PS3 80GB models phased out

Something had to be fishy with only 40GB models promoted n available in India, the business answer came in today - Sony wants 2 discontinue PS2 SW emulated support, the 60GB models with HW emulation for PS2 games went off last year-mid, apparently the 80GB SKU aslso had to make it's way out. Atleast i picked the 80GB one b4 extinction ;)

A memo to Best Buy employees indicates that Sony may be discontinuing the 80GB model of its PlayStation 3, leaving no backwards-compatible versions of the PS3 on store shelves. According to the memo, Best Buy and some other reatilers will stop selling the $499 PS3 on January 28. Sony late last year stopped selling the 60GB version of the PS3, the only other version of the console that was backwards-compatible with PlayStation 2 games. This memo only affects North American gamers, as the UK and Japanese markets have already moved to a single-SKU model (the 40GB PS3).

If Sony removes the 80GB PS3 from store shelves and ceases all production of that model, there will no longer be a new-SKU PS3 that plays PS2 games. The 60GB PS3, long since gone at retail, used hardware to enable PS2 games to play on the PS3. The 80GB version, which is apparently on its way out, used software emulation to enable playback for many, but not all, PS2 games. With both versions gone, the question begs to be asked: is Sony working on yet another version/configuration of the PS3 that will support PS2 playback, or is it leaving consumers high and dry with their PS2 game libraries?

See the memo ->

ThePirateBay Lawsuit Next Week

After a lengthy 20 month long investigation the time has come for the lawsuit to be filed against the men behind the biggest Bittorrent-tracker in the world, The Pirate Bay.

The coming week prosecutor Hakan Roswall at the Swedish Prosecution Authority will be filing a lawsuit against the individuals behind the filesharing network The Pirate Bay. It was in March of 2006 that the Police conducted a raid of the premises where TPB servers were located and confiscated a large part of the equipment. Several people were taken into custody on suspicion of breach of copyright laws, which in Sweden can lead up to 2 years in prison.

The prosecutor has no higher hopes at stopping the entire operation. The Pirate Bays servers are no longer only located in Sweden, but stretches over a network of several countries.

“Since the infrastructure is spread over so many places around the world there is no way one single country can stop the site” Håkan Roswall says to Reuters.

The raid of last years March is however controversial. The previous Swedish government is said to have given away to pressures from the MPAA and the US government. The Justice Department is also said to have told the Police to conduct the raid against The Pirate Bay, something which is illegal in Sweden.

RIAA website hacked by SQL injection

Nothing makes a peer-to-peer user more happy than website of RIAA hacked by an unknown script kiddie. That’s exactly what happened 2 or 3 days ago, when Reddit (http://reddit.com/info/660oo/comments/c02xyz8) published an extremely long SQL code which almost shut down the whole RIAA server. Meanwhile, another people tried the weakenesses in the code and discovered a way to display and alter the whole SQL database. As a result, RIAA’s Press Releases section showed a link to ThePirateBay instead of any content for some time.



There were more errors and security bugs in their presentation, for example an XSS bug which can be used to steal cookies and information. After 2 days, RIAA finally completely fixed the vulnerabilities and the website seems to be protected now. Anyway, this issue just shown this bloody organization is full of legal actions and lawsuing, but they somehow forget to secure their website. Besides, who wouldn’t want a TPB logo at their site?

Gizmodo remotely shutting LCDs at CES: banned

The editor of popular gadget website Gizmodo was banned from CES and Gawker Media, company behind that site, is most likely getting sued by CES organizers pretty soon. Reason? Gizmodo’s prank: shutting down tens and hundreds of TV, LCDs and plasma screens by a remote controller known as TV-B-Gone. They published a somehow funny video at their blog, but interrupting many presentations, press events and other important booth shows of many recognized brands wasn’t that great - may be if you were 17-year old nerdy teenager, but CES is visited mostly by real businessmen and such behaviour seems unacceptable to me. Anyway, enjoy the video.

Alienware dropped this Monitor on Earth

Not only TVs getting bigger with Panasonic's 150 inch crazy home LCD, but computer monitors too are getting extremely large. If you don’t think your widescreen is wide enough and you have a fat enough wallet you might wanna check this new Alienware Monitor out when it’s released in the second half of 2008. Alienware will succeed in luring gamers to this Blackhole ;)

The Sighting: We can’t have one of these Alienware curved monitors until the second half of this year, but until then, we’ve been abducted by its four nearly seamless and sharp screens of DLP goodness. Lit by LEDs, this 2880×900 monster is well over three feet wide and is said to have an other-worldly .02ms response time, great for gaming. The Soylent Green: You can see the seams between this monitor’s four segments, but the Alienware humanoids tell us that flaw will be gone by the time this craft lands on Earth. The blacks look a bit washed out to our eyes, too. Price is yet to be determined.

Check out some more pics and a video at this link.

Blu-ray press conference (HD-DVD slowly sinking)

Good time if ure part of the Bluray group, since Warner Bros too scratching its itch after a looooong time, (numbers just matter - Naturally with PS3 making good inroads for Bluray)

5:05pm PT: Press conference is beginning. Blu-ray Disc Association's Andy Parsons is speaking. Parsons heads up the BDA and comes from Pioneer. Other participants include Fox, Lionsgate, Disney and Warner Bros.

"I suspect there might be a few questions for [Warner]," Parsons joked.

5:10pm PT: Sales numbers for 2007 are 2 to 1 over HD DVD. Global market sales also 2 to 1 in software. Not clear if this includes PS3 games on Blu-ray or strictly movies. Hardware sales 85% to 15% over HD DVD including PlayStation 3.

Parsons: We always include PlayStation 3 in these numbers because it is fully capable of playing Blu-ray movies.

5:13pm PT: Danny Kaye, EVP of Research and Technology for 20th Century Fox. 500,000 Blu-ray devices were sold in 2007, along with 3 million PS3s. Consumers spent $170 million on Blu-ray devices.

2008 projections include 2 million Blu-ray devices, 4 million more PS3s and $1 billion in consumer spending.

Nearing inflection point for "next-generation" media approaching 2001.

5:15pm PT: David Bishop, President Worldwide for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment take the microphone. Says PS3 is critical to Blu-ray's success.

"It's incumbent on us to remind the consumers that the PlayStation 3 is a movie playback device." Sony says it bundled Spider-Man 3 with the PS3 for that exact reason. "We also took a money where out mouth was" and used PS3 advertising to promote the movie features.

"Now we're ready for the next phase: the phase to really fulfill the promise of Blu-ray technology. That's really to start to develop the interactivity....We're really at the early stages of this. When we go to market, it will be mainly traditional content like we have on DVD," but Bishop says Hollywood is excited about what Blu-ray has to offer.

5:18pm PT: Bishop: "We are showing off interactive technologies in our booth. Trailers can be downloaded to players" -- renewing the experience for the consumer. "We'll really get the chance to use our creative juices moving forward. You'll see multiplayer gaming, ringtones that can be delivered to the consumer."

"The last thing I want to mention is how we can increase the functionality of Blu-ray. We're now able to take a disc and put it into your PS3 and load it onto your PSP and the whole process will take 2 minutes."

5:21pm PT: Bob Chapek, President of Walt Disney Studios takes the microphone. He says the industry needs to educate the consumer on high-definition and the value of Blu-ray. Says Blu-ray met this challenge with retail outlet kiosks. Reading from a script, Chapek says Disney made a disc with Monster to help further educate consumers.

"Disney and Panasonic launched the Magical Blu-ray Tour," which took place in malls in 18 markets.

5:24pm PT: Showing video about the Magical Blu-ray Tour. Spots from CW news. Bishop says Disney is relaunching the tour with Panasonic. It will conclude in Chicago in July. "Consumers are becoming educated....Consumers are voting with their dollars, and they are voting for Blu-ray," Chapek says.

5:26pm PT: Ron Sanders, President Worldwide of Warner Bros. is speaking now. Sanders is also talking about educating consumers. Warner says it used advertising to convince consumers that Blu-ray is the real successor to standard DVD.

"Perfect marriage of high-definition TV and Blu-ray" promotion video is being played. Warner says Blu-ray only had 25% brand awareness in holiday 2006 -- that's now 80%.

Sanders says consumers are highly satisfied with standard DVDs, but they appreciate the difference when shown high-definition DVDs.

5:29pm PT: Steve Beeks, President of Lionsgate says Blu-ray has all but established itself as the one single unified format for next-generation DVDs. Beeks notes that USA Today said the format war is all but over.

"We believe 2008 will be a watershed year...The market has decided." Beeks says consumers are the ones that will decide, and "consumer preference is pointing the way for Blu-ray to emerge as the gold standard."

"Increasing certain conclusion," that Blu-ray has won the format war. "We believe 2008 to be the year in which the wasted effort in format competition will be put toward unifying the market and enriching the consumer experience."

5:34pm PT: Beeks says that adoption curve of Blu-ray is similar to that of DVD 10 years ago. "Imagine what we can all achieve when working together to take the home entertainment business to the next level."

"Consumers have made the choice; the challenge today is not to continue the format battle."

5:40pm PT: After question from BetaNews regarding consumer confusion over older Blu-ray players not supporting new features: Parsons notes that Blu-ray will have a "Bonus View" label on movies and players to ensure that consumers won't buy a movie and bring it home expecting new features like interactivity to work on older players.

5:43pm PT: Question about how to convince the consumer that the format war is over: Ron Sanders from Warner says that the marketplace will decide and retailers will follow.

5:44pm PT: Warner's Sanders says the move to Blu-ray didn't have anything to do with any incentive. Sanders did not specifically say Warner did not receive money, however.

5:45pm PT: Danny Kaye from Fox says there is no plans to have combination Blu-ray discs that have DVD compatibility like that available on HD DVD. Says Blu-ray doesn't want to "sacrifice the space on the disc." Kaye says that studios can bundle both versions in a single package if they want. [ed note: Of course, this won't happen because of the costs in manufacturing two discs]

5:49pm PT: Parsons says that Blu-ray burners are not a priority because of a lack of demand. Says DVD recording is not that desirable among consumers. They are out in Japan, but may not come to US market.

5:50pm PT: Bob Chapek from Disney says that Sleeping Beauty will come out on Blu-ray in October.

5:53pm PT: Question about region coding and traveling with Blu-ray discs. HD DVD has no region coding, questioner notes. Blu-ray Disc Association does not want to answer the question. None of the participants have anything to say.

5:58pm PT: Press conference ends.

Though Bluray 2.0 will ditch old 1.0 standalone player buyers (PS3 owners will be lucky as Sony supports firmware updates right now for 1.1 and in future for 2.0)
http://www.betanews.com/article/Bluray_Early_adopters_knew_what_they_were_getting_into/1199841379

There is a redlaser HD-VMD coming up from nowhere as 3rd candidate, time will tell what happens with it ;)

WiDRIVE includes 2.5-inch support, BitTorrent

EDS Lab has resurfaced with its WiDRIVE line -- and it's just getting better. The WiFi drive enclosures now come in 1.8-inch (PX-100) and 2.5-inch (DX-225) versions, but now also support a BitTorrent client, RSS podcast subscriptions and a built-in web server. You can connect to the drive using a number of networking standards, including DHCP, WebDav UPnP and Bonjour, but if 802.11b/g speeds aren't good enough for you, you're out of luck: the USB port is for charging only.



For good space, current options seem to be the 1 TB drives such as from Lacie, WD or Seagate

Yoooooooooo !!! PS3 for my 25th Birthday :)

Started my 25th year of existence with the greatest freaky superb ultimate piece of supercomputing gaming gadget - the Sony PlayStation 3 !!!

All started with an E3 download 2 years back with the Killzone 2 trailer and since then i had begun to go crazy abt this slowly and steadily.

Nice ride - thinking and planning the stuff b4 buying, hunting all over Blore shops, digging PS3 forums on news n updates n here finally i'm standing with one 80gig PS3 (n Bravia 40" LCD at background)

Nothin but a great advert to suit it with the perfect track - Ladies n Gentleman (Saliva)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DmIBIVJ9u3Y

1st Game : Call of Duty 4 : Modern warfare ! (enjoying every moment of it)