Consumer electronics maker Sony Corp. on Thursday said it introduced a new U.S. version of its Sony Walkman that includes the ability to play digital video, the latest potential rival to Apple Inc.’s dominant iPod media player.

The Japanese company, one of the world’s biggest electronics makers, said its NWZ-A810 and NWZ-S610 series of Walkman digital music players would be available in September.

The devices will support an open platform — which means they will play a variety of music formats such as MP3 and Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) WMA, providing more choices for downloading and managing music and video collections online.

Sony added that it would pull the plug on its Connect Music Services, which distributes music in Sony’s proprietary ATRAC audio format in North America and Europe. Specific timing will vary, but the move will not occur before March 2008.

Sony said the models’ battery life allows up to eight hours of video playback for the NWZ-A810 series, which will sell for between $140 and $230. Battery life will be more than nine hours for the NWZ-S610 series, with prices ranging from $120 to $210.

A music industry group Thursday said it would cap “per channel” fees for major Internet radio companies streaming music on multiple channels.

SoundExchange, which collects royalties from Webcasters and distributes them to artists and record labels, said it would limit fees - at $50,000 a year - for online radio station companies that offer more than 100 channels to customers.

Windows Server 2008 is apparently going to live up to its name, with Microsoft acknowledging Wednesday that it won’t be able to finish work on the product this year, as scheduled.

“Windows Server 2008, which we have been saying would Release to Manufacturing (RTM) by the end of the calendar year, is now slated to RTM in the first quarter of calendar year 2008,” Microsoft said on its Windows Server blog.

As for the reasoning, the company said “while we’re very happy with the feedback we’re getting and the overall quality of the latest product builds, we would rather spend a little more time to meet the high quality bar that our customers and partners deserve and expect.”

The format war is far from over, but HD DVD is on a roll–at least as far as PR is concerned. Last week the big news was both Paramount and DreamWorks becoming HD DVD-exclusive studios, and now Venturer Electronics has announced it will release a budget HD DVD player–the SHD7000–by the 2007 holiday season. There have been several reports indicating that cheaper, off-brand HD DVD players were on their way, but Venturer is the first company to make a formal announcement.

Details are a little slim at the moment, but here’s what we know. The SHD7000 has an HDMI port capable of outputting video at 1080i. That’s comparable to Toshiba’s HD-A2, and as long as your HDTV has decent 1080i deinterlacing, you should still get very good image quality with a 1080i signal (assuming it is of comparable quality to the HD-A2). According to the press release, the SHD7000 also has onboard Dolby TrueHD decoding. The HD DVD spec only requires players to be able to decode two channels of Dolby TrueHD, so we don’t know for sure if the SHD7000 will be able to decode multichannel Dolby TrueHD soundtracks (to date, all HD DVD players have handled 5.1 TrueHD decoding.) Like all other HD DVD players, the SHD7000 also has an Ethernet port, so it should be capable of playing networked enabled special features, as seen on titles like Blood Diamond. The press release also states that it will be able to upconvert regular DVDs and play standard audio CDs.

The press release doesn’t mention a price yet, but VideoBusiness is reporting a $199 MSRP. On the other hand, poster Robert Spalding over at AVS Forum claims to have received an e-mail indicating the street price will be closer to $150.

How do you know if you’re getting a good deal on a hotel room? Well, a new Web service plans to tell you.

Travel search newcomer Farecast.com, which makes predictions on the rise or fall of air fares, launched a new hotel search service on Wednesday that tells users whether the rate for a particular property is a good one.

Hotel rates can vary widely, affected by local events like weddings or conferences as well as broader travel trends like winter weather.

Also, all hotels are not created equal, with location and amenities affecting rates.

“The supply-and-demand characteristics of a hotel room are very unique,” Hugh Crean, the site’s president and chief executive, said in an interview.

“Prices do meaningfully change week to week.”

The theft of contact information for job seekers in the database of Monster Worldwide Inc was greater than the 1.3 million individuals the company reported last week, Chief Executive Sal Iannuzzi said on Wednesday.

While investigating the recent theft, the company learned that its Web site had previously been hacked.

“We’re assuming it is a large number. It could easily be in the millions,” Iannuzzi said in an interview with Reuters.

The hackers didn’t get the kind of information it takes to pull money out of a bank account, according to Monster.com, but the contact data is valuable to criminals who use social engineering techniques to conduct scams.

Microsoft Corp. said Wednesday it will release a major package of updates and fixes for the Windows Vista operating system in the first half of 2008.

The company said a “beta” test version of Service Pack 1 will be released “in a few weeks to a moderate sized audience.” The SP1 beta includes updates Microsoft has already made to the operating system it started selling to consumers at the end of January.

The service pack fixes some common problems that cause computers to crash or freeze, Microsoft said, including compatibility problems with some newer graphics cards, external monitors and printer drivers. Microsoft said it also fixed some problems users had with putting their PCs to sleep and waking them up again.

The company said SP1 is also expected to improve battery performance, increase the speed of copying files and help Internet Explorer run faster on Vista.