s estimated around 8,000 employees will be made redundant, in addition to cut backs in its seasonal and temporary workforce.

And if you’re hoping for a whizzy new product in the coming months? Don’t hold your breath. It sounds as if Sony’s trimming right back on its research and development spend too and is overall reducing its investment in the electronics business by “approximately 30%” over the next fiscal year.

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SlashGear: Coming this CES 2009, Samsung may showcase its 2009 line of Blu-ray players with Broadcom’s BCM7601 Blu-ray SoC chipset with smaller footprint and energy efficient 65 nanometer processor for the supports of Blu-ray, DVD, online content playback and HDMI 1.3 protocol.

The BCM7601 is Broadcom’s third gen, high-performance single-on-chip with 500-MHz MIPS 24Kc processor with dedicated 64-KB caches.

Much like the Sigma Design SoC 8644 and 45nm Panasonic’s UniPhier; the BCM7601 integrates a MIPS execution unit, dual-stream video decoder, dedicated graphics engines, 7.1 audio capability, security processor, a hardware still image decoder, dual DDR2 interfaces, video and audio outputs, and a full array of system and connectivity interfaces for the most demanding Blu-ray multimedia player.

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DVICE: Tivoli makes fine, great-sounding radios, encased in real wood and oozing with first-rate workmanship. Now the company is shipping its newest creation, NetWorks, which can tune in thousands of internet radio stations.

It can also play back music from your PCs (except for those DRM-infected iTunes files) — streamed over your Wi-Fi network.

It’s about the same lunchbox-size and shape of Tivoli’s Model One and Model Three radios, and the Model Satellite radio.

The NetWorks is available in three exquisite solid-wood finishes, including walnut, cherry, and a dark, elegant rosewood they’re calling “wenge.”

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NaviGadget: The positioning solution professionals at Trimble just introduced two new handheld “field computing devices” with integrated GPS receviers.

Called Juno SB and SC, both devices have the same form factor and share many of the specs such as: wireless LAN, Bluetooth, 3MP camera, 533 MHz processor, a 3.5″ screen and Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1.

Both devices offer Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, Internet Explorer Mobile, and Outlook Mobile too but only Juno SC comes with a 3.5G modem.

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Techradar: Philips has launched its latest flatscreen effort, the Essence 42PES0001, and hopes that the TV-buying public will finally get on board with hanging their sets on the wall.

It features a single cable carrying the sound, picture and power from a separate connectivity hub, which can be placed up to four metres away.

It’s just 38mm deep at the thickest point, with three HDMI inputs and Full HD with Philips Perfect Pixel HD Engine, 2ms response time and a nice 60,000:1 contrast ratio.

It also features a 2x 15W speaker bar, which can be connected to the bottom of the TV or removed if you’d rather use an existing set up.

There’s connectivity to a DLNA set up if you ‘re one of the four people in the world that’s worked out how to make your devices talk to each other using the network.

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HD News: Sharp has introduced a series of LCD TVs with 50GB blu-ray recorders which allow for the storage of over 10 hours of HD material.

The DX series  is available in 26in, 32in, 37in, 42in, 46in and 52-inch sizes with the 37in models and above sporting Full HD (1920 x 1080) panels. The whole series will ship in either black, red or white.

Sharp’s DX series can record in both MPEG-2 and H.264/AVC formats. H.264/AVC (Advanced Video Coding) MPEG-4 standard enables 5X extended HD video recording (5X Mode), which gives the 10+ hours HD recording capacity.

For the moment the DX series has only been confirmed for a release in Japan.

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Home Cinema Choice: When it comes watching TV, who has their hand on the remote control in your home?

To find out (and promote its own Harmony One universal remote control), Logitech commissioned a study into the subject.

According to the study, 63 per cent of people polled across Europe would describe their household’s use of the remote control as a democracy, with only 23 per cent claiming it was more like a dictatorship.

Interestingly, 63 per cent of those who fit in the latter group were women. Unsurprisingly, 41 per cent of the responses indicated that the man of the house is in charge of the remote control in their home.

Additionally, 91 per cent of the respondents claimed to have fought over the use of the remote control.

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Crave: These speakers are worth their weight in gold–literally.

That’s because the Ascendo System ZF3 gold edition loudspeakers are cast from the actual precious metal.

If the shade is too “glaring” for you, the German company is also offering a choice of silver, platinum or glossy piano lacquer.

While there are no official specs, it’s pretty obvious that these floor standers feature a two-way design with a woofer and what seems to be a ribbon horn tweeter–the latter is renowned for extended treble reproduction.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a port (black hole in front) for enhancing low-frequency bass.

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MarketWatch: Bose yesterday announced that it has settled its litigation against Phitek Corporation at the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and U.S. District Court of Massachusetts.

Bose’s complaint charged that Phitek manufactured headphones for Audio-Technica and Creative Labs that infringe Bose U.S. patents protecting the active noise-reducing headphone technology found in Bose QuietComfort headphones.

As part of the settlement, Phitek has agreed to make certain changes to its headphones to be clear of the Bose patents at issue.

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Crave: Sony reports that Blu-ray’s interactive platform is catching on. Sony’s servers for BD-Live content are coming up on the one million hit mark, according to a report by Video Business, and Sony VP Rich Marty is quoted saying that “consumers are engaging with this game-changing interactivity and are defining BD Live as that killer application.”

That’s in pretty stark contrast to previous reports that industry insiders considered Blu-ray’s interactive features to be mostly a let down. If BD-Live truly is catching on, then we’ve underestimated the public’s desire for slowly loading movie trailers.

While the one million mark is surprising to us, we’d bet that the majority of those visits were made by PS3 owners–rather than more mainstream standalone players–for a few reasons.

First, only a fraction of standalone Blu-ray are Profile 2.0 compatible, which is necessary to access BD-Live features. Of those Profile 2.0 players, so far all of them require a wired Ethernet connection to connect to BD-Live features, while the PS3 can connect via Wi-Fi. Lastly, in our experience, even the best standalone Blu-ray players have handled online content clumsily compared to the PS3, which boasts superior processing power. For BD-Live to go mainstream it needs to work on all players, which means Blu-ray hardware makers have to improve the user experience.

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Electronista: Mitsubishi has recently released the DVR-BF2000 digital video recorder that includes a 500GB hard disk drive and the ability to write to blank Blu-ray discs (BD-R/RE).

Users can record two programs at the same time, or record one while watching another, thanks to a dual digital tuner that supports Japan’s BS/110CS digital and analog broadcast systems. For smaller files, users will be able to burn DVD-R/RW discs, with AVC recording to DVD supported as well.

The DVR-BF2000 is capable of automatically cutting programs, editing out commercials, and playing the new content back. An SD card slot is included for viewing photos and videos captured by digital cameras or camcorders.

It’s unknown when the digital video recorder will be available outside Japan.

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International Herald Tribune: The market research firm IDC last week trimmed its forecast for global LCD television shipments this year because of the economic slowdown, but said lower prices should spur fresh demand next year.

The U.S.-based firm now predicts that unit shipments of flat-screen LCD TVs will hit 95 million this year, down 4 percent from the 99 million units it projected previously, but the shipments could grow at least 15 percent in 2009.

“Given the expected continued aggressive average sales price decline for next year, I still think there’s going to be a robust demand,” said Eric Haruki, a research director at IDC. Haruki said some big TV vendors, including Sony and Samsung Electronics, have lowered prices of their TVs since the beginning of the year after panel prices weakened.

IDC also said major LCD panel makers, including AU Optronics and Chi Mei Optoelectronics, both of Taiwan, should continue to cut production or they could face a severe supply glut next year.

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