Sony unleashes products in Las Vegas

EXECUTIVES FROM Sony have been telling all and sundry about the firm's televisions, Vaio notebooks and home cinema set-ups at CES in Las Vegas.

Today the company said that its Bravia TVs will enhance people's homes, give access to online television on demand, and enable them to 'experience an immersive 3D world'. Although this would usually not be something you would associate with your living room, Sony said that its televisions have a 'unique monolithic design', so don't invite any monkeys over to watch 2001 A Space Odyssey on Blu-ray. Indeed the firm does not appear to know quite who to pitch to, serious movie watchers or style conscious gits.

"The BRAVIA 2010 line-up will change the way you view your TV forever. Go on an incredible 3D journey in full HD with a built-in Freeview HD tuner, connect to a world of online entertainment and enjoy the beauty of a cinematic screen or simply add a unique Monolithic Design statement to your home," it tells us. Other alarming facts about the telly include the announcement that the first on-demand services to be provided over it come from the UK's channel 5. Movies will be taken care of by letterbox botherers Lovefilm.

Should any Nathan Barley's make the jump for one of the units, they will be glad of their on-screen access to Facebook and those sort of sites. This means that they can revel in their own status updates while watching high definition documentaries about Swedish music producers and the latest fashion calamities. Watching 3D television will of course involve wearing special glasses, and Sony said it would be compatible with Sky's service, meaning that viewers will be able to watch the World Cup in high quality 3D glory.

Other features include face recognition technology, so the TV can have some sort of control over who watches what, dims itself if no one is watching it, and make recommendations about programmes you might like based on your viewing habits. The full range will be available in the UK late February 2010.

Although a lot of the above come with built-in Blu ray players Sony has also released some standalone units too, which are designed to complement the monolithic televisions. The new disc players offer both 5.1 channel and 2.1 channel Blu-ray along with, again, Internet video and tools for streaming music, videos and photos across a home network.

The Vaio, Sony's notebook line also saw updates, and the firm announced the tantalisingly named F, S and Y series. The S series seem to be the most serious units for business users, although we don't know whether this is where they get their name from. Sony said these were designed for those doing business on the move, while the Y series is pitched at lightweight users. Sorry, they are lightweight units. Both, however, share the same size screen at 13.3-inch.

While the S comes with mobile connection tools as standard, Sony's Everywair, it is an additional option on the Y series. The S series is definitely the beefier model and offers Intel Core processors, a Nvidia Geforce 310m graphics card, and 512MB of GDDR3 memory. Both will be released by February this year. Like the Y series, the F Vaios are also heavy on the entertainment side, and include a Blu-ray disc writer, the Geforce GT330 graphics card and 1GB of GDDR3 VRAM. The F Series notebooks will be released on 18th January. µ