Holiday Gadget Steam Picks Up

Terabytes of storage, Wi-Fi cameras, and new Sony MP3 players are on the horizon.

TOKYO -- If a look out of the window doesn't confirm it, a definite sign that summer in Japan is over can be seen in the wide array of gadgets coming our way soon from Asian electronics companies.

As the run up to the end-of-year shopping season begins to build steam, the competition is starting, and this year looks like it will be dominated by flat-screen TVs, digital video recorders, cell phones, and digital audio players.

Shoppers in Japan have a new product to look for: an HD-DVD video player. Toshiba and other format supporters previously promised to launch players in the United States and Japan this year, but those plans have now been shifted. It looks like only Japanese consumers will see them before 2006. The new HD-DVD format offers much more recording space than do current DVD formats, and that means it's possible to store an entire high-definition movie on a single disc--something that hasn't been possible previously.

A competing format, Blu-ray Disc, is due out sometime next year, and there'll also be more HD-DVD players, so look for a fierce competition between the two unless any last-minute deal is announced to merge them.PC World's Melissa J. Perenson has been keeping up with developments; browse her " Burning Questions " columns to get up-to-date.

> We don't often cover products from Hitachi because, well, Hitachi's not so strong in consumer electronics. But the company's latest digital video recorder, the DV-DH1000W , is something a bit special: The unit has an impressive 1 terabyte of storage. That's enough room for more than two months of continuous television in the unit's lowest-quality recording mode, which is perhaps too much space for even the most avid TV junkie.

So, why the large capacity? The answer is high-definition television. When the recorder is in HDTV mode, the 1TB of recording space works out to a much more sensible range of 68 to 128 hours of programming. Other features include dual tuners so you can record two channels at once. The Hitachi DV-DH1000W will be available from late October in Japan only, and the company is planning to produce about 5000 units per month. It will cost about $2087.

Now, here's a good idea: Nikon has developed a couple of new digital still cameras with built-in wireless LAN adapters. At a basic level, the Wi-Fi connection can be used in place of a USB cable to transfer images to a computer for storage or to a Wi-Fi printer for printing. Slightly more interesting is the possibility of setting the camera to automatically transfer each picture to the PC immediately after it's taken.

The connection can be either direct or through a network. The Coolpix P1 and P2 cameras are largely identical, except for their resolution. The P1 is an 8-megapixel camera, while the P2 is a 5-megapixel model. In practice, this means full-resolution images from the P1 are 3264 by 2448 pixels, while those from the P2 are 2592 by 1944 pixels. Look for them in late September. The P1 will cost $550 and the P2, $400.

Sony's latest Walkman players were probably the company's biggest challenge yet to Apple Computer, at least before Apple unveiled the IPod Nano. In response, Sony's announced five new players and jukebox software that ties into an online music store.

Sony's new lineup includes three flash-memory-based models with capacities of 512MB, 1GB, and 2GB, and two hard-drive-based models with capacities of 6GB and 20GB. The new players closely mimic Apple's IPod Minis in terms of capacity and the type of storage used (or they would have, had Apple not killed off the hard-drive-based IPod Mini a few hours prior to Sony's announcement).