Gone are the days when your PC was solely for work and your TV was the source of most of your entertainment. Convergence is the hot watchword, and several new devices prove the case. Looking for a way to transfer digital video from your PC to your TV? Want a stand-alone device with new uses for memory cards? It's all here.
Stick With Sony
Sony is offering a couple of products that are aimed at making its Memory Stick a platform for digital video. The first is a video recorder that uses Memory Stick in place of a tape. You can hook up the PEGA-VR100K to a TV antenna or another video source and record your favorite programs for later viewing on a Clié PDA or notebook PC. The recording time depends on your memory card's storage capacity and the quality mode you choose, but a 128MB card will store between 30 minutes and 2 hours of video, while a 1GB card will accommodate between 4 and 17 hours of video.
The MSV-AV1 is even cooler. It's a small handheld unit, with a 2.5-inch LCD screen, that you can not only use to watch recorded video but record it yourself as well, through a built-in TV tuner. Its recording quality requires 64MB of space for an hour of video. The PEGA-VR100K will be available in September in the United States for $299. The MSV-AV will be available in Japan in November for $400; there are no plans to sell it outside of Japan.
Digital Video
The SV-AV100, a palm-size camcorder from Matsushita Electric Industrial, better known by its Panasonic brand name, records MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 video directly onto an SD (Secure Digital) memory card. There's no cassette tape to worry about, which helps make the SV-AV100 small.
You can quickly transfer the digital video to a PC, but that doesn't mean there isn't a downside to the gadget: The relatively high cost of SD memory cards and their limited storage capacity makes recording expensive. In maximum-resolution MPEG-2 mode, data will record onto the memory card at a constant rate of 6 megabits per second, which means a 512MB memory card will be able to hold a little more than 10 minutes of video. Such cards cost around $250, compared with about $16 for the 120-minute MiniDV tapes used in many competing camcorders. Of course, the memory cards can be reused more often than tapes, and there's also their added convenience to take into account.
The camera features an 800,000-pixel CCD sensor, a 10X optical zoom lens and a 2.5-inch LCD monitor. The SV-AV100 measures 1.3 by 3.5 by 2.6 inches and weighs 5.5 ounces. It will go on sale in October for around $995 in the United States.
Truly Tiny
Sony also launched a small camcorder, the DCR-IP1K, in September, but it uses a MicroMV cassette to record its images. Sony says it's the smallest digital video camcorder in the world, and at 1.5 inches thick by 2.7 inches wide and 3.6 inches high--not much more than the size of a pack of playing cards--it just might be. It has a megapixel-class image sensor that can also record still images to a Memory Stick, and it supports the new PictBridge standard. This means the camcorder can print images directly to a PictBridge-compatible printer without the need for a PC.
Part of the camcorder's small size is due to Sony's shifting of some connectors usually found on the camcorder over to a new base station. The base station has a power connector and an S-Video connector, which are also on the camcorder, plus a USB and an ILink (FireWire) interface. The DCR-IP1K will go on sale in Japan on October 18 and has a price tag of $1380. Sony says it plans to put the camcorder on sale around the world at around the same time.
Toshiba Ethernet TVs
Televisions are getting so high-tech these days, but more often than not the cleverness is in built-in software and doesn't rely on hardware. With the proliferation of broadband connections, Toshiba has decided to launch what is--at present, anyway--a unique service: It will provide software updates for televisions for free, across the Internet. Currently the service applies only to four new flat-panel sets that will go on sale in October; the service will initially be used to send a firmware update that ensures the TVs are compatible with new digital terrestrial television services. There's an ethernet port on the back of the TVs for the broadband connection.
It's easy to guess where this feature could lead. In addition to the ethernet connection, the sets have the standard gamut of video and audio connectors, a D4 digital video connector, digital audio output, a FireWire interface, and memory card slots for SmartMedia, SD, MultiMediaCard, and Memory Stick. The four televisions consist of a 42-inch PDP (Plasma Display Panel) set and 37-inch, 32-inch, and 26-inch LCD sets. Prices range from $6465 for the two larger sets to $4741 and $3879 for the 32-inch and 26-inch panels respectively. Toshiba says it has no plans to put these televisions on sale overseas.
Get Creative
If you have ever lived in Japan, you know all about New Year cards, or nengajyo in Japanese. An average Japanese person sends an impressive little pile of such postcards to friends and acquaintances at the New Year to wish them well. Just in time for the holiday, Casio Computer has come along to make the task easier. A few years ago you would buy your cards at a shop, but the explosion of PC and digital camera technology has many people making their own.
Casio's PCP-50 photocard printer takes postcards, and can print a high-quality photo on one side--say of dad, mom, and the kids--and an address and message on the reverse. Best of all, you don't need a PC. The printer will accept almost any memory card and can use JPEG images below 3MB in size. A 3.5-inch LCD lets you know how things will look when printed out, and the printer door has a keyboard on the back that allows you to type in your address, the address of each friend, and a message. This uniquely Japanese gadget will be available from November 1 and will cost $428.
Couch Potatoes, Rejoice
If you really, really like TV and can't stand to miss any of your ten favorite shows each day of your vacation, or whenever you're out of the house, Sony offers its CSV-EX11 hard-drive video recorder. With a pair of 250GB hard drives, it can store up to 342 hours (over two weeks) of video in the lowest of three quality modes. Standard mode cuts this to 171 hours, while high-quality mode reduces this further to a still-respectable 114 hours--or just under five days.
There is no DVD drive built into the recorder, but you can link the machine via ethernet to a Sony VAIO computer running the company's "Click to DVD" software. You can then use the PC to edit the video and record it onto a DVD. The CSV-EX11 will go on sale on November 1 in Japan at $1380. A version with a single 250GB hard drive, offering just under half the recording time at all quality modes, will go on sale at the same time for $1035. Sony has no plans to sell either of the two new recorders outside of Japan.
In Style
It wouldn't be a normal month without a least one new digital still camera. Canon has announced a new version of its Ixy Digital (called Elph in some overseas markets) camera. The Ixy-L/Elph SD-10 has a 4-megapixel image sensor and works with SD memory cards. Canon makes a big deal about the looks of the camera and its availablity in four colors--silver, black, white, and bronze--but gadget lovers will care more about its size: Measuring 3.6 by 1.9 by 0.7 inches, the new camera is smaller than Canon's Ixy 400 model. It also supports PictBridge, which means you can connect directly to a PictBridge-compatible printer and print out photos without a PC.
It goes on sale in the United States in mid-October for $449.
Man's Best Friend
It's been more than a year since Sony's current Aibo robotic dog went on sale, so the time is about right for a new model. The ERS-7 features upgraded electronics functions but few improvements on the robotic front. Aibo's processor has been upgraded, it has more memory, and the audio system has been updated to give a better sound.
Other new features include the addition of wireless LAN as standard. Through the wireless link, you can see images directly from Aibo's eye. Note that the feature also offers the possibility of hacking into other robots in your street and making them do unscheduled tricks at 3 a.m. (but we don't condone that, no matter how much amusement it would provide). The Aibo ERS-7 will go on sale in Japan on September 27 and will carry a price tag of $1595. It will also go on sale in the United States and Europe at around the same time, Sony says.
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