Panasonic have been showing off their combination DVR/Freesat/Blu-ray home cinema system, and it looks like enough to make anyone without access to the free-to-air Freesat satellite service weep with envy. The Panasonic DMR-BS850 brings together a 500GB hard-drive, a Blu-ray recorder and two Freesat tuners, with full HD recording and more.
It has been a long week for Leica fanatics with the talks on Panasonic on the verge to acquire Leica’s photography division. The thought of the German finest optics they’ve been worshiped for decades to fall onto the hands of the Japanese tech behemoth must be unbearable. Whether Leica could use a technology boost from the takeover, or Panasonic to separate themselves from another consumer camera marques, are not happening in near future.
The increasing popular 3D HD Live sports are all over the news these days, we’ve seen the technology gaining positive reviews since its first public debut on BCS College championship game, and now to be featured in the upcoming All star valentine weekend [ check out our family package tickets giveaway, estimated value at $80 !!]. The contents and availability, however, are limited to selected theaters, and frankly not easy to find if you live outside of much popular cities; but similar technology will soon coming to your living home with Panasonic unveiled its 3D Full HD Blu-ray technology labs.
You would think a mini 5-inch TV with waterproof feature has no use in your neck of wood, it does has its marketing value around the pool, outdoor and suitable for housewives like to spend time watching soup opera in the kitchen or bathtub. Apparently the Panasonic in Japan thought so, they have announced new models with upgrades to its IPX6/7 portable 5-inch Viera displays with better contrast, reception and improve power efficiency.
Last week Panasonic Toughbook division announced upgrades to its full-rugged Toughbook 30 and the convertible tablet 19; today, they’ve brought most of the new features available on its semi-rugged Toughbook 52, and added a new touchscreen option.
We’ve seen Bravia Eco TV with sensor-based practice to adjust LED backlit in real time, the similar trick is now being used in a Panasonic produced home-user fluorescent lamp to exhibit its effectiveness in cutting down your power bill.
Last week we reported couple of upgraded Toughbook CF19 and CF-30 were spotted at Panasonic, Japanese site. Today, announcement of similar units are made available for US consumers. As reported, both models are now sharing an ultra high luminance 1000 nit LCDs (previously not available for CF-19), and have gotten better anti-glare and anti-reflective treatments, with circular polarization technology incorporated into the screen to improve outdoor usages, and many hardware updates that worth the wait.
If you can’t spare $400 for the much-advanced Lumix touch-screen FX-580 or the AVCHD lite series Lumix , there’s a budget slim factor model down the line with Venus Engine IV powered DMC-FS25. It’s more affordable but not cutting down in functionalities. You’ll get the same 12.1 megapixel image sensor, 5x Leica-brand optical zoom and 3-inch large LCD screen, and in fact, a top-of-the-line FS-Series model, no less.
Next up on Panasonic rollout is a slim and sleek FX series, touch-screen enabled camera featuring Leica-grade optics, high-speed and high-performance Venus Engine V, DMC-FX-580. The large 3-inch display incorporates a touch panel for user interfaces and controls, together with a host of Panasonic’s latest “Many me” advance features and a 12.1MP image sensor with 25-125mm (35mm equiv.) 5x optical zoom lens.
In preparing for the PMA 2009, Panasonic has launched a series of new digital compact cameras, two out of the new Lumix, the DCM-TZ-ZS3 and DCM-TS1 are the first of its class to feature the new AVCHD Lite HD Video Recording Capabilities of MPEG-4 / H.264 AVC video compression standard.
JP
