LATEST ADDITIONS

Sony announced on Thursday that the next firmware update for the PlayStation 3 (v. 2.20) will add BD-Live capabilities, sometimes called Profile 2.0, to the game console that also happens to be a Blu-ray player. Scheduled for release in late March, this update will make the PS3 the first BD-Live device to become available since the format launched over a year ago.

My first impression of the mStation was that it had grown out of the ground. Having just uncrated it, I knew it hadn’t really sprung out of the carpet, of course. Yet somehow it seemed more like a young stand of trees than a floorstanding iPod docking system. If I waited long enough, would this self-contained trio of cylinders erupt in branches and leaves? No, and yet there was something organic about it. The pair of metal speaker tubes seemed to rise up from the base, while the subwoofer drum suspended between them seemed to levitate in midair. In addition to having a whiff of the arboreal, it also resembled a headless robot.