Sony Corp is bringing baseball to America's living rooms on its PlayStation 3 video game console

Sony Corp is bringing baseball to America’s living rooms on its PlayStation 3 video game console, ratcheting up the competition in the race to become the digital hub of the home.Sony not only ups the ante in its rivalry with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console, but also positions itself as something of a challenger to cable companies and satellite television providers that have long been broadcasting sports to viewers in the United States.”This is one of the biggest deals we’re bringing to the PS3, and it won’t be the last one, there’s lots of conversations going on,” said Peter Dille, senior vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Sony, which has an installed base of 12 million PS3 consoles in the United States, will offer games in high-definition through Major League Baseball’s MLB.TV, an Internet subscription service that is already available on computers and smartphones.MLB charges $25 a month, or $120 a year, for a premium subscription.Sony designed a custom interface for the offering, and users can scroll through live-streaming or archived games. The PS3 provides the functionality of a digital video recorder, allowing viewers to pause, fast-forward and rewind, and to jump to a particular inning in any game on the schedule.

However, users will not be able to watch live games of teams in their local market, which are subject to local blackout rules.PS3 users will need to be subscribers to the free PlayStation Network (PSN) to access MLB.TV. PSN has 20 million members in North America.

Sony and Microsoft have been duking it out to control entertainment in the living room beyond games, offering movies, shows and videos through their subscriber networks, PSN and Xbox Live.Both offer streaming movies through Netflix, and have been hunting for deals that can help transform their gaming consoles into one-stop-shops for content.”We’re excited about bringing MLB onto the console this is something you can’t find on any other console,” Dille said.

In Europe, Microsoft has struck deals with Vivendi unit Canal Plus and British pay-TV broadcaster BSkyB to provide content through the console, including soccer matches.Sony’s PS3 has trailed Nintendo’s Wii, the market leader, and the Xbox in the U.S. market, although the PS3 has generated momentum since a price cut to $299 last year.MLB.TV is also available on the Roku set-top box and through media provider Boxee.(Reuters)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II

Call of Duty zoom

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is all the rage at the moment. And with a simultaneous release across the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, it’s definitely worth the effort to see how the game looks on all of them. It’s clear that Infinity Ward spent a lot of time polishing the engine for speed. The game runs great on both of the consoles and doesn’t require a beast of a computer to run well. We could crank up the resolution and all the high-quality settings with the $160 Radeon HD 5770 and play the game stutter-free. As usual, the PC version of the game looks better, but that’s mainly due to higher-resolution textures and the ability to crank up antialiasing and anisotropic filtering settings. Outside of a few blurry textures on the PlayStation 3, the two console versions look largely the same.

We captured the following shots at 720p across both consoles and the PC to keep everything even. On the PC, we enabled all the highest-quality settings, as well as 4x antialiasing and 8x anisotropic filtering. On the consoles, we captured the images directly over HDMI using the Matrox MXO2 Mini and used FRAPs to capture screenshots on the PC. The first shot represents a shrunk-down version of the originals, and the second zoomed-in set is representative of an actual pixel-to-pixel comparison.

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The 2010 World Cup is going 3-D.Sony Corp

sony corp

The 2010 World Cup is going 3-D.Sony Corp. said Friday it has signed a deal with FIFA, the international football governing body, to record up to 25 World Cup games in 3-D – a technology that gives viewers an illusion of depth on the screen.The Japanese electronics and entertainment company is one of several electronics makers planning or working on 3-D technology for TVs and movies. Sony makes 3-D capable video cameras, and plans to sell 3-D TVs for homes next year.People wear special glasses to see 3-D footage because the illusion of dimension is created by sending different images to the left and the right eye, although manufacturers are working on upgrades that will show 3-D without glasses.Chief Executive Howard Stringer expressed his enthusiasm for watching a soccer game in 3-D in an interview this week.”I thought that was very cool,” he said at Tokyo headquarters.

Most 3-D releases so far have been animation films but the feature is gradually spreading to other genres, such as the soon-to-be-released sci-fi epic “Avatar.”Stringer said sports was definitely one area 3-D could display its strengths.He also said he wanted to see “thoughtful” movies someday being made in 3-D. He ruled out Michael Jackson videos and the next “Spider-Man” movie as 3-D possibilities.

For now, 3-D video of the World Cup in South Africa won’t be shown in TV broadcast for homes, according to Sony, which makes Bravia TVs, Walkman portable players and PlayStation 3 game consoles.They will be shown at Sony booths at FIFA events in Berlin, London, Mexico City, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Rome and Sydney in June and July. Highlights will be shown in Sony showrooms, and a video version will be sold through Sony Pictures.”It’s a great opportunity to get people to experience 3-D firsthand,” said Sony spokesman Atsuo Omagari.