sony

Most "smart home" automation systems require a significant investment in additional equipment in order to smarten up your otherwise not-so-smart gear.

Sony and Control4 want to simplify the buying process, and bring home automation to a much wider audience, by integrating a full Control4 "brain" into Sony's new ES line of receivers. … Read more

More companies seem to be discovering that crowdsourcing is more than just a cheap way to have other people do your work for you, it's a cheap and potentially cool way. Or so the conversation likely went with Sony's marketing folks when they came up with the idea to demo the HD camera on the Sony Xperia Ion smartphone by creating a music video entirely from footage shot by a crowd full of the phones.

Sony got Metric, one of the bands signed to its recording label, to perform in a hotel penthouse and handed out 25 of the company's new LTE phones for the audience to film the one-take performance. … Read more

If you need a daily dose of gaming on the cheap and don't mind exploring the seedy underworld of imitation hardware, check out the S602, a ridiculous $66 Sony PSP lookalike by Chinese company JXD.

Aside from looking almost exactly like a Sony PSP, the device features Android 4.0 and an ARM Cortex A8 1GHz processor, PowerVR SGX531 graphics, Wi-Fi, and 512MB of DDR3 RAM. The 4.3-inch touch screen (resistive) displays a resolution of 480x272 and also supports 1,080P HDMI out. Unlike most modern consumer electronics sold here in the U.S., the little handheld that could supports a healthy amount of multimedia formats and codecs. … Read more

GameStop is entering the end of an era.

The company told The Verge in an interview published recently that the PlayStation 2 is starting to be removed from store shelves to make room for the hardware that will be launching in the coming years.

"The PS2 is a unique one -- we still generate a whole lot of profit off PS2 sales, but we're going to keep PS2 where PS2 does sell, and we won't put it in stores where we see really lapsed sales," Mike Dzura, GameStop's senior vice president of store operations, told … Read more

Before the iPod and iTunes supposedly changed everything, we listened to records, CDs, tapes, and radio in our cars, on the street and in mass transit. Music was nearly as portable as it is now, but iPods and other MP3 players radically increased the quantity of music you could take with you. Looking back to the dawn of the iPod/MP3 era, sound-quality improvements weren't part of the agenda, just the quantity of music that was transportable. Apple's early ads touted the advantages of having "1,000 songs in your pocket," which struck me as an … Read more

Developer Square Enix announced today a mega box set celebrating the 25th anniversary of the legendary role-playing video game Final Fantasy. The 35,000 yen ($446) compilation, due December 18, costs a pretty penny, but it offers hundreds of hours of classic gameplay plus a few extra bonuses. … Read more

Sony used the the IFA tech extravaganza in Berlin this week to introduce a trio of new Android-based smartphones.

Called the Xperia T, J, and V, they run the gamut from low-end to top-tier and should be enough to tide the company over until CES in January. In addition to the three handsets, Sony also unveiled its Android-powered Xperia Tablet S, a remodeled and improved update to its previous Tablet S.

Big time stuff for our international friends, sure, but what about us in the United States? Will we see any of these devices?

While most U.S. consumers are … Read more

BERLIN -- Sony announced a lower-cost $4.99 monthly option for Music Unlimited, a plan it hopes will increase adoption of the streaming-music service.

Sony announced its Sony Entertainment Network's $9.99-per-month music plan a year ago at the IFA consumer electronics show, letting customers tap into a library of 16 million songs using personal computers, PS3 game consoles, and Android devices. This year at the show, it announced the cheaper alternative, which offers the same library but which doesn't work on mobile devices.

"It's going to bring new customers in, that's for sure," … Read more