Music Unlimited Service Coming to Your PSP

Sony’s portable gaming devices PSP and PSPGo will start enjoying Music Unlimited service powered by Qriocity on April 14th. As you may know the streaming music service has been widely available on Sony’s PS3, Bravia televisions and its line of network connected Bluray players. This service will really come handy when the new Next Generation Portable (NGP) will be out with its 3G service, as it will definitely be useful for those on the go since you can fire up your music playlist whenever. I wonder if we will see any new Walkman payers as well as future Sony Ericsson phones integrated with this service some day.

Qriocity’s basic service offers commercial-free, uninterrupted music across a variety of channels and genres and provide instant feedback on each song to ensure that the service learns your music preferences and provides recommendations based on your personal tastes. The Premium service takes it one step further with access to premium music channels, and the ability to search the entire music database, play songs on demand and create custom playlists.

First Sony Store Opens in Los Angeles

As we reported earlier Sony has come through and announced its first ever Sony Store that recently opened its doors in Los Angeles, California (Century City). Following the success and lusciousness of recently opened Sony Store in Nagoya, Japan, the new LA store will bring a totally new experience that customers will be pleasantly surprised with. The overabundance of Sony products will allow customers to play around, experiment as well as witness some future technologies that are still to come (you won’t see the hybrid VAIO or a Sony branded tablet just yet). The openness and spaciousness is definitely a huge improvement over the current SonyStyle stores, and hopefully the future roll out of this venture will follow the trend. Pretty much all 29 current SonyStyle stores will be simply re-branded and remodeled to Sony Stores and possibly move to bigger spaces at the malls, however there were quite a few of those stores that were recently closed for good. So even though the Style is going to be gone in the wording, it looks like it is far from being gone in the philosophy and aesthetics of the new stores to come.  We will probably see a new website name as well that will replace sonystyle.com as a shopping online destination.

If you are in LA, definitely pay a visit to this new store as you may end to win cool prizes. Check out the latest blog post and view a video above where SGNL host takes you around the store.

Here is another video of Sony USA executive introducing the store:

Exclusive: New VAIO Hybrid PC and VAIO Chrome Coming This Summer

Sony has always been known for its ingenuity and amazing design in hardware but most of us may have noticed recently that we have not seen anything ground breaking and extraordinary from the company. Engadget recently unearthed some info about about the upcoming Sony tablet supposedly featuring PlayStation certification as a “full blown media and gaming tablet” , however Sony has some more goodies cooking in their kitchen as we speak.

So, there this interesting VAIO Hybrid PC and the reason why it is a hybrid is it consists of two components. Yes, there is an actual notebook that will be pretty thin, featuring Intel’s Light Peak technology which is what we know now as Thunderbolt, that same interface that current MacBooks Pro are sporting.

Just to tease you a little bit with the hardware specs, you will be presented with and Intel Wireless Display, SSD of hard drive flavor, i7 processor, no optical drive, HDMI output with 3D support, expect battery life to run from 8 to 16.5 hours and the thing should weigh around 1.13 kg.

Now the second component/unit that’s what will be unique to this VAIO when connected, it will provide:

• Discrete GPU (AMD Whistler-XT with 1 GB VRAM)
• Blu-ray disc (reader/writer) drive
• HDMI Output
• VGA Output
• RJ45 Ethernet port
• USB
• weighing around 0.68kg

The connector is kind of funky and reminded me of VAIO DVD-RW i.Link plus power connector, only this time it looks like it’s gonna use USB and AC connection.

Overall the notebook looks pleasing to eyes, aesthetically designed in its VAIO fashion, however we are not quite sure about the purpose  of the second component. It again reminds me of a desktop model Sony marketed back in 2007 – VAIO RM series that featured a twin-unit form factor.

The next VAIO we unearthed is the VAIO with Chrome OS.

As Google is prepping its Chrome OS debut, Sony is hard at work to bring you their first VAIO pimped up in Google’s OS of course. Expect to see the following hardware specifications of this new PC:

• Nvidia Tegra 2 (250) platform
• 11.6″ (1366×768) LCD display
• 1 GB of Memory
• 16 GB eMMC (electronic multimedia card)
• Ultra-low power GeForce GPU
• Wireless WAN
• Wide Keyboard (18mm) will be pretty similar to the Google Chrome Cr-48 laptop keyboard
• Dimensions: less than an inch thick at around 19.9 mm; width is at 11.7″ (298 mm) and it is 21.5 cm (8.46″) deep
• It should weigh around 2.2 lb (or 1kg)
• 8 hour battery life

Features like Bluetooth and GPS will be enabled later on, so don’t expect those two right at launch in summer of 2011.

As far as the software department, you will love the Quick booting, Chrome OS auto-update will ensure you are always on top of new features and Sony will throw in some VAIO related software as well.

That is all for now guys, we will bring more info as it becomes available, sorry cannot post any actual pictures and I am not that great at drawings…Stay tuned though!

More Battlefield 3 Gameplay Footage

Last week EA/DICE released more in-game footage from the highly anticipated Battlefield 3, which is shaping up to be the best version of the game ever released. Check out our previous musings on Battlefield 3, which will be for PC, PS3, and XBOX360. I still play Battlefield: Bad Company 2 multiplayer (on PC) quite a bit..

The New VAIO S Emerges in the US…Finally

We saw the European release, wondered where the heck the Japanese VAIO SA/SB announcement was, as in history they used to break the news and create nice flashy web pages teasing the rest of the world – times have definitely changed.

Sony USA came out today and announced its introduction of VAIO S – the not-so-prototype but more of a teaser we saw at CES.  The SonyStyle is taking pre-orders and will let you customize the model by maximizing it and pimping it out with the latest and greatest. We’d say this model will definitely throw some punches against the new Macs and HPs you may see on the market. We customized to the max and ended up with a pretty nice configuration for $2269 with the following:

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Sony Drops PSP Price To $129

Sony dropped the price of the PSP yesterday in the USA to a very competitive $129, matching the current retail price of the Nintendo DS Lite. The two companies are nearing the end of a generation for both of their portable consoles, and are on the verge of launching new systems within the year. The $129 figure is a far cry from the initial USA retail price of the PSP in 2005, which was a whopping $250. I guess after selling 67 million PSP’s the price comes down substantially. I feel the PSP was underrated in its life, and changed the portable gaming landscape forever with its high quality gaming experience.

There have also been several additions to the Greatest Hits ($19) and Favorites ($9) selection, which offer the PSP’s most popular games at a very reduced price.

New Greatest Hits include: Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines, DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY, LittleBigPlanet , METAL GEAR SOLID: PEACE WALKER, Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, Resistance: Retribution, and Toy Story 3: The Video Game.
New Favorites include: CRISIS CORE -FINAL FANTASY VII-, Daxter, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Killzone: Liberation, SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fire Team Bravo, and Tomb Raider Anniversary.

Sony Europe Shows Off The Colorful VAIO C

Sony Europe has posted a colorful new video to YouTube showing off the new VAIO C series laptop. The design is truly high-tech, as it “scatters light along edges of the translucent PC lid and other key surfaces to create a dramatic glow effect.” It has many other cool features that you can read about at the VAIO C SonyStyle pre-order website. 

Sony Fire, The Protector Of Sony Pictures Studios

I came across these old pictures I snapped of the Sony Fire vehicle at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California. The 45-acre lot has many studios and side streets, which makes a vehicle like this necessary as a first responder. It features an large surface for people to lay on, heavy duty fire extinguishers, medical supplies, lights, sirens, and so on. I wonder how many HP it has.

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Sony Bravia HX929 Series Pricing Revealed?

Sony USA has been mum on pricing details for new Sony Bravia HX series TV sets since they showed off the XBR-46HX929 and XBR-55HX929 at CES. We already witnessed European announcement with their price tags, and they did seem pretty promising. As some of you may remember the original HX909 flagship models were pretty pricey (the 52″ model MSRP was set at $3699), so what might the new and improved HX models cost?

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Battlefield 3 Gameplay Footage

EA/DICE have revealed an explosive new trailer showing off Battlefield 3, a highly anticipated shooter coming to PC/PS3/XBOX360 in late 2011. It will reintroduce several elements absent from the Bad Company games, including fighter jets, the prone position and 64-player battles on PC, while the consoles will support 24 players. No word regarding PlayStation Move or 3D support at this time.

The next generation of Frostbite graphics engine will debut with Battlefield 3. It will take full advantage of the DirectX 11 API and 64-bit processors, with no support for DirectX 9 (nor, therefore, Windows XP). It will also feature enhanced in-game destruction with Destruction 3.0, creating more refined physics than its predecessor.

At SIGGRAPH 2010, DICE gave several presentations on advances in their rendering technology:

- “Tile-based deferred shading acceleration” via DirectCompute. This is being ported to the PlayStation 3′s SPUs.
- Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA), again implemented with DirectCompute, for bandwidth conservation. MLAA is currently available only to a few PlayStation 3 games such as God of War III and LittleBigPlanet 2. DICE intends to bring this feature to DirectX 11 GPUs.
- Quasi-realtime radiosity.
- Improved environment destruction.

Pre-order Battlefield 3 to receive the digital expansion pack Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand at no extra charge. This multiplayer expansion pack includes four legendary maps from Battlefield 2, remastered with Frostbite 2 physics, destruction and visuals. Completing the package are classic Battlefield 2 weapons and vehicles, unique rewards, new achievements/trophies, and more.

Players anxious to fight can pre-order the Battlefield 3 Limited Edition now. Pre-order while supplies last.