Las Vegas – Sony chairman Sir Howard Stringer brought megastar
Will Smith and director Barry Sonnenfeld to the stage of its 2012 International
CES press conference Monday to promote their forthcoming “Men In Black 3 — 3D”
movie and to underscore Sony’s ongoing commitment to the 3D lens-to-living room
movement.
But the real stars of the press event were the multi-screen,
interconnected products that Sony is championing this week to enable consumers
to multi-task in their digital entertainment, work and communications.
Stringer brought out Sony Corp. executive deputy president Kazuo Hirai to play up Sony’s convergence of
its multi-fronted gaming, mobile devices, smart TV and content delivery businesses into a play- what you want,
anywhere you-want proposition.
“We’ve suggested that only Sony can offer a truly unique
convergence of hardware, content and network services,” Hirai said.
Hirai point out that the new Sony Entertainment Network (SEN),
including the Music Unlimited streaming service, is a key part of its tablets,
smartphones and smart TV products.
The centralized media distribution portal also includes Video
Unlimited and other services, giving users a wallet for all of their media
purchases.
Hirai also pointed out that SEN play a big role on the
PlayStation 3 and forthcoming PlayStation Vita handheld game player, which will
include Music Unlimited streaming.
The portable player, which launched in Japan late last year, has
sold 500,000 units as of January 5th. That’s an average of 25,000 Vitas sold
per day, Hirai said.
Hirai also said a Netflix App is planned for the device when it
launches in the United States and Europe on February 22.
In addition, Sony said that many of the classic PlayStation games
will be adapted for playback on some of its newest smartphone products that
will be coming from newly named Sony Mobile Communications (formerly Sony
Ericsson) company that will market Sony branded mobile phones in North America,
including the new Xperia ion LTE smartphone that will be launched exclusively
through AT&T this spring, featuring a 12MP digital camera, Android platform
and high resolution 4.6-inch screen, among other features.
Sony will also offer the Xperia S HD powerhouse globally in March
that will feature a 12MP camera with Exmor R processor, 4.3-inch HD screen, and
1.5GHz dual-core processor.
Both will launch with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) platforms that
will be upgradeable to 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Sony also announced the new Play Memories Online Cloud-based imaging
service for personal photos and videos taken with camcorders, cameras,
smartphones or stored on PCs.
A Play Memories Local app for Android and iOS devices will
wirelessly connect smartphones and tablets with Sony’s new Bloggie Live pocket
cam that streams live recordings to the Internet.
Play Memories Studio, meanwhile, is a new PlayStation3
application that combines the power of the PS3 and controller to share and edit
digital photos and videos in a game-like approach.
In TV, Sony said it will expand its offering of Google TV
products in 2012 including the NSZ-GP9 3D Blu-ray Disc player powered by Google
TV, and including a QWERTY keyboard/remote, Android Market, and apps including:
HBO Go, Netflix, Pandora, YouTube and others.
The company will also offer the NSZ-GS7 Network Media Player
powered by Google TV, offering a set-top box add-on from those without a fully
integrated Smart TV system.
The company also revealed a little more information about its
Crystal LED TV technology, which is being shown at a technology statement this
week. The 55-inch prototype display is a self-emitting LED display using LEDs
as light source. Ultrafine LEDs are mounted to each of the Red-Green-Blue (RGB)
colors equivalent to the number of pixels.
The RGB LED light source mounted directly on the front of the
display, is said to dramatically improve light-use efficiency.
Images are said to have approximately 3.5 times higher photopic
contrast, 1.4 times wider color gamut, and 10 times faster video image response
time than today’s LCDs.
Sony has no market plans and could spokesman could not say if the
company is favor Crystal LED as its next generation display technology over
OLED based systems it has shown many times in the past.
