Reuters is reporting that Toshiba will be giving up on it’s high definition format, HD-DVD soon. Halting production of all related equipment, the firm will be facing colossal losses, but the biggest thing it will lose it’s face to Sony, who has been the strongest backer of the rival format Blu-Ray.

This is actually great news for consumers who will finally be able to make a purchase into the High definition video playback world without having to worry about their devices becoming outdated too early. And for those worrying about the prices going higher because of ‘lack of competition’, you are forgetting that with a winner now, a lot of electronic manufacturers will start producing the devices essentially driving prices downwards. And the prices of media will drop soon too to increase adoption among consumers

This is a little old (7th Jan) but pretty interesting nonetheless. Sony has announced that has developed a new ‘close proximity wireless transfer technology’ which will allow users to transfer large data between electronic devices at a theoretical maximum speed of 560Mbps, but effective transfer rate will be at 375Mbps. The most prominent feature is the ‘Touch & Get’ wherein you touch the two products and transfer of data will begin. We won’t find out till later if it actually works that easily but one thing is for certain; the technology isn’t intended to replace Bluetooth 3.0 or Wireless USB as it operates at a range of ‘within 3cm’

Veronica Belmont’s Demo at CES 2008: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGJtGHWjYko

The most interesting part of the story is really Sony’s continued insistence of doing things their own way by introducing and using their own standards. From BetaMax to UMD and from Memory Stick to now TransferJet, Sony has constantly kept itself at bay from the rest by not adopting Open Standards that ensure inter-compatibility.

Press Release: http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200801/08-002E/index.html