Sony is still thinking that there’s life left in the old PlayStation 2 and it’s probably right considering how poorly the PS3 has faired in the next gen console war. To attract any remaining consumers out there still holding out on picking up a PS2, or simply to whet the interest of the collectors market, the company has revealed that it will sell a limited edition Ceramic White PlayStation 2 bundled with “SingStar Pop” and two of its high-quality USB microphones. The new white PS2 bundle will hit stores in November and retail for $149.99, just in time for Christmas gift giving.

“SingStar Pop” is a karaoke game where you and your friends/family/American Idol wannabe friends can croon the tunes sung by old and new pop stars including hits originally sung by Alicia Keys, U2, Rihanna, Ashlee Simpson, …

Sony is set to unveil next month a portable video player which works with HDV or standard mini-DV video tapes. The Sony GV-HD700 Video Walkman will be available in September for around $1,300.

The GV-HD700 features a seven-inch widescreen display designed to ensure all of the recorded frame area is displayed. It is capable of recording HDV and DV signals from an external source for backup purposes and can also transfer digital still images from tapes to Memory Sticks.

Sony announced today a nice looking all in one PC/television with Blu-ray Disc support. The Sony VAIO LT starts at around $1,900, with the Blu-ray model pricing at around $2,900, and should be available come October.

The Sony VAIO LT, besides offering Blu-ray Disc support, also comes with a 22-inch widescreen WSXGA+ display with mounting capability so it can be hung via a VESA-compliant mount in a variety of places. It has all the usual bells and whistles for a more pricey home computer, including an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, expandable hard drive storage and a 1.3-megapixel camera.

Sony has announced that they’re going to start offering Go!Explore, a new GPS navigation system add-on for their handheld PSP game console starting this holiday season. This is great news for those living in UK/Ireland, Iberia, France, Germany/Austria/Switzerland, Italy, Benelux, and Scandinavia where they will initially have maps available, but the rest of the world is going to have to wait a little longer.

The system includes a some GPS receiver hardware that will mount on the top of the PSP and UMD based software for the maps. The navigation software is provided by NavNGo and the maps will be from TeleAtlas providing navigation along with 3D city and landmark rendering on the PSP.

Go!Explore will come in languages of English, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and will support updating the POI via WiFi.

via TrendyGadget

Today at the Leipzig Game Convention in Europe Sony announced that they will be launching PlayTV sometime in early 2008. PlayTV brings not one but two high definition (1080p) TV tuners to the Playstation 3 game console along with DVR capabilities allowing you to record one show and save another, both in high def.

This is pretty cool in itself (especially if you’re in Europe since this uses European Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial only), but there’s more. You can also transfer these videos from your PS3 and watch them on your PSP while on the go and even use the Remote Play feature on your PSP to watch what’s on your PS3 and to program in your recordings. Just how well and fast this will actually work remains to be seen but …

If you’ve been holding out on buying a PSP because you’re waiting on the new slimmer PSP 2000, it’s now finally available for pre-order through Amazon.com. In case you missed it, Sony officially announced in July that they would be coming out with a new slimmer and lighter PSP adding on some new features including a new video out port, the ability to charge through USB and faster loading of games.

The PSP 2000 is going for $169.99 on Amazon and will ship on September 10.

Sony unveiled today three next-generation dual format DVD/CD recordable drives for computer users. The most interesting looking of these three drives is the slim, external DRX-S70U.

The Sony DRX-S70U ($130, September) is geared towards those who want a more stylish DVD burner sitting alongside their notebook PC. This burner supports both dual and double layer formats, offering 8X DVD+/-R, 4X DVD+/-R DL, 8X DVD+RW, 6X DVD-RW, 5X DVD-RAM, and 24X CD-R/RW recording speeds. It comes bundled with a full version of Nero 7 and sports a USB 2.0 interface.

Sony made it official today with an announcement today of the larger capacity 80GB Playstation 3 game console for sale now both online and in stores in the US and Canada. The new system comes bundled with the off-road racing game MotorStorm for $599 USD or $659 CND.

The larger capacity allows users to download and store more games and media through the game console as the number of games and multimedia content from Sony continues to grow. The 60GB PS3 is still available along side this new high-end version retailing for $499 with an recent increase in sales after the recent $100 price drop, according to Sony. There was no mention in the press release about the 20GB models, but they are likely to be going at some reduced rates while they last.

The MotorStorm racing game included with the 80GB PS3 is …

Sony has announced that it is recalling around 350,000 of its DSC-T5 Cyber-shot digital cameras due to peeling and warping of the coating on the bottom of the camera. The peeling metal coating could potentially scratch or cut the user and Sony has offered to replace the bottom portion of the camera at no charge. Sony says that all the injuries reported as a result of the defective coating so far have been minor.

According to the Associated Press, most of the DSC-T5 cameras were sold in the US, Europe and China with 66,000 of them sold in Japan. If you’re wondering if your Cyber-shot is one of the one being recalled, you can identify it by the serial number on the sticker on the bottom (if it hasn’t peeled or …

Sony has announced a new series of flash drives called the Pocket Bit Mini (USM-HX series). The USB flash drives come in capacities of 1GB and 2GB are Vista ReadyBoost compatible with virtual expander, encoding and secret file lock built into the drive.

They come in colors of black or white and has a two-way carrying case to make them convenient for different USB port locations. The little drives are 14.5mm long and weigh just 1.5 grams. They will retail for $34 and $52 for the 1GB and 2GB, respectively. Expect to see these guys showing up September 2.

FarEastGizmos

It looks like PSP owners in Europe will be getting a new video-on-demand service through a new joing venture announced today between Sony and Sky. The new company will be Europe’s first official PSP video downloading service and is expected to be put in place by early next year, initially in Europe and Ireland.

There aren’t many details yet regarding the service offerings but reports say that there will be a wide variety of entertainment videos available to download to the PSP, with everything from movies to sitcoms to sporting events.

No news of this service going outside of Europe but such talks are underway. Sky is also looking at making a similar deal with Nintendo to bring videos to the DS handheld game console.

GuardianUnlimited

Sony has announced the Walkman NWD-B100 series of MP3 players that feature a direct USB connection to your computer to transfer music and files without the need for any cables. The stick-style MP3 player comes in sized of 1GB and 2GB adn has software that can scan through your directories looking for music files to grab, and monitors folders for new files added in.

The new Walkman can also connect directly to an audio system with a USB connection to record and encode music directly to the player. It also includes a built-in FM tuner and supports voice recording which are both are becoming very commonplace in MP3 players these days.

The NWD-B100 series Walkman’s come in colors of black or white with an LCD display that allows for navigation and song search by folder navigation or by the album, artist or song …

A spokesman from Toshiba announced today that the company is recalling a batch of Sony-made batteries for some of its notebooks. Fortunately the count in this recall is only about 5,100 which is significantly less than the 8 million that Sony recalled last September.

The batteries in the recall list are installed in 10 different models of Toshiba computers that were made in December of 2005 and placed in the notebooks between Jan and Apr of 2006. They were put on a recall list due to a few reports of the batteries becoming too warm, but there were no injuries involved.

Toshiba is planning to post a utility on their website that notebook owners can download to identify if their battery is part of the recall, or users can use a list to identify the batteries serial number manually.

Source: WashingtonPost

In addition to the three colors we get here in the U.S., today Sony made it known that those in Japan will get 3 more metallic pastel-looking colors to select from for the PSP lite. The three basic colors available are black, white and silver, with the additional “lite” colors being pink, purple and blue. No word on these colors officially coming our way but you can bet that some of them are likely to make it to the U.S. one way or another.

Source via Engadget

Reports are in that Sony has sold just over 1 million Playstation 3 game consoles in Japan since its launch last November. According to a report from Reuters , publisher Enterbrain said that Sony had sold 1.01 million PS3 consoles as of the 15th of July.

This rate is still a little behind the Nintendo Wii which reached in the 1 million mark in one fourth the time and has sold 2.9 million consoles in Japan as of the 8th of July. The Wii launched in Japan almost a month after the PS3.

The Xbox 360 which is another of the big, current-generation game consoles launched towards the end of 2005 and has been trailing the Sony PS3 in sales in Japan having sold only 420,705 units.