I'm not sure if this is a new idea but Panasonic is now selling the DMR-HS2 Hard Drive video recorder, DVD player and DVD burner. So you can watch DVDs, record TV programs like a Tivo/Replay TV, and burn those TV programs to DVD. It also has video in and iLink/firewire in so you can plug in your video camera old or new and burn a DVD or copy to the hard drive.

Pentax is running ads on the trains for their latest digital cameras but also stuck in the ad is their newest gadget the Digibino

They are 7x zoom binoculars with a digital camera built in. It's only got about a 1 mega pixel camera inside but I guess that's kind of a cool idea. Unfortunately the unit is pretty ugly.

They also have a digital camera that will take stereoscopic pictures.

Sharp just came out with the craziest overblown electric dictionary. The Sharp PW-C5000.

Can you guess what this is?

Toshiba has just announced their new Gigabeat iPod clone except of course it works with PCs and not just Macs. Here's a list of the advantages over an iPod

• It works on any computer not just Mac (ie, PC, Linux, Mac)
  
  
• batteries last 18 hours (iPod is 10)
  
  
• hard drive is removable (ejectable)
  
  
• hard drive is a PCMCIA card so you can plug in into any notebook
  
  
• if you don't have a notebook it uses USB which nearly all computers have vs Firewire which only some have
  
  
• Uses USB 2.0 which is 480megabits fast (that's faster than fireware which is 400megabits)
  
  
  (more...)

Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away), the biggest movie ever in Japan (#2 is Titanic, $3 is Mononoke Hime) is bout to be released on DVD and it's being promoted like crazy.

The latest thing to come out is the Ghibli DVD player.

I'm not so sure about the DVD player but the remote is kind of cute.

Sony has released yet again a bunch of new digital video cameras the most interesting of which is probably the DCR-IP55 since it uses the new MicroDV cassettes like the DCR-IP7.

I guess there a few small companies that have Hard Disk Drive stereo systems but now both Sony and Panasonic have them. You could basically look at them as iPods in home stereo format. They both have 6gig drives and CD players so you pop in a CD and copy to the drive. At 6gig they would only hold 100 CDs at 105k bits per second which is less than ideal. They also both have memorystick slots so you can make your favorite mix for your portable MP3 player.

While at Yodobashi Camera helping my friend pick a calculator I noticed Casio now sells 3 models of USB calculators. It seems like an obvious idea. Instead of buying a separate keypad or a calucator that only prints just get one of these and cover all bases. The USB cables fold inside so if you want to use it just as a caluclator it all folds up and you can't tell the difference.

Speaking of videos soon to be as copied as MP3s Sharp just released their portable video player. It uses SD Memory cards and they say a 64meg card will hold about an hour of video. It only runs for 1 hour on internal battery or 3 with external when watching video. In music only mode it's 3.5 to 7 hours.