European consumers will be getting a taste of a very slim treat from Japan as Sony is set to deliver its 11-inch XEL-1 OLED TV by 2009. The model is priced at around US$ 2,500 and should hit retail stores in the region as early as April 2009. For more details, check out our full article after the jump.

Sony Entertainment announced today a new home entertainment gadget called HDMS-S1D Digital Photo Album. This was designed specifically to allow users to archive, organize, and watch slide shows of their digital photos in high definition.

Expected to launch later this month, HDMS-S1D will cost around US$ 400. We know it's price is quite steep especially when you compare it to a PlayStation 3 console or even two PlayStation Portable Slim & Lite.

But before you shoot down Sony's latest baby, just take a look first at these features and specifications:

• Offers several methods for importing photos: multiple flash memory card formats, CD, DVD, USB, and Ethernet.
• Photo collections can be managed with the supplied remote control and the device's intuitive interface.
• Photos can be organized by date, special occasions such as birthdays and travel (using pre-selected icons), or into as many as 3,000 different photo albums.
• Provides the ability to review, edit, rotate, delete, and arrange photos for a slideshow or digital scrapbooking with Sony's x-Application features.
• x-Pict Story HD: creates professional quality slideshows, eliminating the need for PC-based photo editing. Slideshows can be created by selecting from 30 pre-loaded music tracks and transition styles. For personalization, you can add up to five songs from your own CDs. The software also allows for connection to a compatible printer for making prints of your photos or scrapbook pages directly from the device.
• Uses Sony's face detection technology to locate faces in photographs and adjusts the slideshow transitions around the location of faces.
• x-ScrapBook: uses face detection and event-clustering technology to make scrapbook-style layouts of photos with a common trait like photos of children, or pictures grouped by events such as a party or vacation.
• When family or friends request copies of the photos they’ve seen on your HDTV, you can select and save those photos to CD, DVD, or flash memory card.

Interested parties can purchase HDMS-S1D Digital Photo Album online from SonyStyle.com or in Sony Style retail stores across North America.

Sony finally managed to find a way to shorten Blu-ray burning time in half, and they implemented their newfound faster writing technology on their second generation internal Blu-ray disc drive. The new optical drive now sports 4x writing speed for Blu-ray, and 16x writing speed for DVD+R discs.

The new Blu-ray drive can now fill up an entire 50GB worth of Blu-ray disc space in a matter of 45 minutes, thus making back-ups an easier chore. This gadget won't come cheap, however, with a steep price of US$ 600. The internal Blu-ray writer will be available at sonystyle.com starting next month.

Sony has recently announced that it will soon market a stand-alone product called the HES-V1000 which is essentially a disc changer with a 200-disc capacity. It can hold 196 full size (12 cm) and four smaller (8 cm) Blu-ray discs, DVDs or regular CD-ROMs.

What's more, it has a 500GB hard drive that can store up to 20,000 photos, 10,000 (or 40,000 depending on the quality) songs or 120+ hours of video. It can play back the music stored on the hard drive on its own. while it can write all the supported disc formats.

It also sports an Ethernet port for firmware updates and downloading metadata for all insterted Blu-ray and DVD movies. So if you have a huge multimedia collection that needs some organizing, this could be the gadget that could un-clutter your living room once and for all. It's tagged at US$ 3,500 and will be available from SonyStyle.com.

The folks over at TGBUS.com have gotten their hands on a PSP Slim, and they've taken the time to take it apart and give the PSP community a look at the innards of Sony's new PlayStation Portable.

There's a whole lot of pictures showing everything from the screen to the motherboard, even the UMD mechanism. You can also see the TA-085 marking clearly on the new PSP's board. You can check out all the images by clicking on the Read link below.

There are no pictures of a box, though, so we don't know if this is one of the new production models or an older prototype model. The new PSPs are reportedly already available at SonyStyle's Hong Kong store, however, so odds are it's new. 0okm has also gotten his hands on a brand new PSP-2006PB with the intention of disassembling it. Keep an eye on this blog for further updates.

   

One of the well-known homebrew developers, 0okm, has just bought his own PSP-2006PB or what is otherwise known as PlayStation Portable Slim/Lite. We are not certain where exactly the item was purchased but it seems that the new SKU has finally arrived in Hong Kong earlier today.

Also, we checked around the Internet and learned that the official SonyStyle store for HK has already started selling the new PSP units for HK$ 1,280 or roughly around US$ 164.15. The colors available for purchase include Silver, White, and Piano Black (similar to 0okm's).

Consistent with earlier reports, PSP Slim is indeed running on official firmware 3.60. Some of the other features implemented by Sony on this new system include RAM increase, improved battery life, and TV output among others. 0okm has promised to disassemble the PSP Slim in the coming days and to report on whatever new things he finds out.

Other markets should have their retail supplies of PSP Slim and Lite by September 20.

This article was originally posted on Aug 29, 2007 at 03:15AM.

This has been an iffy topic ever since the 80GB PlayStation 3 model was revealed. It should be remembered that back in July, it seemed that there was some kind of information struggle within the Sony headquarters with one official denying the supposed phase out and another confirming it.

The only concrete thing we all have as of now is the promise that the concrete plans with the 60GB model will be revealed to the public once the existing units have been depleted. Well, it seems that time is nearing very soon. One representative from Sony said the following to online site GamePro:

The online site has exhausted its inventory of the 60GB. They still have inventory available in-store, however, and other larger retailers and their web operations still have ample supply.

In a related matter, SonyStyle.com has already listed the 60GB PS3 model for back orders. As much as this is good news for Sony (it means PS3 sales are stable), we can't help but think of its implications to Sony's consumer base. We have to acknowledge that some would prefer to have the "lighter" model rather than the behemoth 80GB.

Thanks to Quixand for the tip!

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Update: Sony's Dave Karakker has responded to GamePro's original piece on this subject in order to confirm that Sony is indeed running out of 60GB PS3s. Here's part of Karakker's email to GamePro:

We no longer have any inventory in SCEA warehouses. All inventory has been purchased and shipped to retailers.

We don't have visibility as to if that is on their store shelves or in their warehouses at this time. However, based on inventory reports from our retailers, there is ample supply still left in the channel.

SonyStyle.com has also started to shift inventory from its retail stores to meet online demand.

Sony has already announced that it will be cutting the price of its Blu-ray players by 50% before the end of this year. Now there's a rumor that Sony will release US$ 499 Blu-ray players. If this new rumor proves true, the company may stand to make a big profit on these gadgets once the holidays roll around.

According to TVPredictions.com, rumblings from within the electronics market point towards a US$ 499 second-generation Blu-ray player from Sony. At least one electronics chain in the Washington DC area has reportedly gotten word that Sony's BDP-S300 player will be carrying a US$ 499 price tag when it ships late this month.

The BPD-S300 is currently listed for US$ 599 on SonyStyle.com, but online retailer Crutchfield is apparently already taking pre-orders for US$ 499. The price drop rumors could be due to Toshiba's new US$ 399 HD-DVD player. Blu-ray player prices will have to stay competitive in order to ensure success.

Sony announced the other day that development of the much-talked about memory stick PRO-HG Duo is now in full swing and will become available in authorized dealers and online retail store SonyStyle.com across North America starting August of this year. This hasn't been mentioned in a long time so let us refresh your memories about this particular memory stick (Pun not intended).

Sony's Memory Stick PRO-HG media is capable of recording times and data transmission and is three times faster than the standard Memory Stick Duo products. This is because of its 8-bit parallel interface and the flash memory device. The addition of four more connector pins results data transfer of up to 30MB/s (240 Mbps) megabytes per second.

But if for some other reason you still want to use just four connectors, PRO-HG Duo media is also capable of that but take note that the minimum write speed of 15 megabits per second will be employed. Quite curiously, the new memory stick features copyright protection technology MagicGate that provides security to commercial content like digital music and downloaded movies.

In relation to this, Sony will also be releasing Memory Stick Duo ExpressCard adaptor. This is for personal computers with an ExpressCard slot - mostly familiar in the 2007 line up of VAIO computers. How fast will this make the data transfer, you ask? Well, let's just say that you can transfer one hour of personal video to your computers in around two minutes from a regular memory stick handy cam.

Memory Stick PRO-HG media is also available in three different capacities: 1GB (US$ 60), 2GB (US$ 90), and 4GB (US$ 150).

Never let it be said natural selection is only for living organisms. In light of recent reports that the 20 GB model of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) was being eased out of online stores like Best Buy and SonyStyle, Sony has officially announced that they will no longer produce the (20GB) version for North America. As Sony Computer Entertainment of America's (SCEA) Dave Karraker explained:

Due to the overwhelming demand for the 60GB model from both retailers and consumers, we have ceased offering the 20GB model here in North America. In addition to the larger internal hard drive, the 60GB PlayStation 3 features added storage media slots and built-in Wi-Fi not found in the 20GB system. Based on retailer and consumer feedback, we have decided to focus our current efforts on the more popular 60GB model.

Karraker added that whatever supplies of the 20GB still in circulation will still be sold for the retail price of US$ 499. Furthermore, Karraker assured current owners of the 20GB model that they would still benefit from the same software (ie. downloadable updates) and services as their 60GB kin, given that both PS3 versions carried the same basic architecture. On a last note, Karraker said that Japan still carried both versions, with "no word from them on changing their sku mix."