Japanese homebuilder Yamane-Mokuzai [JP] has reportedly received an order from an individual for a single-family house that will illuminated with LED lighting only.

The company says the house, which is currently under construction, is located in Higashi Hiroshima and will be completed next month. It’s 221  sq. meters large and will have about 150 lights. In addition, Sharp’s Plasmacluster Ion technology will be built into some of the lamps and is supposed to fight viruses and bacteria in the air.

Yamane-Mokuzai claims that compared with standard lamps, power consumption will be reduced by a whopping 80%. If the lights are used for more than 10 years, the LED fixtures will be entirely recouped.

Via Nikkei [JP]

Man alive! Dish Network will have a DVR with built-in Slingbox tech. It’s the Vip 922 HD DuoDVR; we don’t know when it’ll be available, nor do we have any pics. Later today, I suppose.

It’s the first time that a non-Sligbox box will have Slingbox tech built in. The San Francisco Chronicle says the new DVR is “definitely a high-end product.” Good idea to release such a device in this environment.

I’ll have the boys on the show floor—again, I’m still in New York this week—find out more for y’all.

Better hurry up if you want to download the Windows 7 beta, since Microsoft is only allowing the first 2.5 million of you to try it out. Those of you with fancy TechNet and MSDN connections can grab it now; everyone else will have to wait till tomorrow, Friday, January 9.

You should note that, in order to use the Windows 7 beta you’ll have to be upgrading from Vista SP1. So if you’re one of those “Vista sucks~!” people you’ll have to figure something out.

And, obviously, you won’t want to be running this as your main operating system.

The beta will expire in August.

Microsoft just announced at CES that Halo Wars, the RTS that’s bound to confuse more than a few longtime Halo fans—it’s not a shooter?!—will be released on February 28. A demo will be on Xbox Live on February 5. That is all.

It wasn’t too long ago that the music industry was complaining all day long that digital downloads would ruin the music industry. Au contraire! The BPI (sorta like the UK’s RIAA) has just revealed that 2008 was the biggest ever year in Britain for singles. And yes, the industry has digital downloads to thank.

Of course, we’re talking about legal downloads here: iTunes, Amazon MP3, etc. Downloads were up 33 percent last year from the previous, with a total of 115 million files served. Similarly, album downloads were up 65 percent over 2007.

One big reason: the world economy is broken. As such, when people are looking to buy music they want to do so for as little as possible. A couple quid for an album is more attractive than walking/driving/taking a metro to HMV or some other High Street boutique than laying down, um, more quid.

So there, not only have downloads not ruined the music industry, but they’ve saved it. More italics!