[CEATEC 2008] It has been reported that the video-on-demand (VOD) service for Wii will start in December (in Japan) and will feature about 500 shows (all genres). Videos will cost between 100 and 400 Wii points. Fujisoft would like to launch the service outside of Japan as well, but they are only at the “discussion” stage for the U.S and Europe. With a bit of luck, the license deals should be worked out soon, but we think that it would be unreasonable to expect something to launch outside of Japan before 2009. If you wonder, this VOD service supports popular formats like H.264, MPEG4, WMV and MPEG2. I suspect that most videos will be in H.264. [video shot by Giiks]

[CEATEC 2008] The Bose SoundDock II digital music system was shown as a “new” item as CEATEC. It’s an introduction without fanfare, as it is “just” an iPod speaker/dock after all. As you might suspect, there’s not a whole lot of room to innovate on an iPod speaker-system so the list of added features is short:

• iPhone compatible
• Standard jack audio connector in the back (for non-iPod players or your computer)

It costs $299 ($100 less than the original SoundDock) and is available right now. The show was way too noisy to make any meaningful comment on the audio-quality, sorry.

[CEATEC 2008] I’ve never seen a solar solution for mobile that is really efficient, and I’m not sure that this one would be, but I have to say that I like the design of these pocket solar chargers we spotted in a small booth (Gau Gau) at CEATEC. Check the photo gallery to see different models. If someone has one of these, could you please post a comment to tell us what your experience was?

[CEATEC 2008] I haven’t paid attention to the development of Galileo recently (it’s the European, improved, version of GPS) but I thought that it was not due to be (fully) deployed before 2013 or so (this has been delayed several times). For those who hope to use this network soon, be assured that the Galileo-compatible GPS chips do exist – which is weird, given that there won’t be any mass-market for years to come. More about Galileo.

[CEATEC 2008] Everyone worries about throwing away hard drives full of vital information, but yet very few people take the time to destroy the data (because it’s painfully slow) or the drive (it’s more work than you would think!). Crushbox is certainly a weapon of choice for the job: in a matter of seconds, it will drill a bunch of holes (4, it looks like) in your hard drive, piercing everything from casing to the actual platters. While this might not erase the data, it will deter most people to try looking at the surface. Unless a government is after you, this should do the trick. Side note: there’s a version for VHS tapes too.

[CEATEC 2008] Toshiba was presenting its Super Charge ion Battery (SCiB) for laptops at CEATEC. The technology uses materials that are have better properties than current lithium-ion batteries. Right now, SCiB is used for heavier applications (transportation, industrial), but Toshiba was demonstrating that it could drastically improve the way we charge our laptops. It can get a 90% charge in 10mn, but requires an additional 30mn to reach a full charge (who cares about full charge at that point?). I’ve been told that 5 minutes will yield a 45% charge as the first 90% are totally linear. Wow, that’s really cool, no? Better yet, this should be a drop-in replacement for current batteries – who wants one?

Well, unfortunately it is not at the commercial stage yet and Toshiba representative declined to provide a forecast. Note that in addition of its uber-fast charge, it will also last a lot longer than conventional batteries, before it needs to be replaced: up to 6 or 7 years. Faster charging, longer lifespan, less pollution – and slightly more expensive. Can we have SCiB batteries for phones too?

[CEATEC 2008] Everybody loves having more storage space, right? You can just keep dumping your stuff without taking the time to sort things out, which is why the storage business is still going so strong. Having a 400GB optical disc seems like something that could be really useful, but the catch is: it is really sixteen 25GB Blu-Ray discs in one package. Yes, you heard me: the optical drive can only see 25GB at a time. Now, that’s something that might be worked around in the future, but this is the compromise made to have Blu-Ray compatibility. Pioneer’s comment was that this could effectively reduce the optical disc production and save resources. May be, but I think that it will be somewhat offset by the increase in storage utilization.

Photo: Interestingly enough, there was a 500GB disc on display, but the announcement was about the 400GB version…

[CEATEC 2008] I spotted this 3D display on the first day, but my initial photos were not good enough, so I decided to go back. The idea is to have a 3D display that can work without glasses (not convenient in the street). To achieve that, KDDI is using the known technique of displaying the left and right image at the same time in a particular pattern, using a normal display with a special layer that makes it possible for your left eyes to only see the “left” image and the right one to see the proper image as well.

The downside is that this is halving your resolution (on the X-axis), so the image quality suffers. To be honest, the demo was not great and I suspect that this won’t reach its potential until the display resolution can be quadrupled. In the TV world, 1080p autostereoscopic TV sets are much better than their 720p or standard-definition counterparts, so this is just a matter of time…

[CEATEC 2008] I had heard about this mobile internet device (MID) back in April, but all we had then was paper marketing materials. I’m glad to see this MID in the flesh plastic. The device is supposed to have an extension in the back (wired Ethernet+GPS+40GB HDD), but this was not shown on the show floor. However, even without the extension, this device has respectable specifications:

• 5” WSVGA display (1024x600)
• Atom CPU
• 4GB SSD
• Linux or Windows OS
• WiFi-G, Bluetooth, W-SIM

The battery life is unknown and the lack of keyboard kind of kills it for me, but may be others won’t mind using the stylus with the touch-display. I don’t know what the price is, but here is the European distributor site (with more technical info too!)

[CEATEC 2008] This is a trend: televisions are doing more and more processing and JVC’s 2D to 3D (stereo) conversion is yet another example of what can be done, in real-time, with videos. JVC was showing how it can convert 2D video into 3D stereo that works with (passive) polarized glasses. The demo was quite impressive: the stereo animation was crisp and didn’t exhibit too much flickering. There was some issues with the caption, but that was to be expected as JVC can’t really extract any depth information from 2D text in overlay on the video. I don’t know if that would “just work” for all video sources, but this was worth looking at. Note that JVC is using a left/right (eye) image separation that I’ve never seen before. When watching without the glasses, it doesn’t look like standard stereo video (look at the photo gallery)…

[CEATEC 2008] I don’t know if you remember that PS2 train-simulation game called Train Simulator Real (see video), but this is kind of like that, except that Fujitsu is using 1080p real-world footage instead of 3D graphics. It is meant to be realistic enough to train drivers, but it can also be used for educational purposes in places like museums. The novelty is that this is a web application. Yes, they can deliver 1080p at 60fps and sell this train simulator as a SaaS (software as a service). Of course, something that is “on rail” like a train simulator is ideal for this type of video-streaming application. I doubt that it is as fun as the PS2 video-game, but in terms of simulation, this is as close as you can get from driving the real thing.

[CEATEC 2008] I don’t remember seeing this device before, so let me do the introductions: The M-Cody C10D is a player that can receive DVB-T digital TV, play video/music files, receive FM radio and even act as a voice recorder (although not a very good one, because the microphone doesn’t look so great). It works with Mac and PCs and supports western and Asian languages. (M-Cody, is a known Korean portable multimedia player or “PMP” manufacturer)

• 2.4” LCD display (260k colors), unknown resolution (I suspect 320x240)
• DVB-T digital TV
• Video: avi, mpeg 1/2/4, wma9 (30fps max)
• Music: wma or mp3
• Battery: 12h (audio), 6h (video)

[CEATEC 2008] Some of you have been dreaming about it for years, but it looks like Nissan might be bringing an R2D2-like robot in their cars soon. Its eyes are equipped with cameras that allow our little friend to analyze the driver’s facial expressions before interacting vocally with him or her. The robotic agent can be used as a guide while you drive, or it can “talk” about simple things like stock quotes and weather forecast. It’s a far cry from hacking the Death Star, but we’re getting there…

[CEATEC 2008] We briefly talked about the Kohjinsha SC and SX ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) before and most of the time, we’ve shown product photos, but there’s nothing like a good hands-on with these devices to see how they really are. Our impressions? At between $700 and $1000, they are somewhat pricey and you should really look at what you are going to do with them. If you mainly use web applications and basic stuff, then I would recommend getting a much cheaper Nettop (< $400).