Seeing was believing
For a glimpse of how the consumer electronics world will look in 2001, the place to be last week was the CEATAC 2000 show in Chiba Japan.
Many top Japanese companies including Sony, JVC and Hitachi paraded their new products at the show.
JVC announced the impending launch of the world's first hybrid digital/ analogue video recorder. The model pairs a 20 gigabyte hard disk drive with an S-VHS recorder. Users can record programmes digitally on the hard drive then archive them on the S-VHS deck. The unit goes on sale in Japan next month for around £1,200.
Sony's key offering was the Airboard, billed as a personal IT television. The unit features a 10.4inch LCD TV complete with TV reception, wireless email and internet access. It goes on sale in Japan later in the year for around £800.
Sony also debuted a home-based hi-fi system that uses its Memory Stick storage cards.
Top billing on the Sharp stand went to the PC-X2001, an LCD desktop PC that features TV, PC and net content in one unit.
Pioneer displayed the latest in DVD recorders. The DVDR 2000 is both DVD-R and DVD compatible and the first DVD recorder to feature an a high speed iLink connector. It goes on sale in Japan later in the year.
Panasonic unveiled a host of prototype products, many of which use its Secure Digital (SD) storage cards. These included AV enabled notebook PCs, digital music recorders, mobile phones and digital cameras.
Fine tuning
The first of Sharp's long promised LCD screen TVs with built-in tuners arrives in the shops this month.
The £1,500 12inch LC-12A2E features a flat screen active matrix TFT LCD panel which is said to deliver a resolution of 921,600 pixels. Sharp also claims that the screen has a 160 degree viewing angle and a backlight with 60,000 hours' life.
It will be joined next month by a 15inch set, the £2000 LC-15A2E, while a 20inch version, the £4,000 LC-20A2E, will be available early next year.
All three models are less than 5cm thick, boast three speakers, a Nicam Stereo decoder and include component and composite video inputs for connection to a DVD player/VCR. Also due in the stores this month are a pair of ultralight Sharp notebook PCs, the £1,795 PC-AX20 and the £2,045 PC-AR10.
Sony goes to the dogs
Sony's robot pet dog Aibo is about to befriend a new canine chum. Details about Sony's third electronic hound, including when it is to be launched in the UK, are to be revealed at 9.00am this morning - unfortunate timing for us, but required by Japan.
Sony has confirmed that the new dog is designed to partner and interact with its predecessor. Aibo went on sale in Japan last June, with the first batch of 3,000 dogs selling out in 20 minutes.
Sony has sold more than 45,000 dogs worldwide, and they even have their own soccer tournaments. (AN)
Hearing earring
Researchers at IBM's Almaden Research Centre in Silicon Valley may be after jobs moonlighting on the next Bond film. They have taken up designing jewellery with a difference. For example, they have embedded a microphone into a necklace, attached a couple of speakers to earrings, and converted a ring into a scrolling device that works like a mouse.
A watch and bracelet also double as data storage devices, for when you need disk space for web surfing. IBM says: "By combining pleasing form with digital function, the researchers hope to one day free users from carrying around clunky digi tal devices and accessories like palm computers, web phones, headsets and microphones, by incorporating them into items they already wear."
Free speech
Microsoft and Cambridge University are giving away the software needed to build your own speech recognition system. The Hidden Markov Model Toolkit (HTK) is available on servers in the university's engineering department at http://htk.eng.cam.ac.uk/
The software was originally developed by Steve Young and Phil Woodland at Cambridge, and Entropic bought it in 1998. Microsoft - which bought Entropic and will retain the copyright on the code - says the release "will enable the hundreds of sites worldwide that already use HTK to continue to build on its capabilities, and will increase access to HTK in schools, universities and research laboratories".
Phil Woodland, a reader in information engineering at Cambridge, plans to continue developing the software.
Bright note
Fans of translucent plastics engineering should check out the latest products from Sam sung, one of South Korea's consumer electronics giants. The New E (Hip-Hop) MP3 music player comes in vibrant tangerine or blue that is "sure to be a hit with the iMac generation", says Samsung. The alternative New D (Jazz) model has twice the memory (64MB) and is made from brushed aluminium.
The new Samsung SDC-80 digital camera is available in four translucent colours: green, blue, tangerine and white and costs about £249. In spite of the iMac styling, it connects only to a PC....
Star turn
In the early days of screen-based computing, there was some discussion as to whether the screen format should be horizontal or vertical. Horizontal won, and it was somewhat hard for dissenters to turn heavy tube-based monitors on their sides.
That is no longer a problem with flat LCD monitors, which often come with pivot mounts. LG Electronics' 15in Flatron FL577LH (£595 plus VAT) can easily be rotated from landscape to portrait.
And users don't need to worry about reconfiguring Microsoft Windows to display a vertical image. LGE says the monitor comes with software that automatically rotates the image when the user rotates the screen. (JS)
