Event Coverage

IFA Berlin, Germany 2006: Show Floor Highlights Part 1

By Terence Ang - 5 Sep 2006

Hitachi's booth at Hall 23

Hitachi's booth at Hall 23

Hitachi's focus was on its range of Picture Master 9000 series iDTVs, consisting of four new HD-Ready LCD and Plasma TVs, as well as its Blu-ray solutions, hard disk drives and its hybrid DVD/HDD camcorder. It is also one of the proponents of the IPS alpha display technology, first touted by Panasonic at the Press Day conference.

At first sight, the Hitachi W42P-HR9000 Plasma TV may seem like any other TV, but look closer and you'll realize that this TV comes with an internal hard disk recorder. Hitachi's Picture Master 9000 series consists of a 42-inch and 55-inch Plasma TV and 32-inch and 37-inch LCD TV. The flagship 42PD9700 is the first 42-inch plasma panel based on its ALIS 1080 Plasma screen that offers 1080 lines without any upscaling or additional signal processing.

An onlooker at the Hitachi booth, comparing IPS alpha technology on Hitachi's new 9000 series 32LD9700 and/or 37LD9700 LCD TVs versus conventional LCD TVs. The IPS-alpha LCD panel technology is a type of Plane Switching (IPS) technology that allows LCD to perform more like Plasmas, with bigger viewing angles, better contrast and improved response times.

There may be plenty of set-top HDD/DVD recorders (seriously) at the IFA 2006 from the CE players, big and small, but you have to stop and look at this HDD/DVD recorder from Hitachi called the DV-HD1000W. It is a one-terabyte (1000GB's worth) multi-format HDD/DVD recorder that gives you 128 hours of 17Mb/s HDTV broadcast recordings or 1700 hours of standard definition TV programs.

Many IFA visitors got excited by Hitachi's Hybrid DVD camcorder series, which let you capture video to conventional DVDs of any format or an 8GB hard disk drive. The series comes in two specifications - the DZ-HS303 with its 3.3-megapixel CCD, and the DZ-HS301, with 1.3-megapixel. The best part is that these camcorders are on true 16:9 widescreen format.

Stay tuned for more updates shortly on other booths and features!

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