Sony Ericsson releases Xperia X1 SDK Beta

There has been a lot a of speculation this week about whether the X1 will be released on time or not. Sony Ericsson has contradicted previous reports on the web that it’s first Windows Mobile based device would not arrive by the end of the year. Indeed there had been some confusion with SE themselves originally stating a second half of 2008 release which then turned into September and now we are back to Q4 2008. So it looks like it will go to the wire. Anyhow Sony Ericsson is obviously keen for developers to start working on applications for its Xperia X1 and today it announced a tailor-made SDK (software development kit) for the upcoming smartphone.

A beta version of the Sony Ericsson SDK for Windows Mobile 6.1 is available for download from the company Web page. Apparently it has already been used in-house and by some SE partners to develop panels for the user interface, according to Merran Wrigley, spokeswoman at Sony Ericsson. The SDK is based on Microsoft Visual Studio, with extensions for the Xperia panel interface. “It will feel very familiar to existing Windows Mobile developers,” said Wrigley. Using the SDK developers can adapt existing Windows Mobile applications, and start working on new ones. It currently supports HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), C and C++.

A release date for the final version of the SDK has yet to be confirmed.

PSP-3000 Japan Release Confirmed for Next Month

The new and improved PSP-3000 that we reported details of a couple of weeks back now has a confirmed release date in Japan of 16th October. The official price upon release will be 19,800 Yen (approx. 183 USD).The release was announced along with a lineup of new games by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan president Shawn Layden. He admitted that “We need to, and we will, advance our software and hardware without restraint.”  This new PSP is Sony’s latest attempt to broaden the appeal of its own consoles against fierce competition from Nintendo, which is seeing strong demand for its Wii and DS units.

Layden went on to say “For me (the PSP) has been Sony’s entry into handheld gaming and that’s where my focus remains,” adding that the company wants the console to become a “lifestyle application.” – this is despite the fact that data gathered by publisher Enterbrain shows that more than 80% of PSP buyers use the console for other activities than playing games, including listening to music, watching movies, sharing photos or using the Internet.

Sony has sold more than 10 million PSPs in Japan since the launch nearly four years ago. The DS sold 23 million units between December 2004 and June 2008 in Japan.

(Story and picture courtesy of AFP Tokyo)

Blu-Ray Releases for 2nd September 2008

So here we go again with the weeks Blu-Ray disc releases. I know this isn’t strictly Sony news, but as a movie freak I enjoy finding out what new releases are coming up when and where. As you’ve maybe gathered from my previous posts there are often quite a few quirks with BD releases being released at different times in different regions or even on different dates within the same region. Releases usually happen on different days in different countries too (Monday in the UK, Tuesday in US).

Take for example this week; The big release in the US on the 2nd September is the Transformers 2-disc set. UK fans will have to wait until next week to get their copy. However Jerry Maguire came out yesterday in the UK but doesn’t appear until next Tuesday stateside. Fascinating stuff huh…

Anyway, apart from Transformers there wasn’t a whole lot that took my fancy this week in any region. UK fans might want to import the US release of Married Life as this is still showing in theaters in London and won’t be out for sometime yet. This release is region free so you should have no trouble viewing it in Europe.

Fans of Arnie and / or Clint can expand their collections with either Eraser or Every Which Way But Loose. Eraser is confirmed as region free and Every Which Way.. should also be too as it comes from Warner who to date have released everything as region free.

Here’s this week’s US releases in full courtesy of HiDefDigest:

• Black Mask (Lionsgate)
• Cirque du Soleil: Corteo (Sony)
• Eraser (Warner)
• Every Which Way But Loose (Warner)
• The Gauntlet (Warner)
• The Invincible Iron Man (Lionsgate)
• Marine Aquarium (BCI)
• Married Life (Sony)
• Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow (Lionsgate)
• Outbreak (Warner)
• Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles (FUNimation)
• Transformers (2007) (Paramount)
• Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (Warner)

Penn State University to pilot Sony Reader

Here’s a great initiative that caught my eye. Penn State University has teamed up with Sony to begin a year-long project that will start this fall, in which Penn State will pilot Sony’s latest digital book reader. Sony has donated 100 of the devices to the university libraries as part of the project which aims to “test the utility of e-books in a higher education environment”. The University is taking a fairly scientific approach to the project and will put the Reader to the test in a variety of different environments across campus, including in the libraries, in the classroom, as a tool for research projects and eventually also as a service for people with disabilities.

The leisure reading program is the first to kick off with five Readers available for borrowing by students. The devices will be pre-loaded with titles from five different categories. Each Reader may have up to fifteen books from a given category and can be borrowed for a month. The objectives of the project are not just to promote the device itself but also to allow the university and Sony to understand how people use the devices. Anne Behler, information literacy librarian says:

The Sony Reader and e-books have the potential to change everything from book acquisitions to the way patrons interact with library collections. It’s very exciting for the University Libraries to be at the forefront of this new, largely uncharted territory.

The aim is that by the end of the year both the university and Sony themselves will have a fuller understanding of how the devices have been used. Mike Furlough, assistant dean of Scholarly Communications explains that;

Libraries are moving rapidly towards the day when the majority of our collections will exist in electronic form, but while readers love the convenience of online search, they have been resistant to reading full-length books in electronic form.

I believe the Reader has great potential in the academic environment. If the relevant specialized content can be made available, I think this could take off. Being able to carry around all of your course textbooks, plus any related articles you have found on the internet for projects and assignments you are working on at the same time in a device the size of a piece of A5 paper would be amazing.

You can check out the full story at the Penn State site.

BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 2nd Gen Blu-Ray players confirmed for Europe

We talked about these models last month when they were announced for the US market, but the official confirmation that these will now hit European stores in the next few weeks came today at IFA. The BDP-S350 effectively replaces the current BDP-300 whilst the BDP-S550 takes the place of the BDP-S500. Both feature the usual 24fps True Cinema feature, Bravia Sync, Xross Media Bar and 1080P DVD upscaling.

The 350 is Bonus View Capable but only BD-Live ready out of the box – but a firmware upgrade directly downloadable to the unit via its ethernet port in October will enable this feature.

The 550 on the other hand is BD-Live and Bonus View capable out of the box and features additional audio support with a DTS-HD Master Audio Decoder and 7.1 Ch analogue audio output.

BDP-S5000ES High-End Player Touches Down

Another mouth-watering piece of kit was announced by Sony today at IFA Berlin. Designed to complement some of the other new ES series products we talked about earlier in the week (the SCD-XA5400ES and the 5400ES amp, which in Europe will be prefixed STR and not TA-DA), the BDP-S5000ES has got to be the most highly spec’d Blu-Ray player to date and will surely be at the top of every home cinema enthusiasts’ shopping list. What sets this apart from the other players out there is the quality of the hardware and components. Everything has been designed to give the highest possible performance and best possible audio-visual experience. For example the analogue audio board is isolated from the video and servo sections to avoid interference, and the player offers Linear PCM and HD audio decoding with bitstream output, and 7.1-channel analogue outputs. It will handle all formats up to Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, either decoded internally or output as bitstream.

On the visual front it features a new “HD Reality Enhancer” that continually analyses the image coming from the disc, sharpening edges while not over-emphasising other elements of the picture, reducing the effect of grain on the original filmstock, and increasing the colour depth from the 8 bits on the disc to the equivalent of 14 bits. I will be interested to see how this works in real-life, but it sounds very appetizing. Meanwhile Super Bit Mapping, should ensure smoother colour tones.

It goes without saying that this model is fully BD-Live and BonusView compatible so that you can make the most of all of those Picture in Picture commentaries and multi-angle replays and other live content that is now appearing on more and more BD releases.

A natural consequence of this is that the player has an ethernet port that can be used for directly updating the firmware via the internet on to the unit and of course additional BD-Live content can be downloaded and stored on the inbuilt 1GB flash storage.

The player also features the user friendly XrossMediaBar menu system and comes with full Bravia sync capabilites for control over HDMI.

Here are some more photos of this beautiful unit:

Sony Launches New S Series Walkman

Amongst the raft of announcements from Sony this morning at IFA Berlin, came the launch of the new Premium S Series Walkman. The new S series comes with two main variants – the NWZ-630F (shown above and available in 4 different colors) and the NWZ-730F available only in black but with the added benefit of built-in noise cancellation. The exact models and capacities will be as follows:

NWZ-739F – 16GB
NWZ-738F – 8GB
NWZ-639F – 16GB
NWZ-638F – 8GB

New features that are common to all models are Sony’s new SensMe ™ technology which allow users to create playlists based on their mood or the moment. Sony says:

The WALKMAN® S series is the first ever MP3 player that matches your listening to your mood or the moment. Based on Sony’s “12 Tone Analysis” technology and “LCMIR (Low-Complexity Music Information Retrieval)” technology, unique SensMe™ Channels analyse your music collection, suggesting playlists based on each song’s speed, mood and rhythm. There’s no need to spend hours tagging and sorting every track in your music collection. SensMe™ Channels do the hard work, creating a choice of 11 themed ‘channels’, from upbeat pop to emotional ballads.

Codec support includes MP3, AAC, WMA (including tracks with DRM), AVC & MPEG-4 for Video and JPEG for photos. All of these models are drag and drop and feature the usual Dynamic Normalizer, Clear Bass and equalizer options. What is more, being “F” models they also FM radios. The high contrast QVGA screen means videos should be clearer than ever with playback at 30fps.

Finally these are the slimmest Network Walkman offerings to date from Sony, checking in at just 7.5mm thickness. Overall these units get the thumbs-up from Sony Insider.

Pricing at this stage is still TBC for Europe but SonyStyle US has the S736 and S738 listed at $149.99 and $179.99 respectively.

Check out more details on the S series here.

Sony Confirms Release of E & B Series Walkmans

Together with the announcement of the new S series Walkman, Sony also confirmed the release and additional specs of the other two Walkman Series previously reported here at Sony Insider. These are the E series video Walkman (shown above) and the B series USB Walkman. The E series will come in 4GB or 8GB versions and comes with an FM tuner and photo viewer and is aimed at the mid-range market. It can be purchased in four different colors.

The B series is an entry level USB Walkman that again comes in four colorful versions, and features an FM tuner on the B133F and B135F. Capacity-wise there are only two options – 1GB or 2GB.

Full details on the B series can be found here and full details on the E series can be found here. Also check out the Sony press release for full details on all the models announced today.

Here’s a reminder of what the B series looks like.

Sony Japan Announces New MDR-EX500SL & MDR-EX300SL Headphones

Sony Japan yesterday announced two new additions to its N.U.D.E EX range of portable headphones. Using the same distinctive design as last years top-end EX700 model, the EX500 (shown above) and the EX300 both use the Neodymium 13.5mm drivers for enhanced response and audio reproduction. Both models also feature the ML (Multi-Layer) diaphragm technology to help prevent distortion.

The MDR-EX500SL comes with a frequency response of 5Hz-25,000Hz, a sound pressure level of 106dB/mW, and an impedance of 16Ω, whilst the EX300 comes with a frequency response of 5Hz-24,000Hz, a sound pressure level of 105dB/mW, and an impedance of 16Ω.

Recommended pricing for Japan is as follows:

MDR-EX300SL – 6195 Yen
MDR-EX500SL – 12390 Yen

Here are some more photos of both models:

EX500SL

EX300SL

Blu-Ray Releases For August 25-27th, 2008

Another week, another set of Blu-Ray discs hit the streets. A number of new releases will be hitting the streets on different days this week in different parts of the world. I’m going to start with France, as once again they seem to have got some interesting titles coming out this week that have yet to debut on BD in other regions.

The titles that caught my eye on Amazon.Fr were:

Ong-Bak (Thai action / comedy with Tony Jaa)

Taxi 3 (the third episode in the French comedy franchise featuring Samy Naceri – we seem to be working our way backwards through this series of films on BD as episodes 3 & 4 are now both out but the first two films have yet to appear)

The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada starring Tommy Lee Jones

Death Sentence (a pretty grim tale featuring Kevin Bacon about the consequences of revenge, from director James Wan)

All of these titles have yet to appear on BD in the US or UK. The big release in both these regions this week is Heroes. Available either as a boxset of Seasons 1 & 2 or in individual sets for each series. I thought both seasons of Heroes were very good in places, but Season 1 got a bit too caught up in its own plot twists halfway through the season and struggled to work its way back out of a corner. Season 2 on the other hand was not as bad as some reviewers have made it out to be, but overall still lacked some of the dramatic punch of the start of the franchise.

The full list of releases this week for the US reads as follows:

• Action Starter Pack (Universal)
• The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) (Warner)
• Afro Samurai: Season One (FUNimation)
• Blue Man Group: How to Be a Megastar Live! (Rhino)
• Dude, Where’s My Car? (MGM)
• End of Days (Universal)
• Heroes: Season One (Universal)
• Heroes: Season Two (Universal)
• Miami Vice (2006) (Universal)
• The Nightmare Before Christmas (Walt Disney)
• Pale Rider (Warner)
• Postal (UMVD)
• Redbelt (Sony)
• U-571 (Universal)
• What Happens in Vegas (Fox)