Going HD: As television sets get more advanced, so too do video camcorders, and that means going high-definition. Hitachi's recent DZ-BD7H camcorder records onto Blu-ray discs alongside its 30-gigabyte hard disk. But Hitachi has upped the stakes with its new DZ-BD9H, out in February and keeping the Blu-ray ability but doubling the in-camera storage to 60-gigabytes. A second new model, the DZ-HD90, omits the Blu-ray. Both camcorders offer 5.3 megapixels of resolution. Prices are estimated at ¥180,000 and ¥140,000 respectively.
This year's black: One of the key arguments in favor of plasma TVs over LCD has been that technology's ability to offer better contrast, most particularly to provide blacks that are more than just grays with pretensions. Panasonic, a key promoter of plasma despite the recent swing by consumers in favor of LCD, is trumpeting the virtues of contrast with its new PX80 series plasma TVs. The just-announced lineup comes in 37-inch, 42-inch and 50-inch sizes with the headline feature of 15,000:1 contrast ratio. What this means in practice is a higher contrast and better picture than rival sets. The three are compatible with the Viera link system, which allows different Panasonic products to talk to one another. They come in resolutions of 1024×720 for the smallest model, a pretty standard 1024×768 for the 42-inch version and a more arresting 1366×768 for the 50-incher. More information is online at panasonic.jp/viera/products/px80/.
Shedding light: Features gluttony has been an all-too common ailment among electronic dictionaries in recent years, with such unnecessary bolt-ons as TV tuners and color screens. Sharp is going for a more practical and surprisingly rare addition to its top-selling Papyrus range — the humble backlight. Such a feature might seem inconsequential, but when you can't read your obscure definition because the illumination is so bad, you too might see the light. Sharp's new PW-GT570 and PW-AT770 models both boast 5.5-inch high-resolution monochrome touch-screen displays with backlighting. They also keep the increasingly popular handwriting- recognition feature, which allows the user to write kanji, for example, on the screen and get the English translation quickly and easily. The PW-AT770 is on sale now for about ¥35,000. Its sibling, featuring a slightly different set of dictionaries, is due Feb. 9 (¥37,000). Both run on two LR03 (known overseas as AAA) batteries for 120 hours of use.