News written by Dave Horvath (July, 2006)

Tomorrow marks the day that console manufacturer, Sony will go live with over 300 Wi-Fi hotspots for the PSP, dubbed Playstation Spot around Europe and Australia. Only 11 hotspots have been confirmed in the UK area, however Sony states that when they go live, their plan to cover all the PAL regions. The 300 total hotspots will offer PSP users the ability to access a wireless network in which they can update their PSP, download content or play multiplayer games.

While Sony has stated that there will not be a fee to access the wireless networks, there has been on confirmation on what users can expect to pay for downloadable content. They have offered up that some content will be free.

Source:
The Register

File sharing giant, Kazaa recently agreed to pay the sum of $100 million for damages to the music industry, to avoid further legal actions that have plagued Kazaa for some time now. This follows in conjunction with a report released saying that some 20 billion music tracks had been downloaded illegally through their service in just the last year.

"We have won another battle in an ongoing war, said John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI). "We move forward with a spring in our step."

Kazaa has now announced that it will follow suit like the once big media giant Napster and offer only legal downloads in which users must pay for in order to download.

Source:
BBC News

As previously reported by Afterdawn, HD-DVD pioneer Toshiba was supposed to have released their HD-DVD recorder on July 14th of this year. Unfortunately for Toshiba Corp., their launch doesn't seem to be going as smoothly as planned.

Toshiba has announced that it will delay the world's first HD-DVD recorder until at least the end of July. Reasons are sited as there isn't enough inventory to keep up with their launch quota.

There were no plans to bring the Toshiba RD-A1 oversees, even though it boasts impressive features such as 1 Terrabyte of storage space, thus enabling up to 130 hours of pure HD format recordings. At a price tag of 398,000 yen ($3,453), it may be prudent to say that their inventory speculation may be a bit high in the first place.

Source:
Reuters

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has given an official letter to both Tiscali and Cable & Wireless requesting that they suspend some 59 accounts for "illegal filesharing".

The BPI was once focused on handling individual file sharers, but now seems to have switched its strategy to individual firms allowing these practices to take place. The BPI is claiming that this move will make it easier for them to stop the copyright infringements suffered at the hands of the Internet.

BPI has indentified 17 IP addresses which belong to Tiscali and 42 IP addresses under Cable & Wireless control which were used to upload "significant quantities of music owned by BPI members".

BPI chairman Peter Jamieson said "It was unacceptable for ISPs to turn a blind eye to industrial-scale copyright infringement. We are providing unequivocal evidence of copyright infringement via their services. It is now up to them to put their house in order and pull the plug on these people.".

Tiscali has responded stating that it does not normally freeze accounts automatically, but will entertain an investigation. Cable & Wireless merely stated, "This would normally mean that any accounts used for illegal filesharing are closed. We will take whatever steps are necessary to put the matter right".

Have you ever looked at your 60" HDTV and thought, thats just not big enough? Do you often wish your neighbors at the end of your street could see what's playing on your screen in perfect clarity? Has the urge to watch your television from the comfort of your grocery store ever come to mind? If you've answered yes to any of these questions, Matsushita has the answer for you!

At a recent trade show, Matsushita, maker of television sets for Panasonic announced its largest plasma screen to date. Their new plasma television is 103" in overall design. Measuring an astounding 2.4 metres (7.8 feet) by 1.4 (4.6 feet) meters and weighing in at a scant 215 kg (474 lbs) its clear that this television is not for the faint at heart. Girth is nothing without performance however and this set does not disappoint. With true 1920x1080 resolution and full HDTV compliance.

Panasonic has yet to release a price for this monstrosity, however if the price point for their closest cabinet, the 65" plasma selling at $7500 USD is any measure, expect not to see these popping in living rooms around the globe.

Matsushita has already claimed that this television is geared towards the business market and is set to release 5000 units per year.

Developer of the next generation high definition disks known as Blu-Ray, Sony received some potentially bad news earlier from one of their hardware suppliers. The diode that generates the blue laser capable of compressing high definition data seems to be in short supply. As with most new technology, there is always an infancy stage in which demand often outweighs supply.

Sony, Samsung,BenQ, Plextor, Lite-on, Philips, LG, Panasonic and IO Data all are said to be developing players for the Blu-Ray standard, as well as production of the Playstation 3, leaving the production bar quite high. A Chinese language newspaper Commercial Times has reported that both Sony and Nichia, the only suppliers of these diodes are already plagued with production troubles, and ramping up any new technology production takes time.

No official comment from Sony yet as to whether or not the production of these diodes will affect their promise of adequate launch numbers for the PS3.

Source:
The Register

This seems like a great week indeed for people who choose to use their Sony PSP like it was never intended to be used. After the PSP community rejoiced earlier about the 2.60 exploit that had been found, making it capable of accessing the kernel in updated PSP models, a stable 1.50 downgrader program has been launched.

The recent exploit for 2.60, although functional, has already reported making a few "bricks" in the hands of inexperienced PSP modders. Developed and tested as functional, this downgrade program uses the Grand Theft Auto eLoader program and successfully downgrades 2.50 and 2.60 PSPs to the vaulted 1.50, enabling happy gamers to play a slew of homebrew on their portable gaming devices.

Source:
PSP Updates

Update: It appears that shorty after posting this, a similar article was posted on Slashdot and in affect has taken down the PSP Updates website.