Sony has responded to an earlier report that claimed the company was on the “brink of upheaval.” A spokesman for the company said that Sony has no plans to announce any additional restructuring beyond the 16,000 layoffs announced in December. Thanks to Shacknews for the report and headline of the day.
The statement comes in response to a recent report by Times Online, which said Sony was "on brink of upheaval" and that employees were preparing for a "a series of 'sacred cow-slaying' measures" that would see major divisions and factories closed.
Blu-ray sales in the UK are up 400% this holiday season compared to the previous year. Now, before you go giving all the credit to record sales of The Dark Knight, it seems people are also buying non-special effects driven movies on Blu-ray too. Sales figures for the U.S have not been released yet.
Across the whole holiday season 3.7 million Blu-ray units were sold in Britain, and that doesn't include sales of Sony's Playstation 3 console, which also plays Blu-ray movies. A large contributing factor to the rise in Blu-ray sales was the release of the movies The Dark Knight and Mama Mia on Blu-ray. The Dark Knight sold almost 300,000 copies in its first few weeks, becoming the fastest selling Blu-ray title to date. Mama Mia was no slouch either selling 5.1 million copies by year-end.
Welcome to the Monday edition of [H]ard|OCP [H]otDeals! Let’s see what we have in the way of [H]otDeals for you guys today, shall we? There is a pair of GTX 280 deals going today, one for the BFG GeForce GTX 280 and one for the EVGA GeForce GTX 280 both have a price tag of only $294.99 with discounts and rebates. Those of you on a budget will go for one of these XFX GeForce 9800GT that are $109.99 with free shipping. Speaking of budget, you can still get one of those quad-core AMD Phenom 2.3GHz processors for $104.99 with free shipping but you better hurry, deal ends today. Those of you looking for storage space should check out this Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB SATA HDD, is still just $129.99. Oh yeah, show your [H] pride and pick up a RatPadz GS or RatPadz XT while they are still $5 off with free shipping (in North America).
We are going to be doing an interview type discussion that will be run by our readers. Mr. Schmidt, an engineer with Intel's Solid State Drive division has graciously offered to answer any questions we might all have about Intel's SSDs.
MSI Computer, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, is excited to announce it CES 2009 Product Lineup. MSI will be displaying its newest additions to the Wind Netbook U-Series, the MSI “NetOn” All-in-One line, new G-Series Gaming Notebooks, and the latest versions of E-Series Entertainment Notebooks. Read the full press release here.
I feel it is my duty to warn you ahead of time that reading our evaluation of the EVGA X58 3X SLI motherboard will give you an uncontrollable urge to take the 3x SLI plunge. This has been a public service announcement from the staff at [H]ard|OCP. Consider yourself warned.
EVGA has built a very good X58 motherboard that most computer hardware enthusiasts are going to be very happy with. Performance and stability are solid. It should easily get any Intel Core i7 920 to 3.6GHz or better which is going to push your gaming into being GPU limited very quickly. EVGA continues to bring its customers the best support and service in the motherboard business which to some is worth more than the cost of the board.
Do not ask for double ended male adapters at ACE Hardware, they are a fire hazard, illegal, dangerous and immoral. Yes, I said “immoral.” Wait a second, maybe ACE Hardware isn’t against same sex adapters, they probably meant “immortal.” Yeah, that’s it.
In a "tweet" that has since been deleted, Sanchez's account displayed the message "i am high on crack right now might not be coming into work today"--and we're pretty sure that did not come from Sanchez himself. He has now posted a response tweet explaining that his account was hacked.
Ever buy something online only to have it show up broken or non-functional? If you live on this UPS driver’s route, you’ll know exactly what happen to your package. Thanks to Henry F. for this one.
XFX, following its recently announced collaboration with AMD, today introduced its first Radeon™ HD-powered 4000 series cards, the XFX Radeon™ HD 4870, 4850, 4830, 4650 and 4350. All five models feature exceptional memory bandwidth, board power and compute power as well as a number of industry-firsts. For example, the XFX Radeon™ HD 4870 is the first graphics card with GDDR5 memory. To introduce the new GPU line, XFX selected these five models for their highly desirable gaming features, including superior scalability, state-of-the-art DirectX® 10.1 graphics capabilities, optimal power performance and HDMI support. Designed for serious HD gaming, these graphics cards offer exceptional performance at a variety of price points.
The NY Times takes a hard look at the year ahead for Blu-ray. The article touches on the pros and cons of the format but the overall tone seems to be “wait and see.”
“Satisfaction with DVD is very high, and sales figures for the DVD, though the market is contracting, are very strong,” said Chris Fawcett, vice president for the home audio and video division of Sony Electronics, which has lowered growth projections for Blu-ray to account for the downturn in consumer spending.
China has just launched a major campaign to crackdown on internet porn and has major search engines like Google in its sights. A spokesperson for Google defended the company saying it is a search engine and does not “generate” any pornographic content.
The government announcement said Google and Baidu, China's two most heavily used search engines, had failed to take "efficient" measures after receiving notices from the country's Internet watchdog that they were providing links to pornographic material.
This is pretty impressive in a total nerdy kinda way. It almost looks like he was humming instead of using a Theremin. Easily the geekiest / nerdiest thing you will see all day.
Normally this would be more of a press release style news post but, after seeing the response to Lenovo’s dual screen laptop, I wanted to get your thoughts on this all-in-one PC. Might be good for an internet / family PC where space constraints are an issue.
The IdeaCentre A600, an all-in-one desktop PC that features a 21.5-inch frameless screen. The IdeaCentre A600 supports either an Intel Core 2 Duo or Pentium Dual Core processor, the Intel G45M chip set, up to 4GB of DDR3 memory and 1TB of hard disk drive data storage. The A600 desktop starts at $999.
It seems that Justin Long, famous for being the “I’m a Mac” guy, thought it would be a good idea to do a skit where he plays a stoner on his iPhone with a big ol’ bong in his lap. The video is pretty funny but does have some pretty colorful language in it. You just have to wonder how Apple is going to react to this, is it okay or will the video suddenly disappear?
So, what’s the deal? Obviously Long could have been talking on a regular cordless home phone without sacrificing the artistic vision of the film. Is Long trying to get fired from the ads which have likely made him ten times as much money as his stellar movie career, or did he discuss this part with Apple beforehand?
According to the NY Times, LG is set to announce a new line of broadband ready HDTVs that will allow consumers to watch streaming video content like Netflix without the use of a set top box, DVR or console. The only problem is that it will add an extra $300 to the price tag…the same amount you’d spend on a console or DVR.
Owners of the televisions will not be able to browse the Web freely--the TVs' processors and memory chips are not up to that task. But the Broadband HDTVs will have access to a variety of specific video sites, and on Monday, LG will announce one in particular: Netflix.
Didn’t we just see this headline? Yeah, you did but this time it is Steve Job himself saying that health issues caused him to miss MacWorld…just not the health issues everyone thought they were. So there it is, straight from mouth of Steve Jobs, he has a hormone imbalance.
The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I've already begun treatment. But, just like I didn't lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple's CEO during my recovery.
According to the Chinese-language site Expreview, NVIDIA’s upcoming GT212 will have the following specs:
Our source indicates that the number of stream processors increases from 240 (GT200) to 384, and the number of TMUs also increases to 96. Such improvements are fairly significant, kind of like 128 SPs of G92 to 240 SPs of GT200. As the second-generation rendering structure, GT200 features 10 TPCs, and we’re wondering if GT212 would follow this structure. If so, GT212 will feature 16 TPCs, and there’re only 6 TMUs in each TPC, while there’re 8 TMUs in GT200. GT212 is very likely to adopt the third-generation rendering structure - each TPC contains four SMs and 8 TMUs, and there’re 12 TPCs, so there’re 12*4*8=384 stream processors in total.
Thanks to [H] forum member John Vuong for the heads up.
For those of you that are fans of podcasts, PC Perspective has posted their hardware predictions for 2009 in an hour long podcast that covers processors, GPUs, memory, hard drives and more.
This week we talk about our outlook and predictions for 2009 in the world of CPUs, GPUs, platforms, memory, storage and more! How to get the PC Perspective podcast: iTunes, RSS [Enhanced AAC], RSS [MP3], Enhanced AAC and MP3
DigiTimes, citing anonymous industry sources, claims that AMD will launch six 45nm processors for its business class lineup in the third quarter of 2009. AMD did not respond to this report saying the company “does not comment on unannounced products.”
The planned CPUs are the dual-core Athlon X2 B23 (2.9GHz/2MB) and B21 (2.7GHz/2MB), triple-core Phenom II X3 B73 (2.8GHz/7.5MB) and B71 (2.6GHz/7.5MB), and quad-core Phenom II X4 B93 (2.8GHz/8MB) and B91 (2.6GHz/8MB), the sources indicated.
Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, and Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment & Devices Division, will deliver the pre-show 2009 International CES keynote address at 6:30 p.m. PST Wednesday, Jan. 7, in the Palazzo Ballroom at the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. Admission to the keynote address will be granted on a first-come, first-served basis to accredited members of the media and analysts with their official CES badges and badge holders. Credentials can be picked up in the CES pressroom at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), Room S229, between the Central and South Halls, or in the Sands/Venetian lower level in Room 203. Attendees may pick up only their own badge. The doors to the ballroom will open at 5:15 p.m. on Level 5.
Adobe and Intel Corporation today announced plans to collaborate on the development to port and optimize Adobe Flash technology for the Intel Media Processor CE 3100. This effort is expected to provide consumers with richer and more seamless Web-based and video viewing experiences through advanced Intel-based cable set-top boxes, Blu-ray Disc players, digital TVs and retail connected AV devices.
The Recording Industry Association of America has just given MediaSentry the boot. By now most of you know that MediaSentry was the company hired by the RIAA to do all its “evidence gathering.” With MediaSentry kicked to the curb, the RIAA says it will use DtecNet Software based out of Copenhagen.
The RIAA long used a company called MediaSentry to troll the Internet in search of people who uploaded large amounts of music. The information that MediaSentry collected became an integral part of the RIAA's aggressive litigation campaign. Since 2003, the RIAA—a trade organization representing Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, Sony Corp.'s Sony BMG Music Entertainment, EMI Group Ltd. and Warner Music Group Corp.—has sued around 35,000 people for what it says are illegal music uploads.
For those of you that are just getting back from your holiday vacation and gearing up for the week ahead, let us catch you up to speed on some of what happened while you were away. The day after Christmas we posted a pair of motherboard evaluations covering the Gigabyte EX58-UD5 and the Gigabyte EX58-Extreme. Make sure you give those a read.
Just a reminder to all of you that have not have seen this yet, the fine folks at Thermaltake want your opinions to help shape/mold their upcoming products to better suit your needs. Taking the survey also puts you in the running for a handful of cool prizes so it is a win/win situation all the way around. Hit the link and do your part.
Please take a few moments to complete our Thermaltake Survey 2009. Your feedback is important to us. Your responses will help us to address any issues that you may have as well as to better target our products and services to meet your needs. Your responses will be kept confidential and will not be used for any purpose other than research conducted by Thermaltake.
The director of Wikimedia has went on the record saying that, despite rumors to the contrary, Jimmy Wales is still a board member. Apparently Mr. Wales serves as the Community Founder Trustee, whatever that is.
Sue Gardner, the director of the foundation, wrote, "(t)here's nothing to it. Jimmy is a much-valued board member of the Wikimedia Foundation, and I expect he will hold that role permanently: I know of no reason for anyone to speculate otherwise."
EVGA X58 3X SLI Motherboard
XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition
ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution
Gigabyte EX58-Extreme
