Zentek Technology Japan has announced that they've developed a One-Seg tuner that conforms to the SDIO standard. SDIO is "SecureDigital Input/Output," which allows devices to use their SD card slots as though they were external device slots.

The new SD One-Seg tuner should be available in the first quarter of 2007, but only as an OEM device; thus we'll probably see it rebranded or offered by another company before it makes its way to consumers. The new device should bring One-Seg reception to devices with SD card slots and SDIO compatibility, such as PCs, PDAs, multimedia players, DVD players, car navigation systems, and even digital cameras.



Inspired by:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20060929/zentek1.htm

Press Release (PDF):
http://www.zentek.co.jp/pdf/2006/news_060928_1.pdf

Pixela went ahead and announced their One-Seg/digital radio/FM radio receiver, the "Prodia", for release in mid-September. 100 units will go to corporate users for around 150,000 yen apiece, but a consumer-level model should be on the way shortly.

The Prodia has a 2.17" 240 x 320 dot LCD with EPG support, P2/C profile data display support, and playback of H.264 videos. The internal lithium-ion battery should last for about 3 hours. It also has a USB port for firmware updates.



Inspired by:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20060905/pixela.htm

Press Release:
http://www.pixela.co.jp/company/news/2006/20060905.html

Tokyo Tower is responsible for much of the Terrestrial Digital transmissions in the greater Kanto (region around Tokyo) area. It will be broadcasting at "full power" from December 1st, so to commemorate, the Association for Promotion of Digital Broadcasting pulled a few strings, and the tower will be illuminated with blue lights for the night of December 1st.

While it was made apparent in a recent survey that most of Japan doesn't give a hoot about the new terrestrial digital television, o­ne of the primary hurdles to its inception has been the need to purchase a new tuner box.

Since all the tuner boxes these days come in either really really expensive televisions or digital video recorder hybrid doohickeys, people like me with no need for either of those products has been sort of out of luck.

Until today, anyhow. Panasonic finally offers up a terrestrial digital tuner box without all the bells and whistles. Cost? 63,000 yen...

A company called "Seed Planning" has conducted a survey regarding the state of the Terrestrial Digital Broadcast market, and they have hypothesized that by 2010, more than 37 million people will be using Terrestrial Digital.

Personally, I found a couple problems with the survey -- namely, the fact that their sample size is o­nly 100 people, all of which were "digital broadcast industry related." But hey, I'm sure they know more about conducting a survey than I do.

A company called "Chrome Cyz" has developed a new antenna capable of receiving terrestrial digital broadcasts. This isn't too cool in of itself, but it's got a nice design; the plane-based shape of it even allows embedding into the lumber of a house's walls.

The second terrestrial digital article for tonight. Sanyo has developed an experimental new phone which can not o­nly receive terrestrial digital broadcasts, but record them to SD as well.

One of the problems with these new terrestrial digital broadcasts is that they have sort of been retrofitted to Japanese TVs. In other words, two TV tuners were used for receiving two different signals. It makes sense, but seeing as how satellite and terrestrial signals are both digital (in the case of terrestrial digital, anyway), it makes more sense to have them both use the same tuner.

Or at least that's what I understand about how this works.

What does the Southeastern Conference have to do with Japan?
Probably nothing actually - this "SEC" is "Systems Engineering Consultants."
BML - "Broadcast Markup Language." That's a new o­ne. With terrestrial digital, this sort of stuff is possible.

Sony announced three new universal remotes today, two of which support control of terrestrial digital tuners.