Mini movie maker: Panasonic knows the virtue of small cameras. Its latest contribution to the cause is the SDR-S7, a digital camcorder that fits in your palm and weighs a mere 160 grams, including the rechargeable battery. About the same height and width as a small can of coffee, the SDR-S7 includes a 10x zoom and a 2.7-inch LCD screen. It records in the MPEG-2 format at a resolution of 640×480 onto either SD or SDHC memory cards (not included) for up to 13 hours of video on a 16-gigabyte card. The tradeoff is on battery life: 70 minutes of use sends you back to the recharger. Available in either black or silver, the camcorder will sell for ¥44,800 when it comes out April 25. panasonic.jp/
TV on the go: Opting for a vastly different approach to watching and recording TV is Buffalo, with its cryptically named DH-KONE4G/U2DS, out last week for ¥15,700. Ostensibly a modest-size USB memory device, the gadget is also a 1Seg (one segment broadcast) TV tuner USB dongle. It can record up to 20 hours of TV on to its 4-gigabyte internal memory for playback on your computer. buffalo.jp/products/new/2008/000681.html
Finding new ways: Using a compass to navigate is just so 20th century. Portable navigation systems (PNS) started out as must-have accessories for your car. They have since become multifunctional gadgets that you can carry around with you. Sanyo's two new Gorilla PNS devices multitask by including a 1Seg TV tuner to go with their navigation abilities. The NV-SB360DT has a 4.5-inch touch-screen, with its big brother, the NV-SD700DT, offering a 7-inch screen. The pair can each play MP3s and show JPEG photos, have 4 gigabytes of flash memory, a 400MHz CPU and an SD card reader. The NV-SB360DT will cost ¥83,790 and the NV-SD700DT ¥104,790 when they hit stores this month. www.sanyo.co.jp/koho/hypertext40804news-j/0408-1.html