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While we liked the shiny unibody MacBooks, their new miniDisplay Port requires the use of a dual link DVI adapter to drive the 30″ CinemaDisplay. Not only is the adapter $100; it’s a custom cord that can’t exactly be spotted between the batteries and singing cards at the drug store. Now Apple has informed preorderers to expect their shipments no sooner than December 23rd—which just goes to show that in a fight between Steve Jobs and Santa Claus, Steve Jobs would win…or something like that. [9to5mac]

Source: Apple DisplayPort to Dual Link DVI Adapter Delayed to Dec. 23 [Apple]

In the midst of the financiapocalypse, with consumers stuffing money in mattresses and sprinkling themselves with holy water to avoid the layoff plague, you might think companies like Sony would slash and burn their typically premium prices to move whatever HDTVs and Blu-ray players and cameras they could. Nope. We talked to Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow this morning about why Sony is holding steady on prices and staying out of the low end, even as consumers are obviously looking spend less. He also dished about Circuit City’s fairly grim prospects, Blu-ray sales not meeting expectations and why Sony knew the economy was going deep into the crapper in February, before Alan Greenspan.

Blu-ray
Glasgow didn’t drop specific numbers, but he did mention that Blu-ray sales weren’t meeting their original expectations, thanks to the economy. So you might expect Sony to cut the price on its entry level BDP-S350 below its current $299 MSRP. But they’re not—Glasgow says they’re holding firm on that price as their low-end through the holiday season, though he said you can expect $249 before too long, which jibes with what he told me in the Spring. I couldn’t get him to commit to $199 next year. (BTW, You actually can pick up the S350 for $249 right now at Amazon, but going below $299 is entirely a retailer’s prerogative.) All that said, Sony is optimistic for Blu-ray overall because it’s the kind of “family gift” people buy in a recession when they’re staying home more—besides, they fully expect (as we’ve seen) players below $200, even under $150 from lower end manufacturers. They don’t see the adoption timeline slowed down either, as long as prices fall with their projections.

Why Sony Won’t Go Cheap
President of Sony Electronics Consumer Sales Jay Vandenbree said that Sony has never really played in the low end (in HDTVs or otherwise), and they won’t now. Why? Because, he says, during a recession, people stay home and actually trade up to better quality stuff since they’re holed up, which Sony thinks puts them in a great spot. Question for you guys: Is this true? Are you skipping vacation and getting a TV instead? To that end, Sony’s actually enforcing prices on some of its premium products like XBR7 and XBR8 HDTVs and its Alpha DSLRs, so that they’re same price at every single retailer—it’s not just a minimum advertised price, retailers cannot actually sell these items for cheaper than Sony says. It’s an interesting bit of psychology to maintain the premiumness of the brand during the recession, to say the least.

Circuit City
How bad is the Circuit City situation? Glasgow put it this way: No one in their industry has ever survived a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, especially not on that scale. He’s hopeful they’ll bounce back, and thinks they could, but it’s going to be “hard.”

Sony Knows
Lastly, an interesting bit of trivia: Sony knew the economy was going to hell back in February. How? Camcorder sales fell like a rock. Camcorders are the proverbial canary in the coal mine, plunging before everything else. (All of their vast historical data over the last few recessions back this up.) It’s because, Vandenbree says, there’s “nothing more discretionary than camcorders,” so it’s the first to go when consumers feel a crunch, making it an early warning sign.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing that’ll ring the opposite direction, when everything’s about to get better. Everything gets better at once. So we’ll know life’s good again when it actually it is.

Source: Why You Probably Won't Find Amazing Sony Deals for Christmas [Sony]

If you’re a longtime Giz reader, you may remember that on last New Years Eve, Rhys Millen was supposed to perform a backflip in a truck on live TV. One problem: he broke a bunch of his vertebrae during a practice run and had to cancel. Well, he’s gonna give it another go this year, and to get you all amped up for it, Red Bull has released the video of his crash. Want to see a dude do half a backflip in a pickup truck? Follow me, ye of strong stomachs.

Yep, about what you expected, eh? Here’s hoping he’s learned a thing or two during those painful months of rehabilitation.

Source: Rhys Millen Trying to Backflip a Truck Again, Releases Video of Spine-Breaking Botched Attempt [Natural Selection At Work]

Apart from remodeling their home, astronauts on board the International Space Station are installing a new piece of equipment that may save their lives one day. Or embarrass them. It can go either way: Containing 32 sensors in a device the size of a shoebox, the ENose—or electronic nose—will be able to detect even the most subtle inorganic and organic smells. Like Carl Walz, ISS astronaut and Director for NASA’s Advanced Capabilities puts it, “having experienced an air-quality event during my Expedition 4 mission on the space station, I wish I had the information that this ENose will provide future crews.” Yes Carl. Air-quality events are bad.

This component is vital for the safety of astronauts in space. Humans can tolerate some smells without noticing until it’s too late to react. As Margaret A. Ryan, the principal researcher of the ENose project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, puts it:

The ENose is a ‘first-responder’ that will alert crew members of possible contaminants in the air and also analyze and quantify targeted changes in cabin environment.

The ENose uses polymer films that react to different chemicals in the air by changing their electrical conductivity. It can analyze aerosols and vapors, as well as monitor chemical spills, and even send data to the JPL’s ENose computer, which can do more complex analysis. It’s extremely sensitive: Depending on the chemical, it can detect “fractional parts per million to 10,000 parts per million.”

What is surprising is that the ENose is not yet a permanent part of the ISS. In fact, it’s surprising that something like the ENose has never been a permanent part of any modern space mission except for the brief six-day demonstration that John Glenn did on STS-95, back in 1998. [JPL]

Source: NASA Adds Smell Detector To Space Station, Insert Fart Joke Here [Space]

What’s the team a Polyphony Digital doing besides finishing their upcoming Gran Turismo 5 racing simulator? Making some crazy ass tech demos with four PlayStation 3s hooked together to share rendering time. Not only can four PS3s create a 2160p image (that’s four 1080p images for a resolution of 3840×2160 blasted on Sony’s 4K projector), they can create one single 1080p image that runs at 240 FPS. 240! That’s faster than the human eye can see; and so fast, we imagine, that you can actually see into the future. The audience reception was described thusly:

It is as though you are following a real world event happening right in front of your face with your own eyes. Any and all flickering in the movement of the vehicle, in the smoke from the tires, etc. are completely gone, and you are almost tricked into believing you are watching something in real life. The guests at the event were baffled by the quality of the image, and stared in amazement at the screen.

Head on over to the Gran Turismo site to see the tech details of how they did this. [Gran Turismo via PS3 Fanboy]

Source: PS3 Tech Demo Runs Gran Turismo 5 in 2160p or 240 FPS [Gran Turismo]