ft.com/techblog

Las Vegas: "You don’t need a wall to hang it on, it is the wall."
The best line from Sony’s press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show described the prototype of an 82-inch Bravia LCD television on display at the booth.
Of course, Bill Gates tried to upstage this in his keynote later, showing a future home with a virtual Microsoft wall, but that was just a projection in every sense.
Sony’s product announcements consisted of a 70" Bravia TV, a new range of camcorders, a Vaio ultra mobile PC and a circular living-room PC, the TP1 (pictured, click to enlarge), that even Mr Gates tipped his hat to as an interesting new form factor.
There was no viewing provided of the module that will fit onto S-Series Bravias from this spring, enabling them to stream internet video without the need for a PC.
The content demonstrations from partners AOL and Yahoo! were not that impressive given that all the flaws of internet videos are ruthlessly exposed by high-definition televisions. But Sony’s movie trailers streamed in high-def fared better.
The move seems a defensive one by Sony - it needs to get some kind of product out there at a time when many other companies are piling into this space, including Microsoft and reportedly Apple. Yet the module’s appeal is limited to owners of new Bravia sets and by a lack of high-definition content it can deliver.
Any Bravia owners with a PlayStation 3 attached would give it a miss - they already have the same capabilities and many other features on the games console.

January 8th, 2007 in Uncategorised | Permalink