Pioneer has a new model of their "Sugureco" video recorders o­n the horizon. It's loaded with an 800GB hard drive and DVD burner.

Two new products for your bathroom from Pioneer.

This isn't exactly a product, but something rather interesting I came across while looking for news from this past week. At their announcement event for their new PDP-506HD, PDP-436HD, and PDP-436SX plasma displays, Pioneer showed the following slide:

The above photo, taken by Watch Impress, demonstrates just how far plasma displays have come in the past few years. The first row contains brightness and contrast -- as you can see, brightness for Pioneer's 50" plasma displays is 3.1 times what it was in 1997, and contrast ratio approximately 18 times better. Meanwhile, the next row contains power consumption, and you can see that it is down 29% versus the same set in 1997. The light emitting efficiency is 2.2 times better, and the actual weight of the set is down 25%. It's always nice to take a look back and see how far you've come, even if it's o­nly a period of 7 years.

Pioneer has improved their top-of-the-range cordless digital headphones by adding AAC support, using a new 48-bit DSP chip and increasing the model number by 1000. The SE-DIR2000C headphones will be available in late July for approximately $US450. If you're in the market for some of these, you may also want to check out JVC's HP-W1000 which offer a similar level of specs.

Here's a new DVR from Pioneer, and it is apparently the first to support writing to Dual Layer DVD-R.

Here's a new CD player for DJs from Pioneer, packed with a bunch of features I'll likely never understand the importance of. I've never tried to be a DJ, nor do I think I ever will.

Still, it's 50,000 yen. Any DJs out there want to tell us if this is worth it or not?

In what looks to be o­ne of the most technical articles I've translated in a long time, Kyoto University, Pioneer, and Rohm all got together to announce some new technologies they've developed intended for use in flexible displays.

A "Bio-nanofiber" may sound like something out of Shadowrun (if any of you have ever heard of it...), but it could very well be the technology that powers the rollable LCDs of tomorrow.

Here's Pioneer's latest DVD burner, and it supports burning dual layer DVD±R discs at 6x. I sort of lost track of DVD burners when they got to 8x (my own drive supports dual layered burning, but I've never burnt a dual layered disc before), but this is a pretty good indicator of how far things have come since then.

Also, I've finally come to realize how complicated these competing DVD formats are.

Hope they float!

Pioneer's new plasma display panels (PDPs) can display 5.75 billion colors, thanks to its "direct color filter" technology.

This is the external version of the Pioneer DVR-A07. It features USB 2.0/IEEE 1394 connections, 8x DVD±R recordinrg, and 4x DVD±RW recording.

I know it doesn't sound too exciting from the headline, but apparently this is a "world's first" so I'm going to post it here.
The actual part that you can change the size of is the headphone chip itself. I guess if you've got a small/large ear canal, this would be the product for you.

I have o­nly o­ne word to say in response to this: Golly.
Yes, you heard correctly. Pioneer unveiled some technology today which, rather than using a laser beam to record discs, they use an electron beam to record discs. The result? More than 50GB o­n just o­ne side of the disc. The technology can even be applied to Blu-ray ROMs.

Pioneer is set to put out a CD case that holds 6 CDs, with built in (passive) stereo speakers. This would be good for people who don't feel like carrying around headphones, but also have a few CDs to transport.
It's plastic, and looks like a typical CD case. But when you take out the CDs at the end, gee whiz, some speakers.

Pioneer released a tool today that lets owners of the A07 DVD burner choose between three operational modes, o­ne of which is "quiet."

This will put Pioneer as the #1 producer in the world of PDP displays in the world, with a 22% market share.

I'm sure nobody saw this coming, but Pioneer went ahead and did it anyway. Not o­nly is it a cordless IP phone, it can be used as a PC headset. But the fun doesn't stop there! It can also be used as a normal, run of the mill cordless phone.

Oh, and it's pink. For some reason. I guess the designer had something against a more neutral color.