Sony Japan has introduced a new TV tuner for the PlayStation 3 dubbed "torne," a very similar product to Sony Europe's PlayTV hardware.

Torne will allow gamers to watch digital terrestrial broadcasts on their PS3 as well as record the shows to the internal HDD or an external one. The device connects via the USB port and includes a digital TV guide.

Recorded shows can be transferred to a PSP as well.

The Torne will be released in Japan in March for 9,980 yen ($109 USD) and Sony will be releasing a "PlayStation 3 Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting Recorder Pack" bundle at the same time.

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Alan Ellis, the former admin of the giant private torrent tracker OiNK, has been found not guilty on the charge of conspiracy to defraud, and will walk free.

At its peak, the indexing site had 200,000 members which had shared over 21 million music files.

The prosecutors had claimed that Ellis was receiving £11,000 a month in donations, and that there was $300,000 USD in Ellis' PayPal account. They did not mention that donations went towards paying the servers and hosting fees of the popular site. Ellis says any "surplus" from a monthly donation eventually went towards buying a new server. Ellis did admit, however, that he had £20,000 in savings when the police raided his home.

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Google and T-Mobile have slashed the price of the Nexus One for T-Mobile upgraders, dropping the price from $379 to $279, while giving refunds to those who paid the full price in the last week.

To be eligible, you must have had T-Mo service for 22 months since your "last upgrade or new contract." You must also be an individual customer, not on a family plan, or on a business account.

To purchase the phone without upgrading or without a new contract, the phone costs $530 unlocked. With a new two-year contract the phone costs $180.

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Sony has revealed today that besides seeing huge hardware sales for the PlayStation 3, revenue from the PlayStation Network (PSN) set a new all-time record in December as well.

Overall, revenue increased 155 percent in the US, year-on-year, setting up the largest revenue month for the service to date. Sony did not reveal the exact figures, however.

"Final Fantasy VIII" was far and away the most downloaded game of the month, followed by "PixelJunk Shooter."

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Nintendo will officially announce a "DS 2" handheld within 8 months, says top video game industry analyst Jesse Divnich, despite a record sales year for the DS/DSi in 2009.

"Even though the Nintendo DS posted a record year in 2009, EEDAR expects Nintendo to make an official announcement on the DS2 within the next eight months," wrote Divnich in a note. "Nintendo has always had a controlling stake in the handheld market, despite facing numerous competitors, and EEDAR believes one of the biggest reasons for Nintendo's success in the handheld market is their ability to remove opportunity gaps for competitors to enter. Nintendo's transition from the GBA to the DS, a year earlier than anticipated, was a brilliant strategy to remove any upper hand the Sony PSP could have by being first to market."

The new hardware will also help Nintendo to somewhat curb the piracy market, which will in turn give publishers more reason to invest in handheld gaming.

"Piracy continues to be an issue, not just for Nintendo, but for its third-party publishers as well. Whilst the release of the DSi has slowed down piracy, that slow down will only be temporary as hackers have already managed to bypass the new security systems built into the hardware," he added, via GI.biz.

Many publishers have said that they will continue to move money away from handhelds and towards consoles such as the XBox 360 and PS3, thanks to stronger sales.

Says Divnich: "Many publishers including Sega, Capcom, and now Ubisoft have all expressed that they may be reducing their exposure to Nintendo's consoles, which will likely lead to heavy declines in both hardware and software sales for the Nintendo DS."

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NBC has reported this week that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has moved on from the iPhone to the Nexus One, the latest Android device, and a direct rival to Apple's product.

When asked what his favorite phone device was, "Woz" said "Well, it's the latest one. It's a non-Apple product, but it's a gadget that just came out yesterday." This was one day after the Nexus One was released.

The news may not be so surprising especially since Woz has jailbroken his iPhone 3G, and even criticized Apple for the first iPhone and its lack of 3G support.

After the report however, Woz cleared up any misunderstandings by admitting that the Nexus One is in fact is favorite new gadget but that he still owns two iPhones, and has been known to carry three phones on him at one time.

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Earlier this week, Gawker offered up to $100,000 USD to anyone who could bring concrete proof of the existence of the much-hyped Apple Tablet, and they announced a winner today, with that winner being Apple itself after the company sent a cease-and-desist letter which calls for the end of the search for the "unannounced and highly confidential" product.

The letter, from Apple's law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, says: "While Apple values and appreciates vibrant public commentary about its products, we believe you and your company crossed the line by offering a bounty for the theft of Apple's trade secrets. Such an offer is illegal and Apple insists that you immediately discontinue the Scavenger Hunt. Apple has maintained the types of information and things you are soliciting ... in strict confidence."

The letter:

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Microsoft has gone in a different direction then Google and Yahoo, saying that it has no plans of exiting the Chinese search engine market.

In speaking of the recent cyber-attack on Google, CEO Steve Ballmer said: "There are attacks every day. I don't think there was anything unusual, so I don't understand. We're attacked every day from all parts of the world and I think everybody else is too. We didn't see anything out of the ordinary."

Earlier this week, Google threatened to pull their service from China after they were attacked by hackers trying to gain access to human rights activists' Gmail accounts. China says they will stay if Beijing can come to an agreement on freedom of information.

When asked if Microsoft may follow Google (and Yahoo) out of China, Ballmer was frank. "I don't understand how that helps anything. I don't understand how that helps us and I don't understand how that helps China."

Google has a 30 percent market share in China, behind Baidu at 60 percent. Microsoft's' Bing has under 4 percent.

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According to the latest NPD figures, the struggling video game industry ended 2009 on a high note, with hardware sales jumping 16 percent, offsetting a dip in software sales. Overall, sales jumped 4 percent to a record $5.5 billion USD.

Nintendo dominated the hardware and software charts, winning the month easily, spurred by promotions from Amazon and Wal-Mart. The Wii sold 3.8 million units and the DS/DSi sold 3.31 million units. In the software chart, Nintendo had 6 of the top 10 sellers, including the top 3 (if you split Modern Warfare 2 into separate console sales).

"We expected to have a good holiday and this was a great reaffirmation of that," added Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing.

PlayStation 3 sales jumped 90 percent to 1.36 million units, and the Xbox 360 was slightly behind at 1.31 million units sold for the month. The PSP got crushed in the handheld market battle, selling just 656,000 units.

Industry analyst Michael Pachter says he sees good things for 2010, with popular sequels set for release such as God of War 3 and the new Bioshock.

The numbers:

PlayStation 2 333.2K
PlayStation 3 1.36M
PSP 654.7K
Xbox 360 1.31M
Wii 3.81M
Nintendo DS 3.31M

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