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Sony's COO says no new OLED TVs in 2010, BRAVIA Internet Video Link is coming to PS3
Want to blast some BRAVIA Internet Video Link content from your PS3 to your million-inch Sony-built 3D OLED TV this year? Well, you're half in luck. Sony's bringing the Internet Video Link service to the PS3 (which seems to us to provide little that isn't already possible on the PS3, but who are we to judge?) but won't do any new OLED TVs this year. The problem is, naturally, cost, but hopefully 2011 will bring better things in sizes larger than 11-inches -- LG won't have a 30-incher until 2012 at least, and that seems too long to wait. Sony COO Stan Glasgow, in his interview with Sony Insider that turned up these nuggets, also is refreshingly non-bombastic about 3D. He points out that Sony's doing 3D-capable TVs for essentially zero price differentiation, with separate glasses and emitters that can be bought after the fact, and calls the 3D channel rollout "complex." But who knows, perhaps he's just never seen enough of Taylor Swift in 3D to know what he's missing?
Sony execs talk up Blu-ray, digital downloads and OLED
Both Sony Electronics president Stan Glasgow and consumer sales president Jay Vandenbree were caught opening their mouths lately, with one uttering somewhat more respectable statements than the other. Put the two of 'em in a room together, and this is what you get. At a recent media roundtable at the Sony Building, Glasgow confessed that Blu-ray had not met sales expectations, but he still felt confident that there "would be growth this holiday season." Interestingly, he also noted that Sony's low-end price on a Blu-ray deck would remain "stable" at $299 (for now, we presume), though "it might be less in promotional bundling of HD products at retail." The two also felt that Blu-ray Discs and digital downloads could live happily together, pointing out that bandwidth restrictions / caps / etc. would hurt the latter's chances at existing exclusively. Finally, we're told that Sony is toiling away in an attempt to deliver big screen OLED TVs, though (sadly) no time frames were mentioned. Check the read link for the full interview, but don't expect any big surprises.
Sony's Glasgow wants Blu-ray prices to come down
While Sony's Jay Vandenbree is over in one corner griping about HDTV price drops, the outfit's Stan Glasgow is off in another making a bit of sense. In a recent interview with Reuters, the bigwig stated that he understood that movie studios "needed to make money, and [that] packaged media (discs) is a critical way for them to [do so]," but he continued on to say that he would "love to see those prices come down, as well as the price of Blu-ray players to drive adoption." These absolutely laudable comments come on the heels of him admitting that Blu-ray sales overall would fall around 10% short this holiday season of prior expectations, despite the fact that BD deck prices are apt to hit record lows on Black Friday. It's actually pretty astounding to hear a higher-up such as Stan uttering such logical statements, and if you're looking for more of his take on the industry, you know where to head.
Sony talks future of OLED, Blu-ray's chances against DVD
In case you didn't get the message, Sony's due sooner-rather-than-later 27-inch OLED is going to be priced for the Mark Cubans, Bill Gates' and other people not you of the world, at least for the next couple of years. Even with recent massive investments, U.S. head Stan Glasgow tells CNET OLEDs in the future could be seen as a premium alternative to LCDs, but don't expect Sony to jump on smaller screens while they wait for the technology to catch up, HDTV is the focus. As for the upcoming standard def-streaming Hancock experiment? The first of many, if things go well, while at the same time he acknowledges format war winner Blu-ray may not penetrate to the same level as DVD since "a lot of people may be happy with an upconverting DVD player" -- which would be music to Toshiba's ears.
Cheaper Blu-ray players coming, says Sony exec
With the crazy deals last week on HD DVD players, you know Blu-ray had to counter. That counter came from pretty high up at a media roundtable last week -- Sony Electronics president Stan Glasgow forecast drop of standalone players to $399 for the holidays, matching the new PS3 price point. That's a step in the right direction, but when asked if prices could drop even further, he went on to say "I don't expect it to go much lower than that." We're not so sure, though. The steep discounts on HD DVD set a bar for how low the red camp is willing to go; we think the blue camp will have to push back with either price cuts or value-add promotions. That's double true for dedicated players that can't do the videogame thing. We won't predict prices, but it's safe to say this holiday season is going to be interesting for both HDM formats and a good time to jump in to HDM for the consumer.
Sony XEL-1 OLED TV may hit US this year, sez Glasgow
We're sure you've been drooling over Sony's sexy little 11-inch XEL-1 OLED TV since the official launch last month, and though we thought that only the Japanese would be lucky enough to snap one up this year, Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow has just revealed that US customers may actually have a shot at the 3-millimeter thick waif by holiday time. At a roundtable discussion this morning at the Sony Club in New York, Glasgow told the assembled journalists that "OLED could come [here] before the end of the year," but that the decision would be based significantly on foreign demand and panel supply -- an area where yields are still reportedly quite low. In other words, while you shouldn't go squirreling your ~$1,800 away just yet, you should start praying to the gods of consumer electronics that the XEL-1 hits Tokyo with little more than a whisper.
Sony says non-exploding lithium polymer laptop batteries coming soon
You can bet Sony's got tons of engineers working on the problem of how to keep their laptop batteries from exploding. In a meeting with reporters on Wednesday, Sony Electronics president Stan Glasgow mentioned that laptop manufacturers are likely to switch from lithium ion batteries to lithium polymer sometime in the near future. The advantage of lithium polymer apparently is that the lithium is contained in gel packs, which can be squeezed into random spaces (instead of being cramped into compact cells), and thus apparently doesn't have the propensity to, um, explode. That being said, it appears that Apple has already struck its foot in the lithium polymer camp, given that it's keeping MacBook and MacBook Pros juiced up with these newer batteries (pictured), which were not subject to recalls. Of course, there's always zinc and fuel cell batteries, which still toil away in research labs across the globe -- it doesn't really make much difference to us which one wins out, so long as we can somehow realize that dream of untethered beach-blogging for 12 hours straight.[Via Slashdot]
Sony planning iPod / iTunes-like infrastructure?
Given Sony's exploding battery crisis, followed by the launch of the the PS3 (and its aftermath), we figured that those two things alone (not to mention the PS4) have already given enough headaches to its board of directors. However, there may be a bright spot in Sony's future -- the company is now hinting at building an "MP3 player" and corresponding online music store that would go head-to-head with the iPod/iTunes combo and the new-kid-on-the-block, the Zune/Zune Marketplace. According to Wired News' Listening Post blog, Sony Electronics head Stan Glasgow earlier this week alluded to a new digital audio player that could be ready by December 2007. He also said that "DRMs are going to become less important," which may lead to us to the holy grail of media players, but we're not holding our breath just yet on either of these developments. Sony, drop us a line when you're ready to show something off.
