Here's a new 7" widescreen DVD player from Hitachi with a few added bonuses like an FM radio, TV tuner, and alarm function.

I had no idea such technology existed until I read this article, but Hitachi has announced a new notebook PC that features the world's first "vein-recognition" device as a security measure. Vein-recognition apparently recognizes the veins in a person's finger, rather than the fingerprint itself, making it harder to falsify.

Hitachi Maxell has a new pen that features Bluetooth compatibility. Seems like something like this would be a nice replacement for graphic tablets, because frankly, I have a difficult drawing/writing something by hand unless I can see what I've already done.

Ever wanted to look into the mirror and see something other than...a reflection? Now you can. Hitachi's new "Miragraphy" is a "mirror-type display" that involves a mirror, PC, projector, and some data. When you look into the mirror, you of course see a normal reflection, but also whatever the projector is displaying. Could be useful!

Hitachi gears up to release a new version of their internet appliance, the "FLORA-ie." Details inside.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has announced they are "at the cust of the most significant hard drive technology transition of the past decade." For us consumers, this means you can expect to see 20GB Microdrives and 1TB 3.5" drives by 2007. Here's the English press release with more information.

KDDI and Hitachi Systems and Services have teamed up for a project called "micro-VNC," allowing for VNC from a mobile phone. The system supports Windows, Mac and Linux machines.

The GMA-4080N is a product of Hitachi-LG Data Storage. There are many DVD burners that support DVD+R DL, this one also supports DVD-RAM.

Here's a new digital audio player from Hitachi, and it looks to be decent. It's cheap, has an SD card slot, and 256MB of built in memory. And it's small. I mean...small.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, or "the guys who bought IBM's hard drive line," has announced a number of new products. There's a 500GB hard drive for desktops in the mix, as well as a new Microdrive that's somehow smaller than older Microdrives, and they're calling it "Mikey." Not kidding.

English Press Release - New Desktop Drives
English Press Release - New Portable Drives

IPS Alpha Technology is a new company being formed by Hitachi, Matsushita (Panasonic), Toshiba, and Hitachi Displays for - you guessed it - the manufacture and sale of LCDs.

I'm thinking this will be direct competition to S-LCD, a similar venture announced by Samsung and Sony over the summer.

Hitachi has some new "Wooo" series hybrid recorders, and they can also record HD content to the hard drive. Or as we say in hip-hop, "HD* to the HD." Other than that, well, they're hybrid recorders.

*Note: In Japan, "High Definition" content is referred to as "Hi-Vision" content, so I am in fact full of crap anyway.

Hitachi have added the "Prius K" series to their notebook computer model line-up. The "Prius Air Note K" and "Prius Note K" feature upgraded optical and hard drives while the "PriusGear K" is a low-spec alternative to the previously released "PriusGear GN75KT" available in white.

Hitachi will display fuel cells it is currently developing for mobile devices at CEATEC JAPAN 2004, which begins 5 October 2004. Fuel cells for mobile phones, PDAs and notebook computers will be displayed.

I'm not kidding about that product name - but this fridge offers a couple interesting options, including the ability to connect to a network for confirming a couple statistics. What?

It must be International Day of Joint Development Announcements or something, because KDDI, Hitachi, and Toshiba announced that they would be jointly developing fuel cells aimed for use in cellular phones.

Hitachi LG Data Storage has announced 12x DVD recorders that support DVD+R DL (OEM only, to be released in June). Buffalo will be offering the retail versions soon.

There really isn't much innovation here, I just felt like writing about it because it's pretty rare that Hitachi release a digital camera.
And hey, this o­ne doesn't look so bad. Pretty cheap too.

Remember that 400GB hard drive from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies? The o­ne that supports Serial ATA?
Well, guess what. According to Akiba PC Hotline, the T-ZONE. PC DIY SHOP in Akihabara, Tokyo will have a few of these drives in stock o­n the 24th. The price is 52,290 yen.

I suppose this means that you can take the HD out of the computer and throw it o­n the ground as hard as you can, and it would be alright.
But I still wouldn't recommend it.

It must be national LSI week in Japan, because Hitachi announced their new hardware today. It's an LSI for hard drives, that has the world's fastest internal transfer speed - 2.5Gb/sec. I'm not sure if I should be excited about this or not, because it's an "internal" transfer speed. Does this mean a drive using this LSI could write data that quickly? I guess not, because the rest of the architecture would need to support it, such as the platters, write heads, interface, etc.. I really don't know enough about the inner workings of a HD to make a judgement about this, but the prospect of having a 2.5Gb/sec HD is still pretty rad. Can anyone offer more insight?

It's not really holographic, but it still looks pretty cool. What the system consists of is a projector at the bottom of a tube, which projects a special (as in, the object needs to be photographed from 24 different angles special) image to the top of the tube, where a mirror sits. This mirror then bounces the image to 24 other mirrors, that then bounce the image again to a rotating mirror in the middle.
What ends up happening is a simulated 3D image, viewable from any angle.

Don't ask me how they managed to name the computer "Prius" without taking any flak from Toyota. There are two models, actually - the "Prius Deck" and "Prius Air."
More information and pictures inside.

It's more or less just a faster version of their same drive released earlier last year. DVD+R and DVD-R burn at 8x, which is nice.

Hitachi Manufacturing will release a digital surveillance recorder [DS-F221] capabale of connecting 9 cameras
and has a 320 GB hard drive, along with the drive unit for the cameras [VK-AC950] on Jan 20th.

Using 4ccs of a menathol based solution, personal computing devices could be powered for around 6 to 8 hours.

Hitachi Cable is exhibiting the wireless network capable IP phone, the "Wireless IP Phone IPC5000" at this year's "Wireless Japan 2003" event. Conforming to the 802.11b standard, the phone allows one to talk at places featuring this type of wireless network.