[ Music ] ^M00:00:02
>> Every January the electronics industry gathers in Las
Vegas for CES. But if you want to see what's really
going to happen in the electronic industry, you can go a
few months early to CAETEC, Japan's big electronic show.
Every major manufacturer, including a lot of the chip
and component manufacturers, gather for a five-day fest
outside the city to show off their wares. And here's
what they had this year. Robots. Personal robots are
still a tough sell, but a lot of companies are still
trying to have a big hit. Titouden, which makes a lot
of industrial equipment, has made a wireless robot that
you control with a hand-held. Here you see a couple of
them competing. Citizen, the watch company, has also
come out with a mini robot kit. It's mostly made for
school. And the mini robots can play soccer, and some
can be controlled by solar power. There is also a
company named Alsock [assumed spelling] which has come
out with a robot that provides personal information.
These robots rove the floor of the show and told you
where you needed to go. TVs. LCD was big again, of
course. [Inaudible] Hitachi, and JVC all showed off LCD
TVs that were less than an inch thick. This is Sharp's
52-inch thin LCD sliding up and down the panel. JVC
will come out with the first super-thin LCD in the first
half of 2008. Expect also to hear a lot of news this
year at CES 4k TVs. 4k stands for the number of pixels.
4,000 on the vertical axis. The mirrors you see here go
inside JVC's 4k projector. Until now, these projectors
have only been sold to professionals. Cell phones.
Naturally, it's Japan. You have a lot of news about
cell phones. The iPhone won't be the only touch-screen
phone for long. Sharp has been working on a panel that
you can manipulate the numbers and data and Internet
information with your fingers. They've been working on
it for about three years and they started sending
samples to manufacturers. And a lot of attendees at the
show love KDDI's fashion phone. This costs about $400
and it was designed by designer Naoto Fukasawa. The
slim phone also gets live TV. Blu-Ray and HD DVD, the
fight's not over yet. Blu-Ray claims its going to start
winning the war this December. Pictured here is
Hitachi's Blu-Ray camcorder. It contains a Blu-Ray
recorder as well as a hard drive. Virtual reality.
Canon and Hitachi and a couple of universities showed up
with prototypes for a virtual reality. This one from
Canon let's you manipulate a virtual printer at the same
time you can see your hands along with the virtual
image. Portable TV. Toshiba showed off a portable TV
with a built-in fuel cell. The TV runs for about 10
hours before it runs out of fuel. And then there are
those "only of Japan" sort of devices. This is Rolly, a
gadget from Sony that dances and gyrates to music. You
can program it, or it will just gyrate randomly to
whatever song you put on. It costs $300 and serves no
practical purpose. Yet people at the show went nuts.
The booth was packed almost every day. I even spoke to
a couple of people who bought one. They want to take
it, figure out how to hack it, and see if they can do
something with it. I'm Michael Kenos [assumed spelling]
in Tokyo for news.com. ^M00:03:13 [ Music ]
