TOKYO -- After an unusually long rainy season, the skies are now blue in Japan and summer has arrived. Everyone is looking forward to several weeks of unbroken sunshine and hot temperatures, but some people are already thinking about the fall and the back-to-school season. Not the kids, of course. I'm talking about the product planners at companies like Sony and Canon, who are busy preparing to put new camcorders on sale.
Television has already made the move to high definition, and home movies are on the way there. Consumer electronics companies are now pushing parents to splash out for HD camcorders to capture little Taro or Megumi running as fast as their legs can carry them to victory on the track. At least that's the image we're likely to see on TV commercials here soon.
In the next few months we're likely to see more and more HD camcorders, especially if Sony meets its goal of making half of all its camcorder sales HD models by the end of this year.
Sony AVCHD Camcorders
The first two camcorders to support the AVCHD format
are coming soon from Sony. The format was developed by Sony and competitor Matsushita Electric (Panasonic) as a way of allowing high-definition video to be recorded onto conventional 8-centimeter DVD discs and other media. The HDR-UX1 can squeeze 15 to 32 minutes of video onto a DVD-R disc (and about double those minutes for a dual-layer DVD+RW), while the hard-disk-based HDR-SR1 can store up to 4 hours of video in its highest quality mode, and up to 11 hours in the lowest quality mode, on its 30GB drive. The UX1 will go on sale September 10 in Japan, and the SR1 will be available one month later. They will cost $1452 and $1563, respectively. In the United States, they will be available at about the same time for about $1400 and $1500, respectively. 
Canon HV10 Camcorder
What's not to like about Canon's new HV10 camcorder? As the world's smallest and lightest high-definition camcorder, it has a lot going for it. It's based on the HDV tape format, so you can reuse your existing MiniDV cassettes, and its small size means it looks more like a traditional compact consumer camcorder than some HD models we've seen up to now. Like other HD camcorders, it can manage full 1920-pixel-by-1080-pixel resolution. It has a 10X optical zoom lens and optical image stabilization. Best of all, it's going to be launched worldwide by Canon starting in September, so if you don't live in Japan you won't have to wait long. It will cost around $1311 in Japan and $1299 in the United States.
Samsung S-DMB Cell Phone
Samsung has taken the wraps off a new cell phone that can receive radio and TV broadcasts direct from satellite. The SCH-B500 phone is the thinnest handset yet to support this reception service, which is called S-DMB (Satellite Digital Mobile Broadcasting) and which is available only in South Korea. It's 13.5 millimeters thick, or about half the thickness of the first-generation models that went on sale in early 2005. The phone comes with the usual camera, an MP3 player, Bluetooth wireless interface, and a document viewer, as well as TV output. There's also an audio book feature that will read aloud three fairy tales in any of four languages: Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and English. The SCH-B500 will be available in South Korea only, just like the S-DMB service. No price was provided.
Sony GPS Unit
How about this for a cool little idea: Sony has developed a GPS (global positioning system) unit that can be used to add location information to digital pictures. The 9-centimeter-long GPS-CS1 is intended to be attached to a belt and worn throughout the day as pictures are taken. Every 15 seconds it records the current location and the time, thus building up a record of exactly where the user has been during the day. Later, that data can be matched with the time stamp on the digital images to work out where the picture was taken. Sony supplies a software application to do the data matching and has upgraded its Motion Picture Browser software to link in with Google Maps. The GPS unit will run for about 10 hours on an AA cell, and the unit's internal 31-megabyte memory can store about 15 days' worth of GPS data. The GPS-CS1 will be launched in September in the U.S. and Japan, and will cost around $150. Details on a European launch have not yet been announced.
HTC Windows Mobile Cell Phone
Windows Mobile handsets might be old hat to people in North America, Europe, or other Asian countries, but in Japan they've been nonexistent until recently. One of the first is the HTC Z from Taiwan's High Tech Computer. The device has a QWERTY keyboard that slides out from underneath the display. It supports standard Internet mail, can read Word and Excel files, and is compatible with WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) and GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks. On the networking side, it has Bluetooth and wireless LAN, which may make it an attractive package for the businessperson who needs to be always in touch. It will be out in Japan in late July. The price has not yet been announced.
Panasonic Viera Link TVs
The remote control has made life easier for millions of people, but things are getting more and more complicated with the sheer number of remote controls we now have to deal with in the average living room. One for the TV, one for the video recorder, one for the satellite tuner, one for the audio system--you get the idea. Panasonic has developed Viera Link, a single remote control for all these devices that works as long as you're using HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) to connect your gadgets. It's on new Viera flat-panel TVs now; expect it to spread throughout the product range soon.
R&D Corner: Samsung Flash Memory Drive
No one likes waiting for Windows to boot up, but a flash memory drive from Samsung could improve system performance. The 4GB drive will take advantage of the ReadyBoost feature in Windows Vista and store information that would otherwise be written to the hard disk. That will lead to a boost in performance, says Samsung. The technology is one of several that Microsoft is building into Windows Vista to increase system responsiveness and eliminate those annoying waits that are forced on users when programs are starting. (Some of these other technologies being built into Vista are ReadyDrive, in which flash memory is added to hard disk drives to act as a temporary memory cache, and SuperFetch, which anticipates what programs and documents might be next required and preloads them so that they start faster when called by the user.) Look for Samsung's drive to appear in laptops due out later this year.
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