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PlayStation Home lets friends watch free movies together now, UStream and radio next month
Sony's recently redesigned PlayStation Home project has always been about bringing online social experiences to the PS3 that mirror their real-world counterparts: hanging out in your apartment with friends, window shopping at the mall, Quincying. Now it can add one more notch to its virtual world experience belt by offering the ability to view full length movies for free, streamed by Sony's Crackle network. If you're a frequent user of Xbox Live's Netflix Movie Parties this may sound like old hat (were we the only ones using that feature?), but now all PS Home users -- in North America -- can do social viewing with up to 60 users or private parties with up to 11 at a time. Crackle's selection of movies and TV shows are available today, while live broadcast UStream events (Engadget podcast party anyone?) and musical stations provided by RadioIO are scheduled to debut in December. Press play on the video above for a quick preview or check after the break for a celebratory press release.
The birth of a Blu-ray: inside the manufacturing plant
Were you ever curious as to how a Blu-ray disc is manufactured? NEWS.com.au took a rare look into one of Sony's DADC factories and took some snapshots detailing the disc's journey from plastic crystal pieces all the way to the finished product. As you can see here, the factory is hard at work on the PAIN Blu-ray game, which is available exclusively in Europe.To see the entire gallery, click here.[Via Blu-ray.com]
Sony DADC 50GB Blu-ray production underway
The last time we checked in on Sony's Terra Haute, IN-based Blu-ray plant dual-layer 50GB discs were still nowhere to be seen, but the company announced recently it now has 6 50GB production lines up and running and is ramping up to produce 60,000 discs per day. According to the Executive Vice President production is "meeting expectations", and not a minute too soon. With the PlayStation 3 finally here and the BDP-S1 coming... some day if Blu-ray is going to win the format war they'll certainly need more than 25GB discs to do it. With over 130 BD titles mastered, including some dual-layer releases even though 50GB is late to the party, it's earlier than some anticipated.[Via HDBlog.net]
