Isaiah's Tech

This is going to be my last blog post of the night. It is going to be Sony's press conference, which i am extremely excited for. Hopefully, they will take a couple of cheap shots at Microsoft's Xbox 360.

So, the introduction starts off pretty entertaining. So far, it looks to be the most interesting to me. They start off with a Jeopardy-like theme. They are celebrating Jeopardy's 25th anniversary. I don't know why, but they must have a reason. The speaker mentions that "Sony is an entertainment powerhouse." He plays Sony Bravia's new commercial, which introduces the world's first MotionFlow 240Hz technology for TV's. He introduces a lot of people that work for Sony. He finally introduces Stan Glasgow. He starts off by summarizing the sales from last year and talks about his struggle, last year, to remain optimistic. He is going to talk about 2 primary areas: in-home and out-of-home. He is going to start with the out-of-home lineup.

He first mentions the X-Series OLED walkman with a 3 inch touchscreen, Wi-fi and noise cancellation. He tells the crowd about the popular [but delayed] Sony Xperia: X1. The Sony Ericsson w508 is reportedly customizable, with up to 8 colours. He introduces the Cybershot c510 phone, which has a 3.2 megapixel camera, face detection and 3G. So far, this has been a great presentation because his speech flows extremely well and there is a good balance between speech and visuals. He introduces a couple of digital photo frames. The DPF-X1000 + V1000. They will both feature a 10 inch SVGA resolution, widescreen LCD, 1-2GB memory and Bluetooth. You can even display it on your Bravia TV with an HDMI. He introduces 2 magnificent camcorders, the Handycam: HDR-520v and the HDR-CX100. First off, the HDR-CX100 will be HD-capable and have 8GB of space. The HDR-520v, on the other hand, is much more heavy on the specs. It will have a whopping 240GB of space, 101 hours of HD, 12 megapixel stills, GPS and Geotagging. Both of these camcorders will be available in March. He introduces new 'Webbie' HD cameras with pmb software, mpeg-4 for easy transfer, 5x optical zoom, 20x digital zoom, a 2.5 LCD that will have a rotation swivel of up to 270 degrees. This 'Webbie' will be available "tonight" [now] on sonystyle.com. So, what's been stirring up all of the controversy lately? The Vaio P-series, of course. It was finally and officially unveiled. He held one in his hand, as he listed the many specs. It will weigh a mere 1.4 pounds, sport an 8 inch screen, 3G-capabilities, has 802.11n wireless, Bluetooth, GPS (if you're in US or Canada, you won't even need an active internet connection), the Xross media bar, a webcam and all of this will fit in your purse or jacket pocket. You will be able to pre-order it tomorrow on sonystyle.com.

Phew, that was a lot of information, but luckily, i was able to get it all down, thanks to visuals. Stan will now talk about in-home products. He quickly mentions that the sales of Blu-ray grow 300% every year. He mentions, but doesn't go into detail about, the Playstation 3, Playstation: Home, Playstation Network and the Playstation Portable (PSP). He does, however, mention some news about the OLED TV's. A journalist mentioned that they are "the most coveted TV on the market." Sony OLED TV protoypes are just 0.9 mm thin (!!) with an 11 inch display. Furthermore, he mentions that there are upcoming 21 and 27 inch models with a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, super top emission technology (I don't know what that is) and, of course, fast response times. He mentions recycling their products. The "Eco" Bravia will reduce power consumption by 40% (just like everyone else) and will exceed energy star 3.0 requirements (which is also like everyone else). But, this is where Sony sets itself apart from it's competition. The Bravia's will have the technology called HCFL (Hot Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) (more about that in a later blog post), a light sensor, an eco switch, which will reduce your watt consumption to 0W in standby, and will have a presence sensor. The presence sensor will detect if anyone is moving in the room. If the TV detects that no one is moving in the room, the TV will be shut off. This is good for anyone that sleeps in front of the TV or when you leave the TV room and forget to turn it off. These Bravia's will be available in 3 sizes: 40, 46 and 52 inches. He talks about Bravia: Internet Video partnering with the likes of: Amazon, Youtube and Slacker, for streaming videos. Bravia: Internet Video will be integrated in the upcoming XBR9 Sony Bravia TV's that will also have the world's first MotionFlow 240Hz technology, accompanied by Bravia's Internet Widgets, with the help of Yahoo! The XBR9 will be available in the Spring-time.

Sir Howard will be presenting tomorrow morning's Sony keynote.

Stan Glasgow really sells their Sony products. I'm always against buying Sony products, except for the Playstation 3 because i feel that all of their products are overpriced (Don't get me wrong, the PS3 is still a bit too expensive). But, Stan is really persuasive and is really enthusiastic when he speaks. Samsung could learn a thing or two from this Sony press conference, so that they can improve for next year. Unfortunately, there were no talks of the Playstation 3 in this press conference. This was my favourite press conference of the day and i just loved the combination of the visuals and the speech.

Special thanks to G4 for all of the streaming and uploading of the press conference videos.

Sony Press conference video: http://www.g4tv.com/ces2009/press_conf_detail.aspx?video_key=35869
Sony Cybershot C510 picture: http://www.cellphones.ca/news/post004647/
Sony Xperia X1 picture: http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/10/sonyericsson-xperia-x1-qwerty-with-windows-mobile/
Sony Bravia picture: http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/07/sony-brings-yahoo-widgets-to-1080p-zbr9-z-series-hdtvs/