Sony is recalling 73,000 Vaio TZ laptops because of a possible manufacturing defect that may cause them to overheat, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said Thursday. The recall relates to a problem with wiring near the computer’s hinge, which could short-circuit and overheat in certain circumstances.

Samsung expects Sony’s Blu-ray technology to be superseded within five years, despite winning the high definition format war in February. “I think it [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn’t give it 10″, Andy Griffiths, Samsung UK’s director of consumer electronics, told website Pocket-lint.

Bond titles have traditionally opened the weekend before Thanksgiving, but Sony didn’t want to open too close to Warner Bros.’ “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” so it originally settled on Nov. 7. But the landscape changed last week when Warners announced it was pushing back “Half-Blood Prince” from Nov. 21 to July.

In a demonstration to reporters last week, Toshiba played the same DVD in an XDE player and a standard, $US70 upscaling model on side-by-side LCD HDTVs. The new player produced a subtle but noticeable sharpening of the image.

The Sony comedy nabbed a record-breaking $12.5 million at the US box office. For the first time in its run, Warner’s “The Dark Knight” came in No. 3 for the day, behind “Pineapple Express” and “Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.”