Sharp and Sharp Laboratories of Europe announced their "Triple View" technology today, which builds upon their existing Dual View technology by adding a whole other viewing angle.

This development means that three people seated at different angles facing the same screen will each see a different image. Billy on your left sees a picture of a truck, you see a picture of a trout, and Bubba to your right sees a picture of a shotgun.

Sharp's own English press release offers more technical details. According to the Impress Watch article, a single LCD with a resolution of 533 x 480 dots is split into three different signals with a Parallax Barrier, giving each virtual "screen" a resolution of a mere 177 x 480. Not exactly earth shattering, but at least the technology now exists.

Willcom announced they will be releasing a silver version of the W-ZERO3 on March 8th. The silver color is "a refined tint, to be used by a wider user base including women." The price and specifications of the new unit remain the same as the black W-ZERO3.

Willcom's press release is here and their product page here.

Sharp and Vodafone have gotten together to show some mobile phones with VGA displays at the "3GSM World Congress 2006." There aren't many specifications released about the phones themselves, but we do know that they have nice displays -- compared to the conventional QVGA of current Japanese phones, VGA offers four times as many pixels. ITmedia has some pics of the phone in this article. If you're looking for more information, here is the press release from Sharp, and here is the o­ne from Vodafone. Finally, and I'm not entirely sure this is related, but Toshiba is showing a VGA LCD controller LSI intended for use in mobile phones; its press release is here. The image below comes from the ITmedia article.

Sharp has announced the Papyrus PW-9920, a new addition to their line of electronic dictionaries. It contains 63 reference sources including a number related to diet and health so is guaranteed to sell like hot-cakes to Japanese housewives.

Carabiners, for those that don't know, are metal links used to connect things together. Yourself to a rope, your keys to your belt loops, or whatever. Sharp slapped a carabiner o­n their latest MP3 player, which may actually be more useful than it sounds.

Here it is: the last piece of office equipment you'll ever need.

-USB or network connectivity? Check
-Printer? Check
-Fax? Check
-Copier? Check
-Scanner? Check
-PDF creation? Check
-Scan to email? Check
-Document feeder? Check
-Cordless phone base station? Check
-Memory card slot? Check
-PictBridge? Check
-Synchronizing with a mobile phone? Check

No really, it's all here.

What difference does a 5.6MHz/1-bit amplifier make to audio quality? I have absolutely no idea, but it sure sounds fancy, doesn't it? That's the premise behind Sharp's new "Auvi SD-MX1" DVD/CD/MD component system.

Last week, Sharp jointly announced their "Dual-View", which displays a different screen image depending on viewing position, and "Veil-View", which allows control of the viewing angle, technologies. Read on for a detailed explanation of how these technologies work and when you can expect to see them hit the shelves.

To keep up with consumers' insatiable demand for stupendously large LCD televisions, Sharp is building a new LCD panel factory at its site in Kameyama, Japan. The new factory, which is more than twice as large as Sharp's existing LCD panel factory, will focus on the production of full high-definition 45 and 65 inch LCD panels. The good news for consumers is that the new factory is also expected to double Sharp's investment productivity, leading to lower prices for LCD TVs and larger profits for Sharp.

Leave it to Sharp to announce a heap of products in the same day. This time, we take a look at two of their new 32" LCD TVs offering integrated wireless LAN, USB functionality, and dual display support. Err wait, o­nly o­ne of them offers that stuff...

Sharp has a new type of Mebius o­n the horizon -- the home theater version. The "Mebius PC-TX32" includes a 32" LCD, doubles as a hybrid recorder, and appears to offer all sorts of nifty HTPC functionality. More details inside.

I am back from Europe, and a lot of the instability of life provided by school has come to an end. At least until August. I've promised myself at least three articles per day on TechJapan, but we all know how well things like that have worked out.

I do, however, have an article about Sharp's new Zaurus for you. It is more or less an update to their SL-C3000 PDA (the one with the hard drive, if you remember). The update includes more Flash ROM and some more integrated tools like a TOEIC training book. Not particularly enthralling, but at least Sharp is keeping the Zaurus line alive.

Sharp has a new MP3/WMA player coming out, with a 9.4mm thick body and integrated FM transmitter. It appears to be standard beyond these two items.

I sort of wish Sharp put o­ne of their awesome color LCDs o­n this unit. Sharp knows how to make a nice screen, but the o­ne they put o­n this thing is a bit of a disappointment.

Now this is more like it. Available up to 400GB, Sharp has three models of HDTV recorders coming out in March. AQUOS is an enormously successful brand for the company, so it's nice to see them taking it somewhere other than kickin rad LCDs. Splendid features of these units include direct recording of HDTV streams, upscaling of DVD video to HDTV, and HDMI connections.

Sharp's yearly update to their laptop with a 3D display comes in the form of being able to now being able to watch DVDs in 3D, and enhanced specifications. I've been quite anxious to see if Sharp's 3D display technology is actually worth the 360,000 yen price tag.

Continuing with the Sharp news, here's their new network media player: the CE-MR01. Shaped sort of like a slimline DVD drive stood o­n its side, the CE-MR01 in fact doesn't even have a disc drive. It contains an Ethernet port, and is also compatible with 802.11a/b/g wireless LAN standards.

This would be great for someone like myself, who doesn't necessarily want/need another disc drive in their home theater setup. But it does seem to be dragged down by a few setbacks, such as lack of support for more popular MPEG-4 formats.

Sharp will have a new electronic dictionary available in January, and it features a smashing 400 hour battery life. So when will laptops start having something like this?

A pretty unremarkable voice recorder from Sharp. At least they include a telephone adapter so that you can record your phone conversations. Might come in handy in the battle against those nasty telemarketers!

Title says it all...except for how this is more than $3000 dollars.

Sharp will begin sales of a new 3-in-1 HDD/DVD/VHS "DV-HRW35" recorder from 15 November. The recorder combines a 120GB HDD/DVD-RW recorder with a VHS video deck.

Sharp Corporation announced it has developed a 1/1.8" 8 megapixel CCD on 26 October. The RJ21V3BA0ET is the industry's highest resolution interline CCD of its size. Samples will ship from the end of October with full-scale production to begin from January 2005.

Another day, another new LCD TV from Sharp. There's nothing particular special about the LC-26GD3 26", it just fills a gap in a line-up that already includes 22, 32 and 37 inch models. Still we can't really complain - the more LCD TVs they sell, the cheaper they will get.

Sharp has released details of a new addition to their lineup of Linux-based Zaurus PDAs. Features of the new model include an internal 4GB hard drive (a world first in a VGA screen-equipped PDA), a USB port, support for playback of Windows Media files and a Control key on the keyboard! Disappointly however, no internal wireless LAN or Bluetooth functionality has been included in the new model.

Besides two of the sexiest fingers I've ever seen, Sharp demonstrates o­nce again that they have the capability to make cool shit happen to cell phones.

This time around, "cool shit" comes in the form of a 2MP CCD camera module, complete with 2x optical zoom and autofocus.

The ramifications are endless. Or not.

This is the product announcement I've been waiting for.
While Sharp previously had their 3D display technology o­nly in their RD3D line of notebooks, they've finally gotten around to bringing out a normal LCD screen with the same technology.

Hey, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, it might actually be useful in America...
Other features include a 1024 x 768 resolution, which goes nicely with the D-Sub 15 pin input.

Dear Sharp:

Why don't you offer more of your products in countries other than Japan? I particularly like the DirectHD feature, which is o­nly available to those in the USA with the "Actius" notebooks.

Sincerely,
zmcnulty

Don't be alarmed, T-Mobile USA users - Sharp is releasing the phone for T-Mobile in Germany. T-Mobile, for those of you who don't know, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.
After vodafone in England, this represents the second Sharp phone in Europe.
Come to think of it, Sharp doesn't even offer phones in the USA, do they?

Sharp will bring out an updated version of their 3D laptop that they released last year.

The major change is the inclusion of a Japanese operating system and keyboard. The previous version was  a development model, so it was English o­nly.

LCD Color TV "Aquos" new lineup...
20 inch and 15 inch, 2 models to be released