Isn’t this fun? At this rate we’ll have CES covered before the whole team is even on the ground.
Hitachi has announced that they will be showing ultra thin prototype TVs this year at CES. Yay! More uber thin prototype TVs just like last year. Please excuse my sarcasm, I really can’t wait to get to CES and see the rest of the gang.
Anyway, Hitachi will have a 50-inch 35mm plasma prototype (which is probably the same one they had at CEDIA) and a 37-inch 15mm prototype LCD with RGB LED backlighting and it’s said to consume half the power of previous models. The actual TVs that we can from Hitachi will see “mainstream pricing” (whatever that means) across their entire LCD HDTV line. Sizes range from 32- to 52-inches for both 60Hz and 120Hz sets. There’s also some talk of fancy new TV stands with “luxurious Japanese lacquer and genuine gold-leaf.”
Next up is the DZ-BD10HA Blu-ray camcorder. Nothing much doin here but you can record your HD video onto a BD-R, hard drive or SDHC. That’s actually quite nice. No word on pricing or availability.
The CP-A100 3LCD projector will also make an appearance at the Hitachi booth and it’s greatest feature is that it has a short throw. You can also network these projectors and control a slew of them all at once. The CP-X10000 3LCD is a Pro Series model with a brightness of 7,500 ANSI lumens and up to six different lenses.
A gesture based TV control system prototype will be demoed as well. An embedded camera will interpret your hand gestures to control normal TV operating functions as well as controlling your AC unit and lighting over your home network.
There’s some talk of a super high resolution technology, but details are pretty vague. The tech will use “original signal processing technology to transform video of various resolution levels to the optimal level of high-resolution image.” I think that just means it will resize everything to make a super high res image/video or something along those lines.
Two more things of note:
iVDR (Information Versatile Disk for Removable usage) is a removable hard disk drive with features compatible with a wide range of applications from AV to PC and an additional feature of Electronic Paper Display. This allows for ultra low power consumption and is indefinitely re-writable.
Clarion, which joined Hitachi-group as a consolidated subsidiary since 2006, is joining the Hitachi booth with their revolutionary Mobile Internet Navigation Device, ClarionMiND. The ClarionMiND combines connected personal GPS navigation and real-time Points of Interest (POI) with Internet based entertainment and full web browsing capabilities.