AfterTek

For months Sony has been able to use the price on their Playstation 3 by stating that it was the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market at the time. But all that is about to change. Sony has decided to create its second generation BDP-S300, which always had a value of $599 and decrease that down to $499 for Father’s Day.

At $499 the player now officially bests the 60GB, $550 to $599.99 (depending where you look) 60 GB PS3 (the 20GBer having been culled). The smarts of such a move have to be questioned however since while Sony cannot afford to fall any further behind HD DVD in the pricing war, the ‘cheapest Blu-ray player on the market’ label certainly helped bulk up the PS3’s sales.

German manufacturer Siedle has taken away prizes in three important design competitions for its new in-house telephones. Within a few weeks, it won the red dot design award, the iF product design award, and the Innovation and Design Award at the Milan LivinLuce-EnerMotive trade fair.

In two of the competitions, the Siedle telephones made it among the elite of the prize-winners: in the red dot design award, they received the rating “best of the best”, while at LivinLuce they made it to the “Top Selection Design”. These honours are reserved for supreme products, like the Executone phone with a design that the experts on the jury not only regard as inspired but also as pointing the way to the future.

Unlike the Xbox 360, the 2.5-inch hard disk drive inside the PlayStation 3 can be upgraded by the user at any time. Sony’s Korean division appears to be well aware of this, and according to official information posted on the PlayStation Korea website, the territory will be getting an 80GB hard drive inside the machine when it launches on June 16. Neither the 20 GB nor the 60 GB PS3 consoles will be available in South Korea.