Some good news for sound. The Sony Tubular non-directional speaker concept has now become a reality. The speaker is being released on June 20th, 2008 and it measures 325mm x 1845mm x 325mm and 12.5kg. The “Sountina” speaker is a transparent and organic glass tube that vibrates to expand sound a full 360 degrees.

You’ll get a frequency response of 50Hz – 20,000Hz, an input line, 13cm subwoofer speaker, 7cm medium speaker and the tweeter which is also made from organic glass. It’s priced at around €6500. If they add some color, every Jedi in the galaxy will be using them and matching colors to their lightsaber.

Everybody’s favorite whacked out, dancing, escape pod looking robot from Sony is finally making its way from Japan to the USA. The small egg-like bot can blast tunes from it’s built-in speakers, move its cute little flippers to the music and spin around. Is it useful? Hell no. And we like it that way.

The bot comes with pre-choreographed routines for songs. (”Also Sprach Zarathustra,” Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend”, Earth Wind and Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland”) You can also use the choreography software to create dances for own tunes. The 2GB bot can be had in black or white, and found online or in Sony stores for $400.

If you were hoping to somehow get your hands on that gun metal gray Metal Gear Solid 4 Playstation 3 bundle, here’s your chance. Konami has issued a press release showing that they exclusively will have a 40GB MGS4 PS3 bundle available for North American with the pre-sell starting on May 19th. This is not the same as the 80GB bundle we had talked about last month but a new offering available only from Konami.

The package comes with a Gun Metal Gray, 40GB Playstation 3, a matching wireless dualshock controller, Metal Gear Online, a Blu-ray disc with 2 hours of exclusive additional content and the Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Limited Edition game. The bundle is priced at $599.99 and will only go while supplies last so if you want one of these you’ll want to keep on top of this offer. In fact, you can add it to your Wish List on the Konami site now to keep up with the offer.

SONY just announced release dates for the long-awaited PlayTV add-on for the PS3 and Go!View video service for the PSP. PlayTV will allow the PS3’s hard drive to record TV shows thanks to it’s dual TV tuners. The included software has a 7-day programming guide, and recorded programs can be viewed remotely over Wi-Fi or transferred to the PSP.

SONY’s Go!View video service for the PSP will be subscription-based or on a pay-per-view system. Users can download TV content to their PSP from a dedicated website.

Dan Middle bought Sony’s UX UMPC and found it to be severely lacking when it came to portable gaming. He did what any of us would have done, he took things into his own hands by hacking a cheap USB gamepad. The end result is a set of controls that make available all eight buttons with a single hand, while the other hand is free to aim with the UX’s mouse controls.

The gamepad has been attached to a CF dummy card, slotting into the UX’s CF port. He did some testing and found that it’s pretty decent to use. Vista even recognizes it as a gaming peripheral. I’m not sure if this spells trouble for the PSP and DS Lite, but it’s pretty cool. Video below.

If Sony were to partner with Apple for their next portable, all-in-one gaming device, the result might look something like this beautiful and sexy droolworthy beast called iWish.

Mat Brady made this mockup, and says that he calls this the iWish because he wishes Sony would get it’s act together and improve the PSP. He makes a good point about many companies doing amazing and innovative things these days, yet sadly, the only innovative thing to happen to the PSP since 2005 was that it got a little slimmer. Can’t argue with that.

These are some excellent renders, but unfortunately this is just a concept Sony Cybershot camera called ‘Snap’. It was obviously inspired by a man’s wallet, the surface is even covered in leather. Like some other ultra compact Cybershot cameras, you slide the cover to activate, only it pivots from a corner for easy one handed operation. But aside from that, it’s just another typical Cybershot.

Some users would really love the compact design as you won’t stand out as an obvious tourist while using it, while you take pictures inconspicuously. Others might find it a bit too fragile and wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to actually put it in their back pocket and break it.

Sony’s SRSZX1 2.0 Speaker System is for the average desktop computer user that does not need or want huge-ass bass. It claims to have “an enriched sound range and fuller bass sound reproduction”. It’s best for casual use like PC gaming, audio and DVD playback etc. Design-wise it’s not Earth shattering, but it has a nice aluminum finish and comes with a compact wireless remote controller.

Some technological advances include Mobius Duct technology that ‘minimizes wind noise’, Turbo Shift technology for extended bass range and a Sigma-Type magnetic circuit for upgraded sound reproduction. Nothing on pricing yet, but I’m sure it won’t be very expensive.

When we heard news that Sony and Konami where launching a Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3 in Japan we of course wanted one but new that this was probably one of those cool, Japan-only things that we would never actually see here in the U.S. But, as it turns out Sony is going to be launching this gun metal colored PS3 console in the United States.

Unfortunately it sounds like this release will be a very limited edition in the U.S., so we probably still won’t get our hands on one but at least now there’s a better chance. The MGS4 PS3 along with its matching DualShock 3 controller has a U.S. launch date of June 12 and will come bundled with the game and the standard 80GB PS3.

Sony is launching it’s BDZ series of Blu-ray recorders, with the A70 and high-end T90 that are capable of picking up unprotected HDTV feeds, relying on AVC (H.264) encoding in order to record shows for future viewing on their 320GB and 500GB hard drives. If you like, you can record videos straight to Blu-ray, and it can also convert videos directly to portable formats, which is really handy.

Some other features include both analog and digital TV tuners, Sony’s Room Link, HDMI output, S-Video, and RCA. Both models will ship on April 30th in Japan. The prices start from $1,664 upwards. No info yet on whether we will see these in the US.

Sony Europe is treating its consumer base to a new BRAVIA television series which does full 1080p HD and offers an AVC-HD tuner. This series is called the BRAVIA W4000-Series.

The BRAVIA W4000-Series LCDs will reportedly range in size from 32- to 52-inches in screen diameter. You’ll get some reportedly really great images on your television with its BRAVIA ENGINE 2, 10-bit signal processing and 10-bit LCD panel. This will all bring you what Sony says is some 64 times more color.

Sony Europe is setting its sights on a new in-car CD tuner which offers multiple ways to listen to digital music. It is known as the Sony MEX-BT3600U - no pricing has been announced as of yet.

The Sony MEX-BT3600U in-car CD tuner can let you listen to digital music through it via USB or wireless. For USB one can connect a USB flash drive to its front panel USB port and browse music files via a LCD interface. The wireless option comes via Bluetooth and support for the A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) standard.

Like the DS Lite, the Sony PSP will be receiving the Colorware option starting April 14th. So for those of you who aren’t thrilled with the usual color palette, this is good news. It probably means that the new Bronze color and the Mint aren’t doing it for you. I don’t blame you. Bronze? Mint? The first is a statue color, the latter should be reserved for Girl Scout cookies.

There’s no word on what it will cost just yet to jazz up your PSP, but I would think that it’d be equivalent to the price for the DS Lite. Let’s face it, it beats th hell out of taking a can of Krylon to your console.

Just in case of the off chance that you hadn’t been gaming all last night, that 2.20 firmware update for the PS3 is now available. Along with some minor changes and tweaks the big news for this update is the BD-Live interactive content for Blu-ray 2.0. It looks like most of the updates revolve around media and web. Unfortunately there does not appear to be any sign of the portable copy to get Blu-ray movies on your PSP that we heard rumors of, or at least not in this version.

Thanks for the heads up, Josh.

It looks like Sony’s next firmware update for the PS3 might include even more than the BD-Live interactive content on Blu-ray discs and the loss of the max file size for some video media. According to PCWorld the 2.20 firmware upgraded for the PS3 will also bring the ability to transfer Blu-ray movies from discs on the PS3 to the Playstation Portable.

This would be a nice feature for Sony to add sounds like it would be not unlike the Digital Copy we saw from FOX movies for iTunes. Instead of taking the time to convert each film into a special version for the PSP, some Blu-ray discs would have a “portable copy” of the movie that can be transferred to the PSP.