Welcome to a digital world

By RICHARD WOOD in Tokyo

"Digital Everywhere" was the theme of the Ceatec show in Japan this week.

But while digital consumer electronics certainly were everywhere among the 667 companies at the show, that was just part of the story.

What these companies are looking forward to, in about five years, is a world of fully networked devices in cellphone and pendant forms able to perform biometric identification, tracking of your location, personal navigation and household appliance management.

Too far-fetched? Panasonic already has home networking technology in Japan called Kurashi Net which incorporates a base station that looks after security and communicates with home appliances including air conditioner, washing machine, refrigerator and microwave oven - all of which can be accessed and controlled by mobile phone.

But that's not all. Here's a rundown of some other technology trends that are likely to find their way here over the next year.

Flat displays

Large plasma display panels and liquid crystal display (LCD) screens are a must for the modern home.

Picture quality and viewing angle are what is important to consumers, but effort has gone into differentiating models through additional technologies, especially in terms of communicating with other devices and providing a central hub for the home.

As an example, Panasonic has incorporated Secure Digital or "SD" memory card readers into its displays for showing still pictures and mpeg videos taken on digital cameras and camcorders. Similarly Toshiba is incorporating Sony Memory Stick slots into its new plasma and LCD TVs. Sanyo took the whole game up another level by demonstrating a 40-inch 3D display to be released in autumn that does not need special glasses to watch and can be viewed from wide angles.

Sharp was another to demonstrate 3D screens. These had a limited field of view but are expected to be available sooner, with the first off the ramp this month in the form of a notebook computer, the Mebius PC-RD3D, which is able to present the 3D objects in computer games and will sell for about $5500.

Digital memory

Perhaps the most significant trend was the growing importance of solid state digital memory devices and their use in cameras and miniature video recording devices using Mpeg compression systems.

Panasonic showed off its D-snap series of Mpeg digital video recorders and cameras which use SD cards to allow them to be "credit card-sized".

SD cards can currently store up to 512 megabytes of picture or video files, and 1 gigabyte cards will be available next year.

The MiniSD sibling, suitable for mobile phone applications, will be available in 128MB storage capacity by the end of the year and 256MB by autumn next year.

Extending the SD format were SDIO (input/output) cards that combine functions such as camera, network connection and radio tuner to an SD card, primarily for use in a Pocket PC or Palm handheld computers.

Sony's Memory Stick storage format is currently available up to 1GB and is expected to reach 2GB next year. A more compact and faster access version called the Memory Stick Duo, which incorporates copyright protection technology, has been released up to 256KB format with 512KB coming this month.

PSX

A highlight of the show was Sony's PSX machine, which will give DVD recorder manufacturers a run for their money because, as well as a PlayStation 2 video-game console, it incorporates a DVD and hard disk recorder.

The unit features a TV tuner, a 24x speed DVD recorder that writes in DVD-RW and DVD+RW formats, and a computer hard disk to record TV programmes like a VCR, giving up to 325 hours of recording time.

It will be released in Japan this year for $1250 with a 160GB hard drive and $1500 with a 250GB drive. Its international release is next year.

DVD battle

Taking up an unseemly amount of floorspace was the battle over DVD-writing formats - DVD-RAM, DVD+RW and DVD-RW - which underpin the growing industry of DVD recording devices. At this stage there's no clear winner.

To further complicate the picture Philips has announced double density DVD technology which stores information on two layers providing over 8GB of storage but which needs a new type of drive to write to the new discs.

Another storage "technology in waiting" is Blu-ray disc, which uses a blue diode laser as distinct from red lasers to hold 30GB of data on special discs.

Fuel cell

Toshiba showed off a pocket-sized prototype fuel cell battery charger, due for release in 2005, which can be used to charge a regular handheld computer or cellphone battery up to six times.

The device uses methanol and weighs 130 grams when full.

* Richard Wood attended Ceatec as a guest of Panasonic.