Sony’s new Sountina speaker is one of the most striking new technologies on show at IFA in Berlin, the world’s largest consumer electronics fair. Over six feet tall, it’s a thin, sealed glass tube with a single wire running its length, which vibrates to produce a sound that’s the same 360 degrees around. (A speaker to provide bass notes sits lower down the column.)

Not being an expert on hifi history, it was only when I came to Germany’s Grundig a bit later that I realised the idea - if not the implementation - wasn’t new.

Squashed 1970s-style spheres with chrome waistbands in both black and white stood on stands or hung from the ceiling. Visitors could sit on a roundabout to appreciate the Audiorama 9000’s unchanging sound as they went round in a circle. The design is a modern revamp of Grundig’s Kugelstrahler 700 speaker, which as early as 1969 offered an all round sound.

To add a further 1970s touch, head over to Germany high-end TV manufacturer Loewe. While other companies are striving to make their models as thin as possible, Loewe is offering customised side panels to some of its less anorexic ones. Best of the bunch was a very strokeable, acid-tipped mohair option. A Loewe spokesman wasn’t sure whether the concept would reach the shops, so if you might spend over 2,000 euros on a TV with its own fur, let Loewe know.

The genuinely gorgeous and the jaw-droppingly gimmicky are rare sights on the floors of TVs and tumble dryers on show in in Berlin at IFA, which claims to be the world’s largest consumer electronics fair, but this year Sony takes the dubious accolade of having both on show within a few metres of each other.

First the sublime: Sony’s XEL-1 TV, based on OLED technology, will go on sale in Europe for the Christmas season for around 3,000 euros after being available in Japan for almost a year. With just an 11 inch diagonal, you don’t get much screen size for your money, but you do get a TV that’s just three millimetres thick and has strikingly more vivid picture than conventional LCD technology.

Of course, Sony isn’t going to be alone with OLED televisions for long. Samsung also has an impressive array to go on sale next year, though theirs will be pricy too — product executive Noh Young Joong told Reuters they would likely cost two to three times as much as equivalent-sized LCD units.

Turn round the corner at Sony’s stand, though, and things rapidly go downhill. Remember those artificial flowers from the 1980s, which gyrated around when you played music? Possibly not, but their spirit lives on and seems to  have possessed ‘Rolly‘. Rolly is egg-shaped, about the size of a hand grenade and plays tinny music. It rolls around (dances even) and flips lids covering its speakers. You can stream music from your mobile phone via a Bluetooth wireless network, or store several hundred songs on board. If you have time on your hands, you can even program its dance moves using a laptop.

You may be wondering what the point of it is, though seemingly not the design experts who gave it a prestigious Red Dot award. Rolly goes on sale for 350 euros in October:  roughly the cost of one of Sony’s Playstation 3 video games consoles.

A more deserving winner of a design award — and one that stays the right side of gimmicky — is an MP3 player from Korea’s iRiver that offers a minimalist, and miniature, take on Mickey Mouse. Mickey’s features are reduced to two small pastel-coloured spheres for ears and a larger one for the face. The ears act as a volume control and a track skip control respectively; the face has a socket for headphones and a discreet Disney logo. The price is right too, at around 40 euros when it goes on sale in Europe later this year.

Good news for fans of guilty pleasure shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Felicity” or “Dawson’s Creek” - TheWB.com is about to be up and running. With those shows and others, the website hopes to bring in those 18-34 year-olds so loved by advertisers.

Thing is, the website exists even though the television network doesn’t. Recall the WB was folded into UPN a couple of years ago to create the CW.  (Warner Brothers, however, is still one of the major TV studios).

Given that, it’s sort of strange that Craig Erwich, EVP of Warner Horizon Television which oversees TheWB.com, tells Silicon Alley Insider in  an interview that the thing separating TheWB.com, from other websites it – well, the name.

“The WB is a brand that resonates with fans and we are capitalizing on the history of the brand have created a destination site that targets a niche audience and that gives fans an active experience,” he says.

(Otherwise, Erwich gives very little away in the interview, declining to discuss specific details and numbers)

The site is supposed to launch later today, and it will be interesting to see how it stacks up against Hulu.com, which most people considered a big leap forward for professionally produced online video sites. Already, TheWB.com has some good reviews from those who got an early look.

TechCrunch:

While TheWB fares well in terms of features when compared to its competitors, its content still falls well behind the multi-network selection offered by Hulu. That said, it’s always nice to see more (legal) free television on the web, and the advanced search alone could help set TheWB apart from the sites offered by each individual network.

Keep an eye on: 

• Taylor Nelson Sofres continues to recommend rejecting a hostile takeover bid from WPP despite preferred suitor GfK giving up its takeover attempt (Reuters)
• Rising development costs may drive Microsoft Corp, Sony Corp and others to publish more video games themselves (Reuters)
• TiVo reached a deal with Entertainment Weekly that will allow its users automatically record TV shows suggested by the magazine (WSJ.com)

(Reuters photo of “Buffy” co-stars Sarah Michelle Gellar Michelle Trachtenberg at the 2001 Teen Choice Awards)

    At Europe’s biggest video games convention in Leipzig last week, evidence of a distinctive European flavour was largely absent, apart from in karaoke-style titles such as Activision’s Guitar Hero or Sony’s SingStar and sports games.
    Music from local bands and singers is a necessity for these titles, and the new World Tour edition of Guitar Hero delivered it in the form of artists such as Germany’s emo-lite Tokio Hotel, Swedish rockers Kent and Spanish 80s classic Radio Futura.
    Sony offered a more unusual twist with a Turkish Party edition of SingStar for release in Germany in November, to capitalise on the country’s large Turkish population as well as nostalgic holidaymakers.
    In the case of sports games, a title such the next annual revamp of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer is understandably expected to sell better in Europe than the United States.
    But outside these two genres, industry executives struggled to pin down differences. Konami’s head of Europe, Kunio Neo, noted that Europeans did not take to games with manga-style graphics as readily as gamers in the company’s Japanese homeland. Konami also said it expected one game in development, Lords of Shadow, to appeal particularly to European sensibilities — early artwork leans heavily on director Guillermo del Toro’s film Pan’s Labyrinth, which was set in Spain.
    Neo’s counterpart at Electronic Arts, Jens Uwe Intat, made similar claims for Mirror’s Edge, which he said had a high-end aesthetic which he hoped would be particularly successful in Europe.
    But Intat in general saw little difference between what made a hit game in Europe compared to the United States.
    “With the exception of American football all franchises that work in the U.S. work in Europe too — though as in the movie industry you see slightly different top tens,” he told Reuters just before the start of the Leipzig event.
    Yet critics can easily point to distinctive traditions of French, Italian and British film alongside Hollywood and Japanese movies, which has no equivalent in video games. Why do you think this is? Does it bother you?

    The rise of casual video gaming may have grabbed the headlines over the past couple of years, but the more hardcore end of the market dominated at Europe’s biggest gaming convention in Leipzig last week.
    Apart from new iterations of popular karaoke-style games such as Activision’s Guitar Hero, Electronic Arts‘ RockBand and Sony’s SingStar, which arguably kick-started the trend of easy-to-play casual fare, the world’s biggest games publishers focused on products for their core audience.
    Upcoming release Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 was a case in point. Not only does the game involve sending dozens of types of futuristic military unit across apocalyptic landscapes, but EA was marketing it in part on the basis that one of the
actresses in it, Jenny McCarthy, is a former Playboy playmate of the year.
    Most publishers were playing it safe, focusing on sequels such as a new version of The Sims – the virtual doll’s house franchise which has sold over 100 million copies since launch in 200? — or movie tie-ins such as a game based on new James Bond film Quantum of Solace.
    True innovation was thin on the ground, at least on a whistle-stop tour view of the main publishers’ offerings. Ubisoft demoed a game in the same genre as Command and Conquer which could be fully voice-controlled — apparently a first for consoles — while Sony previewed LittleBigPlanet. This marries the hot theme of user-designed content (think YouTube or MySpace) to an age-old platforming mechanic, the basics of which that would be familiar to anyone who had played Nintendo’s Mario games.
    Cute sack-doll characters jump over flames and on to rising platforms, but the novelty is that most of the game, from the characters’ outfits and personalities to the landscapes over which they clamber can be modified by players and shared online.
    But for two of the other most hotly awaited games of the season, there was no news, albeit for opposite reasons. EA’s Spore, in which players guide a lifeform in the Darwinian struggle from primaeval soup to interplanetary conflict, is due out on Sept. 4 and had already been presented in near-final form at other events, so did not get a spot in EA’s main presentation.
    World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, the next installment of the online role-playing game that has over 10 million subscribers — was available to play in an early form, but it remained unclear when the final version would be on sale. A spokesman for Activision unit Blizzard could not even confirm it would definitely be out before Christmas.

    * Where do you think gaming is going in the run-up to this year’s holiday season? Were you at the Leipzig Games Convention? Tell us what you think below.

(Updates earlier post to clarify deal terms)

After four years of recriminations and in-fighting between executives from Sony Music and executives from BMG Music Entertainment, Tokyo-based Sony Corp has decided to end the mutual pain of a controversial merger and take full control of Sony BMG.

Artists like Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen and Justin Timberlake will now record under a new banner: Sony Music Entertainment Inc.

The FT had reported in June that Bertelsmann was looking for $1.2 billion-$1.5 billion for its 50 percent stake in Sony BMG, but it looks like the German media company settled for $600 million-$900 million — the exact sum depends on how you do the math.

Basically, Sony said it is paying $600 million cash to Bertelsmann, which will also get half of another $600 million in cash on Sony BMG’s balance sheet for a grand total of $900 million. The deal values Sony BMG at $1.2 billion. (UPDATE: You can argue that half of Sony BMG’s cash belonged to Sony, so its total cost was $900 million but Sony says it hadn’t consolidated Sony BMG’s cash. Bertelsmann adds that the value to it was higher than $1.2 billion, after taking into account tax breaks)

Will full ownership by Sony give the record label a new lease on life? According to Music & Copyright research, Sony BMG ranks second in the music industry with a 20.1 percent market share, behind Universal Music’s 28.8 percent. Here’s what some analysts told our correspondents in Tokyo and London:

Daiwa Institute of Research analyst Kazuharu Miura

Sony BMG is a company whose sales have been on a declining trend. But it has managed to post profits so far thanks in part to its restructuring efforts. There is no reason to see this as particularly negative. But I don’t think this is something that prompts investors to chase Sony shares, either.
Sony’s cash out is $600 million, while Sony BMG has been posting after-tax profit of about $100 million to $200 million. Of that profits, Bertelsmann’s portion will come to Sony after the deal. So, Sony can expect a return of about $50 million to $100 million for a $600 million investment. That is not a bad
investment.

Informa music analyst Simon Dyson

It would appear that Bertelsmann was getting out of the music industry altogether but actually they’ll still deal with some management and rights, which signals that they think there’s money to be made, just not in retail.
I’m probably a little more pessimistic than most people. I’m very sceptical as to whether music sales are going to return to growth for a good five or six years.
Sony is big in music and games, for example with Guitar Hero, for which artists seem keen to sign up. I wouldn’t think that actually owning the music company would need to be a part of it.
BMG on the surface seems to have got the most out of it. But they’re very clever people at Sony, perhaps they’ve got some kind of plan.

Jupiter music analyst Mark Mulligan

This is absolutely related to the fact that the music industry is in a really difficult time. But it has much if not more to do with Bertelsmann refocusing itself. What Bertelsmann really created was a cross-media megalith, trying to do too many things across too many areas. Owning everything isn’t necessarily the best way of getting the most out of a media company.
The timing and the importance of getting this done has been intensified by the state of the music industry. The music industry’s declining but some time in the next couple of years the decline will slow. Digital music sales will ultimately catch up with the rate at which CD sales are declining.

(Photo: Reuters)

Hear that? It’s the sound of sighs. Sirius Satellite Radio has finally completed the purchase of rival XM Satellite Radio.

“The completion comes after a marathon period of government scrutiny that ended late last week when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved the deal, which was first announced 17 months ago,” Reuters reports.

Now that the deal is done, it’ll be interesting to see whether it was worth the wait. Neither company has posted a profit on its own, and, in fact, they have posted huge losses along the way as they’ve paid to build up subscribers.

RBC analyst David Bank put it this way in a note to clients: “While merger is beneficial for Sirius, we remain cautious as significant execution risk exists implementing synergies and recognition of synergies is probably already priced into stock.”

While they will no longer be fighting one another, they will still have to convince audiences to pick satellite radio over traditional radio, digital audio players and iPods. That’s no easy task, particularly when people are worried about gas prices, food costs, a lousy housing market and a fragile job picture. Do people really want to be spending their extra cash on satellite radio?

Keep an eye on:

• Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia reported a quarterly profit, buoyed by higher magazine advertising sales and revenue from deals to label various products with its brand (Reuters)
• AMC’s “Mad Men,” coming off 16 Emmy nominations, scored record ratings in its second-season premiere, drawing nearly 2 million viewers (LA Times)
• The Los Angeles Times new monthly Sunday magazine, LA, will debut on September 7 (Folio)
• Sony Corp posted a bigger-than-expected 47 percent fall in quarterly profit and cut its outlook, hurt by its struggling mobile phone joint venture with Sweden’s Ericsson, while rival Matsushita nearly doubled its profit on rising flat TV sales (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

Camping out at the Sun Valley Lodge bar on day 2 of Allen & Co’s annual Sun Valley mogul fest — a time honored tradition — is kind of like Disneyland for folks like us.

Slightly to extremely inebriated tycoons of the media and tech industry wander the lobby huddled in small groups chatting about stuff that few will remember in a few hours, while reporters try to keep pace with the liquor consumption and the conversation.

A quick snapshot:

• Google co-founder Sergey Brin on Yahoo: “Good company, good partner. A lot of excitement going on. For recent events, talk to the CEO.” We think he meant Yahoo’s Yang, who has yet to show up. Brin then realizes that standing next to him is Sony Executive Deputy President Katsumi Ihara. Ihara to Brin: “We called you last year about something and we never heard from you!” Brin to Ihara: “I have something for your TVs.” Out of nowhere, Sony CFO Rob Wiesenthal jumps in to rescue Ihara. Fun’s over.
• While I was chatting up Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg jumped in: “If he offered cable service in New York City, I’d switch in a second!” Brian fires back: “Let me tell you. Here’s the next President of the United States.” (We think he meant the next next President)
• Winner of high wattage table of the night:  Google co-founder Larry Page, Legg Mason’s Bill Miller (Yahoo investor), former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, Yahoo President Sue Decker, Davis Advisors’s Christopher Davis, Sergey Brin. In response to a question about what everyone talked about, Brin tells the AP reporter Jeremy Herron that he learned about money markets. 

(Photo: Reuters/Rick Wilking / (l to r) Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sergey Brin, Allen & Co.’s Nancy Peretsman at Sun Valley 2007)

Yahoo’s stock price was rescued (yet again) by rumors that Microsoft is getting ready to bid for the web company’s search business (yet again).

The shares had looked set to fall below $19.18 on Wednesday — the level they stood at on January 31 before Microsoft first announced a takeover bid for Yahoo. But thanks to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo shares jumped about 6 percent in electronic trading early in the morning.

If this reversal of fortune sounds familiar, it should. These days, Yahoo’s stock seems more likely to rise on speculation about possible deals than anything having to do with its actual business. Check back on a MediaFile posting from June 24 that points out Yahoo shares jumped 15 percent after TechCrunch reported that it was back in takeover talks with Microsoft.

Here’s what the Wall Street Journal is saying about the latest talks:

“Microsoft Corp., positioning itself for a new run for Yahoo Inc.’s search business, has approached other media companies in recent days about joining it in a deal that would effectively lead to Yahoo’s breakup, say people familiar with the discussions.

Microsoft has held discussions with Time Warner Inc. and News Corp, among others, say people involved in the talks.”

Investors seem pretty pumped about the report, given the stock’s early morning surge. But they may want to read a bit further — and keep in mind all the past speculation that hasn’t resulted in a Microhoo deal — before getting too bullish.

“Some of the people familiar with these talks say they are preliminary and unlikely to result in a deal with Yahoo. Indeed, two weeks ago, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer called Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock to suggest they meet to discuss a new idea involving other partners, according to a person familiar with the matter. The meeting, scheduled for Monday, was subsequently canceled by Microsoft, which Yahoo took as a sign that Mr. Ballmer’s efforts to find a partner have so far failed.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that the Justice Department has opened a formal antitrust investigation into the advertising deal between Yahoo and Google.

“It doesn’t mean they have drawn any conclusions,” Peter Guryan, a partner with Fried Frank and formerly an antitrust lawyer in the Justice Department, told the newspaper. But “it is a significant step beyond a request for voluntary information,” he said. “It demonstrates that the DOJ clearly has questions.”

Keep an eye on:

• The 2008 presidential race, which has already drawn a record number of dollars and voters, is poised to shatter another record: the amount of money spent on television advertisements (Reuters)
• Sony Corp is seeing little or no sign of softer demand among U.S. consumers for its range of digital TVs, cameras and computer goods despite a weakening economy, a top regional executive said (Reuters)
• “Kit Kittredge: American Girl” has her work cut out for her as she expands to movie theaters across North America on Wednesday after two weekends of solid returns in limited release (Hollywood Reporter)

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

The countdown is underway in Hollywood, with just hours to go before the contract covering 120,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild expires. What happens next is anybody’s guess, though it would be some time before actors walked off the job.

Indeed, SAG president Alan Rosenberg said in a statement that it had “taken no steps to initiate a strike authorization vote” and that any speculation was “simply a distraction.”

The Hollywood Reporter writes that several options are left for the guild and the studios. “They could negotiate a contract extension, which could be by day, week or month, and keep talking; the studios could lock out the actors; or SAG could seek a strike-authorization vote from its membership, which will be at least a two-week process as the negotiating committee must vote on whether to bring a strike.”

SAG’s contract talks have bogged down on some of the same issues that prompted the strike by screenwriters, who walked off the job late last year and stayed away for months.

In the meantime, most film production has already shut down since the studios don’t want the risk of their projects being interrupted by a strike, Variety reports. It said that “TV production has also ratcheted down but not stopped completely.”

This all sounds very, very familiar.

Keep an eye on:

• Sony Pictures’ latest ”Hancock” opens in theaters on Wednesday and will be available –after its theater run but before release on DVD — over the Internet, directly to viewers’ television sets, if they own a Sony Bravia TV with a Web connection (NY Times)
• Publicis Groupe’s ZenithOptimedia lowered its U.S. ad spending forecast, predicting that ad spending in the U.S. will increase 3.4% in 2008. That figure is down from a 3.7% forecast Zenith made in March (WSJ.com)
• MTV is expected to unveil a $50 million push into selling downloadable songs in the open source, iPod-friendly format through its Rhapsody digital-music service (NY Post)
• Marc Andreessen, who founded Netscape, Opsware and Ning, is joining Facebook’s board of directors (TechCrunch)
• Jon Friedman rolls out his nominees for the 10 most intriguing media industry headlines so far in 2008 (MarketWatch.com)