PlayStation 3 Production Costs Halved, Says Analyst

From $800 down to a bargain $400, the PlayStation 3 has its production costs in hand, claims wholesale investment bank Nikko Citigroup's Kota Ezawa. While the rest of the Business Week article retains the skepticism prevalent in just about any dissection of PS3 economics, it's the following that may be of interest to anyone who views the system's shortcomings in shades of sticker shock.

Nikko Citigroup's Kota Ezawa estimates the games division will lose $1.4 billion this fiscal year, following last year's $2.1 billion loss. And while he doesn't expect the business to be prosperous until late 2009, Ezawa applauds Sony's efforts to shrink the PS3's chips and tweak its design. Already such changes have cut the cost per machine to around $400 now, from above $800 just before it went on sale in November, 2006, he says. (The PS3 with an 80-gigabyte hard-disk drive retails in the U.S. for about $499.) "We think the biggest factor here is that simplification has become possible through a reduction in the parts count, leading to a reduction in costs," Ezawa wrote in a Dec. 27 report.

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Amazon Convinces Sony To Go DRM-Free

Amazon.com on Thursday announced a new deal with Sony BMG to sell its digital music without copy protection. Sony is the last of the major record labels to jump on the Digital Rights Management-free bandwagon.

Amazon's DRM-free MP3 digital music store will now feature music from all four major labels -- Sony, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI -- as well as more than 33,000 independent labels. The MP3 songs are playable on virtually any digital music-capable device, including PCs, Macs, iPods, Zunes, Zens, iPhones, RAZRs and BlackBerrys. Sony's music will debut on Amazon.com later this month.

"We are excited to be working with Amazon as they continue to build new markets for digital music," Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG Music Entertainment's Global Digital Business & U.S. Sales, said in a statement. "We are constantly exploring new ways of making our music available to consumers in the physical space, over the Internet and through mobile phones, and this initiative is the newest element of our ongoing campaign to bring our music to fans wherever they happen to be."

Moving In on iTunes

Launched in September 2007, Amazon MP3 offers the largest selection of a la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads, which now includes over 3.1 million songs from more than 270,000 artists. Every song and album in the Amazon MP3 music download store is encoded at 256 Kbps to deliver high audio quality.

Amazon.com's pricing scheme is slightly lower than iTunes in many cases. iTunes offers a standard 99-cent price tag on its singles. Most songs available on Amazon MP3 are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, with more than 1 million of the over 3.1 million songs priced at 89 cents. Most of the top 100 best-selling songs are 89 cents; most albums are priced from $5.99 to $9.99; and most of the top 100 best-selling albums are $8.99 or less.

Amazon makes digital music downloads available through its 1-Click shopping feature and offers an Amazon MP3 Downloader that streamlines downloads to PCs or digital devices.

Path to Redemption?

With a rapidly changing record industry, Sony seemingly had little choice about its move to DRM-free digital music downloads. According to music industry news site Billboard.com, total album sales last year dropped nearly 15 percent. Rap album sales suffered dramatically with a 30 percent sales drop.

Earlier this week, Sony debuted MusicPass, a $12.99 gift card sold at retail stores that entitles the buyer to download a DRM-free album of MP3s online. MusicPass and the Amazon.com deal are both moves to help Sony compete with other labels and services that have already begun selling DRM-free MP3s on Amazon and elsewhere.

"Sony had issues with trying to balance the protection of its intellectual property with being consumer friendly. Sony is realizing that it's just not working," said Tim Deal, an analyst at Pike & Fischer. "Sony still needs to come a long way to be more pro-consumer and less guarded about its content."

Sony should have been on the forefront of the digital music revolution, Deal noted, but has failed on a number of levels, including poor marketing, mismanaged product introductions and coming late to the table with digital downloads. "Sony's concern for Digital Rights Management was so all-consuming that it put a bad taste in consumers' mouths," Deal said. "Perhaps offering DRM-free music is part of their path to redemption."

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Warner Bros to back Blu-ray DVD format exclusively

Warner Bros studio on Friday said it would exclusively release high-definition DVDs in Sony Corp's (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) Blu-ray format, dealing a big blow to Toshiba Corp's (6502.T: Quote, Profile, Research) rival HD DVD technology.

Some saw the move as an end to the war that has confused consumers and delayed the development of a multibillion-dollar market. Warner Bros, Hollywood's biggest seller of DVDs, represents about 18 to 20 percent of sales in the United States and was one of the few studios that backed both formats.

"We expect HD DVD to 'die' a quick death, versus a prolonged format war," Pali Capital analyst Rich Greenfield told investors in a note.

But Toshiba said it was "quite surprised" by the move and vowed to fight on.

Blu-ray discs outsold HD DVD by nearly two-to-one in the United States last year, but HD DVD won major allies in August when Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc said they would go exclusively with the Toshiba technology.

"I have not seen anyone give up in this fight. Every time one shoe drops and you think 'Oh, it's over,' the other side comes up with something else," said Stephanie Prange, Home Media Magazine editor in chief.

The battle has confused consumers, she confirmed, but many people don't see the need for high-definition anyway, she added.

The stakes are particularly high because sales of traditional DVDs last year posted their first significant drop since the disc format debuted in 1997, according to Adams Media Research. Total DVD unit sales fell 4.5 percent in 2007 and sales fell 4.8 percent to $15.7 billion.

"The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger. We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers," Warner Bros Chairman and Chief Executive Barry Meyer said in a statement.

News Corp's (NWSa.N: Quote, Profile, Research) 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Co (DIS.N: Quote, Profile, Research), and Lionsgate (LGF.N: Quote, Profile, Research) are among studios backing the Blu-ray format. Viacom Inc's (VIAb.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Paramount studios and General Electric's (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) NBC Universal release movies in HD DVD format. In addition, Sony's PlayStation 3 video game system can play Blu-ray movies while Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Xbox 360 works with HD DVD.

Warner said it would continue releasing in the HD DVD format until the end of May, although those releases would follow the standard DVD and Blu-ray releases.

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Skype Coming to Sony PSP

Sony's all for loading multimedia functions onto their consoles (portable or otherwise) to add value, so the addition of VoIP via Skype is something we can definitely see them doing. The feature's listed on Sony's CES site, along with internet radio and a few other features we already know about, like Remote Play. So it's not a matter of whether the PSP will grab Skype, it's a matter of when the firmware update will be released. Hit the jump for the note in question.

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Amazon's Kindle: The iPod of E-books?

It's the gadget of the day: Amazon's homegrown Kindle, the latest attempt to make the e-book reader from quirky oddity into something for the mainstream. Will it fly this time time around? Amazon's got a long road ahead of it, but first appearances would seem to indicate that this is the best e-book reader to date.

Amazon is unabashedly looking to the iPod for inspiration, attempting to make a piece of hardware that needs minimal expertise to run and that ties specifically to its own store, in this case, Amazon.com, which will offer 88,000 book titles for sale at launch. Even better, the Kindle is designed to be usable sans computer. It connects directly to a special Sprint-powered cellular network called Whispernet (not Wi-Fi) and lets you download directly from the web. However, there are no additional monthly service fees for the privilege.

The big question with these devices is always the screen. Kindle uses the same display technology that the similar Sony Reader uses, called E-Ink. The screen looks as much like paper as electronic displays get; it also allows for exceptional battery life since, once a page is generated, it requires no additional power to keep it displayed.

But there's a dark side of Kindle, which is already drawing heaps of abuse for its design, which can charitably be described as heinously ugly. The vaguely trapezoidal gizmo with oddball keys certainly doesn't share any kinship with the elegant iPod, but iPod 1.0 was hardly the beauty it's become of late. I'm going to chalk it up as a first stab at a design, and I'm all but certain the 2008 version will look nothing like it.

Weighing just 10.3 ounces, the Kindle is lighter than most paperbacks, which should make extended reading no problem. You can store hundreds of titles on its built-in memory and add SD cards for additional room. Titles you buy ($10 for best sellers and new releases) are backed up on Amazon, so even if you have to delete one, you can always download it again later. And if books aren't your bag, the Kindle also does blogs, newspapers, and more (though for additional fees). There are also some very basic music and web browsing features.

So will Kindle fly? People who aren't complaining about the design will likely complain about the price. Even if you're saving $6 off the purchase of each book, it will take more than 60 purchases for the $399 Kindle to pay for itself. Consider also the Sony Reader, which has been a modest success: Sony claimed it was "exceeding expectations" and that e-book sales were outpacing music sales at its online store, as of January 2007. That said, who buys music from Sony's online store? Sony reportedly has a new, wireless Reader in the works, too, so there appear to be at least some legs in this market.

The jury's out on whether Kindle will really make an impact with consumers, but Amazon's launching it at the perfect time, and tying it to the world's largest bookstore is certainly a smart move. The price is the real trick: Many Amazon shoppers are loyal to the site because of its exceptional bargains, but $399 puts it at (or above) the price of most gaming consoles. So would you like an e-book reader or a Nintendo Wii underthe tree this year?

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Installing Windows Media Player Plugin for Firefox

So you just bought a training video and popped it into your computer. You click on the menu in the autoplay dialog and it opens up Firefox, your default browser. Now you are staring at a blank screen.
What now?

The problem is most likely because you don't have the Windows Media

Player plugin installed for Firefox, so all we need to do is install it.

Note that you'll usually have the same problem anytime you try and view video files in FIrefox using Windows Media format, such as .wmv files.

Installation

Just download and run the plugin installer linked below. You'll probably want to close Firefox during the installation.

Verifying Plugin Installation

After running through the very quick installation wizard, you might be curious if the installation actually worked. While the easiest method is to just open a Windows Media video, you can also type the following into the address bar to see the list of loaded plugins:

about:plugins

And you should see the Windows Media Player plugin in the list. You can also see which file types Firefox will use the plugin on.

And now I can view this Windows Media format video file in Firefox…

Technical Notes

In case you have any issues with this installer, you might want to take a look at this list to help with your troubleshooting:

• The WMP plugin uses the IE Proxy settings, not the ones in Firefox.
  This is because the plugin itself is only a thin wrapper around Windows
  Media Player, which always uses IE internally to fetch data.
• The plugin files are installed to the "C:\Program Files\Mozilla
  Firefox\plugins" directory by default, and the file name is
  np-mswmp.dll. If the uninstaller fails to remove this file for whatever
  reason you can manually delete it.
• You could also theoretically copy the same .dll file into the
  plugins directory on any Firefox installation and it should work
  without running the installer.

Download Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin from port25.technet.com

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CNET has a review of Sony's new Cyber-shot DSC-T2 up, and the verdict seems to be "well above average," with a 7.4 score. The case is bit on the podgy side, although if you don't mind that it's well designed otherwise with a hefty lens protector taking up the front and a large 2.7-inch touchscreen taking up the back. That touchscreen has problems, with the review pointing to responsiveness issues. The 4GB internal storage is also nice, but the ridiculous proprietary cable means if you lose the one in the box during your vacay, you're screwed. Image quality and performance is nothing to go crazy over, and you'll probably be happy with it if you've used an equivalently priced digicam recently. Overall, the flaws in the integrated storage and the touchscreen mean this is a bit of a letdown. Go for the T200 instead.

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Sony's DSC-T200 ultracompact going big with 3.5-inch LCD, 5x zoom

So it looks like Sony is about to break us off with a very nicely spec'ed little waif of a camera, the 8 megapixel Cyber-shot DSC-T200 (pictured left). Oddly enough, SonyStyle Canada has all the juicy details about this unannounced, significant upgrade to the DSC-T100 -- and its little brother, the DSC-T70 (pictured right) -- posted up for the world to see before a single press released has passed our desks; we're talking 3.5-inch touchscreen, 5x optical zoom (3-inch / 3x on the T70), claimed 3200 max ISO, VGA video at 30fps, automatic face detection, and even optical image stabilization, all in sub-160-gram packages. No wireless radios onboard, unfortunately, but you are getting the ability to dock with Sony's optional CSS-HD1 Cyber-shot Station for TV, allowing images to be viewed in their full glory on high definition sets. Despite the mounds of info and images displayed on these microsites -- along with overseas enthusiast site e-Photographia -- there are still no pricing / release details to be found, so we'll keep our eyes open. You can check out the T200, lens cover down, after the break...

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Sony's Cyber-shot DSC-H3: an 8 megapixel, 10x zoomer

For parents looking to capture and re-live their children’s back-to-school memories, Sony is introducing a super-zoom digital camera small enough to carry to any school activity.

The new 8-megapixel Cyber-shot DSC-H3 camera has a powerful 10x optical zoom lens for those close-up shots you don’t want to miss, and yet features a super compact form so you can take the camera along anywhere.

The model features high-definition component output, putting a high-resolution spin on the family slideshow. By connecting the new camera to any HDTV set with Sony’s VMC-MHC1 high-definition component cable (sold separately), families can see their digital photos the same way they watch their favorite TV shows – in full 1080 HD resolution. The camera is equipped with a built-in slide show function so you can view photos, complete with transitions choreographed to your choice of programmed music clips or by adding your own.

When the camera is connected to a new Sony BRAVIA® television, photos are optimized for television viewing with Sony’s new “Photo TV HD” mode. This mode brings the look of actual printed photography to the television set, reproducing high-quality digital photos by fine-tuning image parameters, like sharpness, gradation and color specifically for photographs.

Designed to Capture Great Photos

The DSC-H3 model includes a variety of features to ensure parents can document their kids’ activities, from football games to dance recitals and spelling bees. To begin, the new camera features a powerful Carl Zeiss ® 10x optical zoom lens, which makes it ideal for capturing every expression when shooting little stars from the audience. It also includes a long-range flash that lights up subjects farther from the camera. For group shots, moms and dads will appreciate the model’s face detection technology. It identifies up to eight faces in the camera’s 2.5-inch LCD screen, and automatically adjusts for correctly exposed, sharp photos.

To capture every touchdown, the high-zoom camera also includes Sony’s advanced sports shooting mode, which combines high shutter speed shooting and intelligent continuous auto-focusing. The camera will quickly focus on fast-moving subjects by predicting where they will be in the frame. This technology also helps to reduce shutter lag -- the time it takes for the camera to focus and shoot.

To reduce chances of blurry photos, the H3 model incorporates Super Steady Shot® optical image stabilization that minimizes blur caused by camera shake. This is an important feature when shooting at slow shutter speeds at full zoom. The unit’s high sensitivity (up to ISO 3200) will also capture well-exposed, natural-looking photos, even in challenging low-light conditions.

Equipped with Sony’s Dynamic Range Optimizer, originally developed for the Alpha digital SLR system, the new camera can analyze captured image data, and instantly determine the best exposure and tonality of each picture before JPEG compression. Other helpful in-camera functions include red-eye correction and photo retouching effects with filters.

The Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-H3 camera will ship next month for about $300. Additional accessories will include wide and telephoto conversion lenses, filters, batteries, travel chargers, sports packs and cases. The VMC-HD1 high-definition component cable is currently available for about $40. All can be purchased online at sonystyle.com, at Sony Style® retail stores (www.sonystyle.com/retail), at military base exchanges, and at authorized dealers nationwide. Pre-orders begin on Aug. 23 at www.sonystyle.com.