From PC World….

Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) on Thursday announced the forthcoming release of PlayStation 3 firmware version 2.30, slated for release next week. The new update will be free for PlayStation 3 users, who will be able to download it over the Internet. What’s more, the update will also let PS3 owners access Sony’s revamped PlayStation Store.

The update enables PlayStation 3 consoles to access DTS-HD master Audio and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio on Blu-ray Discs equipped with that capability. DTS-HD master Audio can deliver audio at a variable rate 24.5 megabits per second (Mbps), higher than what standard DVDs can provide, and can offer 7.1 audio channels at 96k sampling frequency with 24 bit depth. Already, more than 100 Blu-ray Disc movies and concert videos are available with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks.

DTS-HD High Resolution Audio streams audio at a high constant bit rate of 6.0 Mbps and also provide up to 7.1 channels at 96/24. The net result is better-sounding audio that takes up less space on a Blu-ray Disc than a Master Audio soundtrack does.

Sony’s been working on a new PlayStation Store for the PlayStation 3 that enables users to buy software, download demos and access add-ons for games they already own. Up until now, the PlayStation Store has been an integrated online storefront, but this 2.30 firmware update will change that to an application that resides natively on the PS3. Sony hopes that it will enable users to access and buy content more easily.

See walkthrough of new online PS3 Store here

http://crackle.com/c/Video_Games/PlayStation_Store_video_walkthrough/2245773/#ml=fi%3D%26fpl%3D289233%26o%3D12

Is the CD going to become a white elephant thanks to downloading of compressed mp3 files?  I sure hop not.  I still like my music un-compressed so I can listen to it on a decent system. If the labes got smart, they’d lower the price of a CD. Instead, they pay the RIAA to sue those who illegally download. Apples’ iTunes may be the champ for now, but with new competition coming online, it looks like Apple may finally have to look over its shoulder…..

From Newsfactor.com…..

With new online music retailers springing up to challenge its Net dominance, Apple’s iTunes Store moved the goalposts again Thursday. It announced its store has overtaken even Wal-Mart as the number-one music retailer in the U.S. — online or off. The new designation is based on data  during January and February from the NPD Group, a market-research firm. NPD’s MusicWatch survey compiles unit purchases in a given week.

According to news reports, Apple now has 19 percent of the market and Wal-Mart, including both its online and brick-and-mortar sales, has 15 percent. Best Buy took third with 13 percent, and Amazon, which has launched a music store to compete with Apple, is fourth at six percent. Target, also with six percent, is fifth, followed by FYE/Coconuts, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Circuit City, and Rhapsody.

Apple’s move to the top of both the real and virtual worlds of music retailing is a milestone not only for the Cupertino, Calif.-based company, but also for the industry. Physical CD sales have been plummeting as the industry tries to adjust to the new digital reality. In fact, NPD reports that nearly half of all teens in the U.S. didn’t buy even one physical CD in 2007, up from 38 percent in 2006.

But it’s not just the real-vs-virtual ratio that is radically changing the music industry. There was a 10 percent decline in overall music spending in 2007.

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with industry research firm JupiterResearch, said the new position for the iTunes Store “demonstrates the remarkable shift that has taken place in the music industry.” He noted that this shift not only means an increasing role for online distribution, but the “reinvention of the single.”

The new claim to fame for Apple’s store comes as it faces new competition. Apple said its iTunes Store, which launched less than five years ago, has sold more than four billion songs, has 50 million customers, and has “the world’s largest music catalog” with more than six million songs.

One potential new competitor launched Thursday as social-networking site MySpace joined with three of the four biggest music companies, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music, to create what MySpace described as a “fully integrated 360-degree global music solution.”

In addition to music sales, there will socializing tools, ad-supported audio and video streaming, a mobile  storefront, concert tickets, artist T-shirts, and integration with MySpace’s millions of artist profile and user pages.

And recently Earth’s biggest store — Amazon — got bigger, as it launched Amazon MP3, with music downloads free of digital-rights management and more than two million songs. Those downloads are generally priced lower than songs from the iTunes Store.

Gran Turismo…. Since it started on the Sony Playstation Platform ten years ago, it has been known for its cutting-edge graphics and for being a true-to-life driving simulator.  The much anticipated version 5 in the series is soon to be upon us….and it looks like one more feature is coming….

From 1up.com…..

Careful, lazy Gran Turismo drivers — that “bumper car” technique you use to overtake opponents heading into a corner may not work so well in Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. At least, not once you download a patch that will finally add car damage to the Gran Turismo series.

“Maybe by Fall we’ll be able to implement it,” said Polyphony president Kazunori Yamauchi in an interview with IGN, confirming car damage would be coming as a download to Prologue (set for release in North America on April 17). It’s a sign that the series is finally catching up with its contemporaries; while other racing simulators like the Forza series have implemented car damage, this key element of realism has been missing from Gran Turismo since its very first installment in 1998.

But it does make us wonder — if car damage comes to Prologue by fall, what does that mean for the release of the real Gran Turismo 5? Is that even still slated for a 2008 release? Ah, well. With the infamous perfectionists at Polyphony, we’ll take what we can get.

Official Game Site

From GearLog…..

Here’s a surprise: Sprint CEO Dan Hesse just announced that his carrier will have a Wi-Fi, iDen Blackberry on the Nextel network “later this year.” That’s all he said on the topic in his CTIA keynote spech today, but it’s pretty big news, considering the company hasn’t been giving their old iDen network much smartphone love. (iDen has a Blackberry and a Windows Mobile phone, but they’re both quite old.) The Nextel “push-to-X” network will also get new phones from Sanyo, Samsung, Motorola and LG that will run on Sprint’s CDMA network, but with Nextel’s push-button ‘chirp’ services, Hesse said. “One capability that makes Sprint unique is the push to talk network that sets the gold standard,” Hesse said. “If it’s not sub-second [connectivity], it’s second rate.”

From News.com….

Windows Vista’s checkered history is now legend. Instead of the evolutionary marvel that Microsoft long promised, Vista instead has become synonymous with development delays, shifting feature lists, and spotty driver support.

No wonder then, more than a year after Vista’s release, many consumers and business customers have steadfastly held onto Vista’s predecessor, the Windows XP operating system. Microsoft has followed with price cuts and promotions. This is not exactly the “wow” moment the company had in mind. News.com’s Ina Fried has chronicled Vista’s first year in earlier posts.

Still, we know that all good Windows releases eventually come to an end: Windows XP is stable, widely supported, and ultimately doomed. New PCs with XP installed will begin to disappear this summer. Microsoft will stop selling XP completely next January (although the company will provide support for much longer).

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley reports that it’s unclear when a rumored service pack, SP3, will debut for XP, raising speculation that Microsoft is sending a pointed message about upgrade planning.

On Tuesday, Dell launched a Vista migration program to nudge big companies toward the OS. The PC maker’s “client migration solution” will cut migration costs by up to 62 percent and reduce labor by an estimated 88 percent, Dell says.

Microsoft is greasing the skids for Vista acceptance by offering free telephone support for Vista Service Pack 1 through March 2009. (The toll-free call-in number in the U.S. for Vista SP1 help is (866)-234-6020.)

From News.com….

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Friday indicated that Windows 7, the next major version of Windows, could come within the next year, far ahead of the development schedule previously indicated by the software maker.

In response to a question about Windows Vista, Gates, speaking before the Inter-American Development Bank here, said: “Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version.” Referring to Windows 7, the code name for the next full release of Windows client software, Gates said: “I’m super-enthused about what it will do in lots of ways.”

Most of Gates’ speech was devoted to topics closer to home for the crowd, such as how Latin America can be more competitive.

Windows 7 and its intended feature list have been the topic of speculation since Microsoft discussed some details of the new software last summer.

At that time, Microsoft said little except that Windows 7 will ship in consumer and business versions, and in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The company also confirmed that it is considering a subscription model to complement Windows, but did not provide specifics or a time frame.

Less than 24 hours ago, a Microsoft representative told CNET News.com that the company expects to ship the successor to Vista roughly three years from Vista’s January 2007 debut.

Unclear is whether Gates was referring to early testing of Windows 7 coming within the year, as opposed to a widespread release or debut. An early test geared toward developers would be conceivable. The company has repeatedly said that it will accelerate the development of new Windows versions, largely as a response to Vista’s roughly five year gestation period.

Excerpt from post on The BetaGuy blog….

In the face of the mass-media criticism of Windows Vista, mainly with regards to the performance issues present when compared to Windows XP on hardware with similar specifications. However, very little information has been presented with regards to the performance of Windows 7, this article however shall change that.

For Windows Vista, Microsoft had to change their design and development strategy in order to comply with the DoJ and EU regulations regarding the anti-trust issues present in previous versions of Windows; specifically, the integration of assistive applications such as Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player into the core operating system. Competitors complained that offering internet and media solutions with the operating system harmed competition in the marketplace (despite other operating systems such as Mac OS X and Linux apparently being immune from such criticism).

In response to this, Microsoft made fundamental changes to the way Windows Vista was linked together; shifting more towards modular designs rather than the monolithic processes used in previous versions of Windows. This increased amount of componentization, while satisfying the DoJ and EU, also led to performance issues due to the increased number of libraries which comprise the operating system. On traditional hard drives, the more separate files which the operating system has to load, the more seeking across the hard drive is required, and therefore overall performance takes a hit.

Another reason for Windows Vista’s performance issues is the way in which Microsoft approached backwards compatibility in Vista. The operating system stores multiple copies of core system libraries, as each revision of a library typically adds/removes functions, and applications compiled with dynamic links to a specific version of a DLL file may call on functions not present in the currently installed library. Vista aims to solve this issue through the WinSxS collection; essentially a massive store of every differing version of libraries present on the system. That way, when an application makes a call for a dynamically linked library, Vista queries the WinSxS cache for the correct version, which is then loaded into memory. On the average system, this directory can be several gigabytes in size, with much of the code duplicated between the separate versions many times.

Windows 7 takes a different approach to the componentization and backwards compatibility issues; in short, it doesn’t think about them at all. Windows 7 will be a from-the-ground-up packaging of the Windows codebase; partially source, but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows. Making the break from backwards compatibility is a dangerous proposal but a dream for software developers. Performance of native applications can be increased, distribution sizes can be cut down, functionality can be added without the worry of breaking old applications, and the overall end-user experience can be significantly improved.

From DailyTech…..

Mobile phone users around the country and the world have noticed for a long time now that their cellular signal drops inside the home or office. This loss of coverage makes sense with the added interference of actually penetrating the walls of a building and competing with other wireless signals that are often very prolific inside a home or office.

For mobile phone users that want to drop landlines or who already have made the move to mobile phone only, the lack of coverage inside the home is a huge issue that can leave you without service or with poor service. Many of the largest cellular providers are looking at solutions to this problem and one of the most promising answers is the femtocell.

A femtocell is exactly what the word sounds like, a small cellular tower built into a package resembling a Wi-Fi router. The femtocell provides a usable wireless signal inside the home or office. The femtocell is good for the cellular provider in one aspect because it sends voice traffic over a user’s broadband network and the carrier doesn’t have to pay for the traffic.

The drawback for carriers to providing the femtocell to customers is the cost. Currently a femtocell costs in the area of $200, though the price is expected to drop to near $150 as more makers enter the market. To get customers to adopt the technology the carrier would have to subsidize the cost.

Sprint’s trial femtocells cost $49.99 cost to the subscriber. Sprint also provides unlimited calls in the home to femtocell users for an additional $15 per month. Sprint spokesperson Emmy Anderson says that feedback on the femtocells has been good and there has been no interference between the femtocell and cellular tower.

Many customers will view the femtocell as an extra cost to get what they already pay for—a usable signal. Despite what may present a prejudice in a subscribers mine, Verizon announced at CTIA that it would be deploying femtocells in 2008. Verizon declined to give any specifics on its femtocells like cost and availability.

For some potential users of femtocells a big drawback could be the addition of another box into the home that already has a cable modem, wireless router, home phone, cable box and more to deal with. A French company called Thomson may have the answer to that problem; it is working on a femtocell that is built into a Wi-Fi router.

From TechRadar.com …….

Microsoft has insisted that Lite-on will not be making Blu-ray drives for its Xbox 360, despite widespread internet rumours to the contrary.

DigiTimes - citing industry sources - insisted that Lite-on are going to produce drives that would replace the Xbox 360’s current internal DVD drive.

And while Digitimes continues with its runaway speculation regarding what it considers to be this Christmas’ price war between the Blu-ray Xbox 360 and PS3, here’s the statement just in from Microsoft to scupper their rumour-mongering:

“No. Lite-On is not manufacturing Blu-ray drives for Xbox 360. As we have stated, games are what are driving consumers to purchase game consoles and we remain focused on providing the largest library of blockbuster game available.

“For our customers who want a premium movie experience we offer the largest library of on-demand HD content available and the ability to play back DVDs in high definition.“

Blu-ray not ruled out

Jon Hicks, editor on Official Xbox 360 news told us earlier: “I’m not surprised. If they were going to announce something like this then they would certainly not do it right now. As I’ve said in the past, they haven’t ruled out Blu-ray on 360 and if we ever were to see anything, then I would imagine it would be announced much nearer to Christmas.”