Your hard drive is now obsolete

HD DVD truce?
There are lots of companies displaying next-generation video disk technology.  Nearly all of them are either Blue-ray or HD-DVD only models. 

But, LG Electronics may have the perfect solution, and have just announced the launch of the world’s first Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD combination player. Expect the first units to hit the market later this year — and expect them to be expensive.

New cell phones
Samsung were showing off a great looking family of cell phones. The x830 are small, lightweight and come in a rainbow of colors. These GSM phones might look large in the picture but they’re actually the size of two chewing gum packs (remember Juicy Fruit?) stacked on top of each other.

Samsung A very cute handset - but not for U.S. residents.

Samsung representatives wouldn’t tell me the price because these handsets are not available in this country. It seems that none of the U.S. cellular carriers were interested in marketing these cuties. If you’re interested you should be able to find unlocked (you provide the SIM card) samples on the Internet.

Pocket-sized high-def video camera
Finally, a high-definition video camera/recorder that fits in your pocket, Sanyo’s VPC-HD1A. The name seems longer than the actual device.  We’re talking 3.15 by 4.7 by 1.4 inches weighing in at a mere 7.4 ounces.

This little device can take both stills and movies. It has a 5.36 megapixel CCD sensor capable of shooting MPEG4 movies at 1280 by 720 pixels HD resolution and 30 frames per second. It records 48 KHz, 16-bit stereo sound. It has a 10x optical zoom.  There’s digital image stabilizer circuitry and a whole lot more.

Sanyo Electric An HD digital camcorder that really does fit in your pocket.

Storage consists of a SD memory card.  A 1GB card will hold 7 minutes and 17 seconds of HD video or one hour of TV-HQ video (640 by 480 pixels, 30 fps) or nearly 600, 2592 by 1944 still images.  Obviously, quadruple those numbers for a 4GB card.

I saw it demonstrated with its cute little base — and thought that it would make an amazingly complete little live broadcast studio when attached directly to a laptop and a high-speed Internet connection.  I can't wait to try one — and, I expect some TV network bigwigs and news departments are interested too.

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CES 2007 Section Front

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