“Home” is a real-time interactive online world much like Linden Lab’s “Second Life” and other so-called “metaverse,” or a virtual world in computer graphics on a personal computer that allows people to walk around and interact with each other.

The product had been initially promised for last year. But in September, Sony delayed its debut until early this year to spend more time to create a better product.

Sony is delaying the start of its “Home” virtual world for its PlayStation 3 video game machine until the latter half of this year — the second time the Japanese electronics and entertainment company has postponed the online interactive service.

Sony has had previous delay problems with PlayStation3. The machine went on sale in the U.S. and Japan late 2006, but its European launch was postponed for several months due to production problems.

The version of “Home” promised for later this year is called an “open beta,” which means it isn’t officially finished and will keep evolving with new services and features being added later.

Kaz Hira, head of the Sony game business, said in a statement that the company needs to deliver a more focused gaming service than what Home can deliver today.

“A spokeswoman said the company plans to launch Home almost simultaneously world-wide in the fall. The virtual worlds will look the same in all of the regions, but they won’t be connected to one another because of language and billing considerations.” [ WSJ ]

Sony Electronics has announced 2 new Blu-ray recorders for the Japanese market: the BDZ-A70 and BDZ-T90. Both recorders will feature the ability to read and write both Blu-ray and DVD media, as well as read any CD media. Both will feature large hard drives - the A70 comes with a 320GB hard drive, the T90 with the larger 500GB hard drive - that the machine can easily record and playback material in the popular AVCHD format.
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Will Blu-ray replace previous DVDs? Its manufacturers hope so. In the meantime, JVC has developed a Blu-ray/DVD combo disc with an approximate 33.5-GB capacity, allowing for the release of video in both formats on a single disc. But Blu-ray is not alone in the marketplace. A few other formats are competing for a share of the DVD market.

The other big player is HD-DVD, also called AOD (Advanced Optical Disc), which was developed by electronics giants Toshiba and NEC. HD-DVD was actually in the works before regular DVD, but it didn’t begin real development until 2003.
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