Name: Epson Photo Fine Player P-7000 Category: photo viewer Price: About JPY80,000 Release date in Japan: September 4, 2008
Here's a gadget category that isn't too well known outside professional photographers. But it's an interesting item that even hobbyist fotogs could find really handy on those longer shooting excursions.
Photo viewers are compact little combinations of hard drive and display. Their simple purpose is displaying photos, though in a photographer's work environment (as opposed to recently-popular digital photo frames that show pics as decorations). It's a tool that lets the photographer transfer shots to a hard drive to free up storage on the camera (or as a backup), and then study those shots on a larger screen than the camera's.
A good example is the new Epson P-7000 Photo Fine Player. The 433-gram device combines a 160-GB hard drive with a wide-angle 4-inch LCD. The screen displays over JPEG and RAW format images in 16.7 million colors, encompassing 94% of the Adobe RGB color space, so you can expect detailed color reproduction (advance reviewers have raved about its brightness and sharpness). Although it's a compact screen, zoom functions let you confirm details up close. Basic editing tools let you play with brightness, contrast cropping, etc., or add text; organization tools allow photo rating and creation of collections and slideshows. A new jog wheel makes it all easy too, says Epson.
There's support for audio (MP3, AAC) and video (MPEG4, Motion JPEG, H.264); video and audio outputs let you also display things on a big screen. (These additions are the reason Epson adds "Multimedia" to the product line's name overseas. Yes, you can use it as an expensive iPod if you like.)
The new model boasts data transfer (via CF or SD memory card) up to 35% faster than its predecessors: transferring 1GB of data from CF card to the hard drive takes 100 seconds. A full battery charge allows around 75 such 1GB transfers. All in all, the drive will hold about 9000 10-megapixel RAW photos (almost 4 times as many if JPEG), or 166 hours of 2Mbps MPEG4 video.
Also included is a battery charger and car adapter for travel, plus software to transfer Fine Player data to a PC.
A good photo viewer isn't an inexpensive addition to a weekend shooter's collection. (If the JPY80,000 tag is a tad more than you can afford, there's also a new P-6000 model with 80GB hard drive for JPY70,000.) But for anyone taking and reviewing lots of shots on the go, it's a more refined tool than a clumsy, expensive laptop with iffy battery life and disk space largely eaten up by data and software.
This sounds good in a world ever-more concerned about energy costs and eletronic waste: Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology (TMD) and Idemitsu Kosan have announced a new small-molecule organic electroluminescent (EL) display panel that reportedly lasts 30 times as long as current TMD screens while sipping a scant 1/10 the electricity. The 2.2-inch QVGA screen for mobile devices uses 100mW of power and lasts up to 60,000 hours, the best specs recorded yet for the category. TMD provided the TFT substrate design technology and element design technology, while Idemitsu chipped in RGB light-emitting materials. The two companies are now cooperating on commercialization plans.
Name: Kairen Projector X Pro920 Category: portable projector Price: JPY36,540 Release date in Japan: Early August, 2008
Saitama-based Kairen YK is about to release the smallest projector I've ever heard of. It's a mere 9 x 8 x 4.4 cm and weighs a scant 190 grams. Yet it's a real projector, designed for use with your iPod, DVD player, or other media player.
Input is via a mini AV jack for DVD players, or D-Sub15 pin connector for PCs. The sold-separately "VGA SMART" kit allows connection to smart phones, letting a phone with slideshow or PDF display capabilities run a full presentation for a (small) table of people.
At 10 lumens, the Pro920's LED light won't outshine the big models. In fact, it sounds downright dim. Kairen says the brightness is good for a 25-inch screen (presumably in a dark room), but you'd do well to confirm visibility yourself with a store display model before dropping the cash.
Maximum input resolution is 1024x768; output is via a VGA (640x480) 0.44-inch LCoS panel with 4:3 aspect ratio. Completing the low-rent theater experience is a 1W monaural speaker and manual focus.
I'll admit, I laughed at the idea of "digital photo frames" when they appeared on the market. But industry watchers are calling the category a hit: sales in Japan are nearly 5 times what they were a mere half a year ago, especially booming from March. A Bic Camera staffer told Business Computer News: "Digital cameras sell well before events (school entrance, graduations, etc.); digital photo frames sell well afterward." Another factor is Sony's entrance from May, bringing a household name to the sector. Stop by any big electronics shop to find a wide selection of frames from a growing number of manufacturers. http://bcnranking.jp/news/0806/080625_11071.html
Name: Nikko Home Electronics Star Wars R2-D2 DVD Projector Category: projector / robot Price: JPY388,500 Release date in Japan: April, 2008 (next shipment in July)
This is on of the craziest gadgets you'll find, and caused a stir when announced in 2007. Though it's not new, it's worth mentioning again for anyone who's missed it so far. Japan sales began only last month; an online order now will get you a unit in July.
What is it? It's a rolling, reclining, chirping 1/2-scale replica of Star Wars' R2-D2 'droid, and it's come to Earth to entertain. The key feature of the robot (shared with the movie character) is a projector: not for Princess Leia holograms, but for beaming images to your home theater screen. Play movies or music from the internal DVD/CD player. Beam photo slideshows to a wall via USB and memory slots. Project your video console games larger than life via input connectors. There's even a nifty pop-out dock to accept video, images, or audio from an iPod.
You don't just unceremoniously plunk this projector down into place for movie time; this is R2-D2, after all. You'll pick up the infrared remote control and steer R2 around the living room to your heart's content. He goes forward and backward, turns left and right; his head turns, and he can recline backward to a 60° angle (good for movies on the ceiling, if that's what you like). A 7.2V nickel hydride battery keeps him rolling while he beeps 11 different R2 noises and flashes messages on a display panel.
The remote control really takes things over the top. Tastefully designed as a detailed replica of the Millenium Falcon spaceship, its cockpit and engine lights glow while the voices of Han Solo and Chewbacca converse over the whine of hyperspace engines.
It's all terribly expensive for either a projector or a toy robot, but the list of features (both useful and goofy) and the level of detail have gizmo lovers and Star Wars fans salivating. One caveat: some specific product details appear to vary by web page or user report, and the Nikko America product page shows even more differences; it's possible that the manufacturer continues to make changes with each production run. If you're going to lay down the cash, you might want to contact NHE and confirm any unclear details.
Some specs from the current Japanese NHE web page:
Name: CASIO XJ-S series Category: projector Price: JPY207,900 - JPY312,900 Release date in Japan: Early July, 2008
Modern projectors are thin and light enough to be briefcase-luggable; they'll happily travel with you to meetings. CASIO, which boasts the "world's thinnest" 3.2cm-thin B5 projectors, is improving its lineup with the similarly-svelte but brighter XJ-S series.
Leading the eight new models is the XJ-S57 (JPY312,900), which sports a 2x zoom, auto keystone correction (to keep the screen a nice rectangle when you project at an angle), XGA (1,024×768) resolution that will display sources up to UXGA (1,600×1,200), and (along with the XJ-SC215) the ability to read and display data (MS Office, PDF, JPEG, BMP, AVI, MPEG4, Motion JPEG) directly from a USB drive. At 3000 lumens, it's bright enough to use in a meeting room with all the lights on. A separately-sold USB wireless adapter will let you send data from a PC to the unit via WiFi.
Lower-priced models cut the brightness, down to 2300 lumens in the entry-level, USB-less XJ-S32 (JPY198,000).
All eight models offer an impressively small B5-sized package (27 x 20 x 4.3 cm; 3.2 cm at the thinnest point) weighing less than many laptops at 1.8kg. Minimum projection range is 0.84m; expect a 60" screen at 1.7 - 3.4m distance or a 100" screen at 2.7 - 5.6m. (Overall, screen sizes range from 15" to a theoretical 300".) Final details: 16+ million colors, contrast ratio 1800:1, mono speaker.
Name: SONY Canvas Online VGF-CP1 Category: digital photo frame Price: Open price (about JPY30,000) Release date in Japan: May 17, 2008
Appearing together with the Liblog Station server is a new digital photo frame companion, the VGF-CP1. It'll wirelessly grab photos from a computer and dish up slideshows, complete with background music, on its 7" screen. SONY claims one touch of a button will connect the screen to your WiFi-networked VGF-HS1, PC, or "SONY Room Link"-enabled device, thanks to simple AOSS (AirStation One-Touch Secure System) configuration. (A little hands-on configuration allows connection to non-AOSS WiFi networks as well.) Internet access to Yahoo! news and Yahoo! weather displays, RSS feeds, and major online photo sharing services are another plus.
Remote content isn't your only choice; the VGF-CP1 will also read and display media fresh from MemoryStick, SD, or CompactFlash cards, as well as USB drives. You can also copy pics into the CP1's internal 100MB memory and let the photo frame take it from there - or even upload from the CP1 to online photo sharing services.
Again, SONY provides a little marketing thought behind the product: Everyone takes digital pictures, but not many enjoy and share them. While 80% of PC users in this digital camera age have photos squirreled away on hard drives or media cards, only 10% get around to frequently enjoying the photos via means such as printing or online sharing. SONY wants to provide its slideshow screen as an easy way for non-technical users to enjoy the photos they take.
Details: 11b/g WiFi, 7" WVGA (800x480) 24-bit "ClearPhoto LCD" screen (16+ million colors), 17.7 x 13.4 x 3.3cm, 530g, black or white. Designed to work with Windows XP/Vista PCs, or the VGF-HS1 home server. Behind the scenes, the CP1 runs Timesys Linux on a 400MHz ARM processor.
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