We interrupt the game news with hardware "news" (more sales figures, an exec says something quotable, intercorporate politics, and questions about game format).

Parts of the porn industry may have "sided" with HD-DVD, but according to NPD sales figures, Blu-ray is still way ahead. Not that the HD-DVD Xbox 360 add-on isn't moving: the MS hardware sold an impressive 92,000 units in the last two months of 2006! But Sony's Blu-ray has sold 687,000 units in the PS3.

Still, Richard Parsons, CEO of Time Warner (Time Warner supports both HD-DVD and Blu-ray) says the PS3 sales figure doesn't necessarily mean Blu-ray is winning the format war. "Do I think that the game console platform is really going to drive the conversion?" Parsons said, "I don't think so. People get those things [PS3s] to play games, not watch movies."

The real winner will be determined by the sales of HD-DVD and Blu-ray players. Or both could end up as losers with some companies opting to manufacture a compromise. Warner Brothers is fielding Total HD, a disc that can play both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD media. Meanwhile, LG Electronics has its Super Multi Blue player which plays both formats.

What would be interesting would be a hybrid HD-DVD/Blu-ray format. That should end all this brouhaha about which HD-DVD versus Blu-ray, so we can finally stop arguing about disc players and start talking about what matters most: game titles. Right? Right?

Talk about a comeback - LG Electronics is apparently giving their dual-format concept another shot. They've just announced that they'll be releasing details on the player at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

For the guys who can recall, LG had made a much earlier announcement for this dual-format player, which ended up getting scrapped.

Consider this a confirmation of at least one facet to the recent video format  talks that have been closely tailing the next-gen consoles. With that said, we'll wait for word on the other dual-format entries, such as Samsung/Toshiba's player, or NEC's dual-format chip. For now, we'll just have to wait out the next four days before CES begins from January 8 to 11 in Las Vegas. Remember to check out the other console-related treats to be featured while you're there.

Computer and electronics companies including LG, Panasonic, NEC, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba are planning to come up with a set of standards for WiHD or WirelessHD. WiHD is a high-definition digital interface - it will let devices communicate with each other to share high-definition audio/video streaming and also to allow high-speed data transmission.

Basically, it's like a WiFi standard, only more robust and manly. WiHD aims for 5 gigabits of data per second - and up to a distance of 30 feet. Transmission will take place at the 60GHz frequency. To compare, WiFi operates at around 2.4GHz to 5-point-something-GHz.

60GHz! That's a high frequency usually only used by the military or in ship-to-ship communications!

The companies plan to have a standard drafted and ready by early 2007. Then they'll put WiHD into all their HDTVs and all their audio video gadgets. So...

• Will the PS3 take advantage of WiHD in the future? Did somebody mention HDTV? Yeah, Sony is one of the companies (that's their old Bravia ad in the YouTube vid; we chose it for this article because we love the music).
• Where's Microsoft and Apple? Will they follow suit, team up, or make their own standards? Like WiFi, will we end up with several standards - will there be a WiHD.a and WiHD.b and other standards?
• The Nintendo Wii shunned HD, right? Will this new development make Perrin Kaplan eat her words?

Immersion Corporation is definitely not feeling good vibrations coming its way. The developer of the touch-feedback technology opened up its financial results for the second quarter (which ended June 30, 2006) being somewhat pessimistic. The company sees a continuing loss after disappointing attempts to settle its lawsuit with Sony. The company posted revenue of $6.7 million for the period which is slightly higher in last year's posting ($6.2 Million). The company also figured a net loss of $2.4 million.

Now they could only hope that its TouchSense Vibration Technology could save the sinking ship. According to Immersion CEO and President, Victor Viegas: "this... technology can work alongside motion and tilt sensing and provides backward compatibility for existing dual-motor systems, allowing an implementation path at any stage of product lifecycle, even after a console model has launched."

Aside from that, the company is also rummaging for profits in the mobile phone business. It signed a new license agreement with with LG Electronics to allow the mobile handset manufacturer to make use of Immersion's VibeTonz System. Korean company SK Telecom also recently launched a VibeTonz-only content service called VibeBell. Finally, Immersion stated that most recently in June, the Korean phone company introduced a new VibeTonz capability, which enables force feedback in touchscreens for smartphones. Whatever works for the company, I guess.

While everybody is busy developing Blu-ray burners to support 2x recording, the other electronics giant- LG, came from nowhere and presented their very own Blu-ray disc recorder - the world's first to run at 4x. But well, LG can't have 'em all, their latest innovation doesn't support dual-layer, 50GB media since it only works on single-layered 25GB discs.

The Blu-ray burner, dubbed as the GBW-H10N, has been on display a handful of times, all in 2006. Its first appearance was at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last January. LG recently announced that this one will be shipped on June with a price tag of US$1,020. Definitely more pricey than the blu-ray-incorporated PS3 right?

This LG innovation will write BD-R and BD-RE at the speed of 2x whereas it will run on 4x for BD-R media only. It will read single-layered BD-ROM and BD-R discs at 4.8x, at 4x for dual-layered BD-ROMs, and at 2x for single-layered BD-REs. This one will also read and write CD-R/RW media, DVD-RAM discs and DVD-R/+R DL media.