Panasonic presented a lot of new products this week:

Plasma and LCD TV’s (ranging from 37 to 50″) in the Viera lineup. The plasme screen has a 3000:1 contrast ratio. The technology used in this specific case is called “PEAKS”.

These are 2 home cinema systems: the SC-HT06 (2.1, with virtual speaker technology) and the SB-TP60 (5.1 with Cineplex Sound technology

And finally we have the SA-XR55 (7.1), an AV amplifier that uses the “Dual Amplifier” technology and VGDA (Variable Gain Digital Amplifier).

ODTV, short for On Demand TV, means that you can watch what you want, when you want to and on what you want. Several Japanese companies are offering us their TV services and hardware solutions.
From a hardware point of view, we have MelcoInc (Buffalo) with a ODTV compatible box, with an Ethernet port and a D4 (Digital) out.

Television wise, we have OnDemandTV that offers nice prices, with a DVD rental at 3 Euros for 24 hours. In my opinion, this is a good solution as the lazy people like me can watch any movie they want without leaving the couch (byebye those useless trips to the video rental store to get a movie that is not available).

Toto brought us the toilet seats that get warm in winter, include a bidet, and a warm stream to wash - and dry - your bottom, and a variety of cool WC gadgets that make you laugh until you try them and realize life has no sense without them. Well, recently, they have developed the “New Neorest” toilet system series which is the world’s first toilet seat that releases an aroma and plays soothing music (via removable memory cards), in addition to the customary features of course.

In October sales of home electronics in Japan accounted for US$ 1.4 billion, a fall for the third month in a row in comparison with 2004.
According to the Nippon Electric Big-Stores Association who reported the statistics, the sluggish sales was due to the earthquake in Niigata and the heavy typhoos that hit Japan in October. DVD player and TV sales increased, but sales of video cameras and PCs are fell.

The busy Japanese often complain about lower back-pain. Matsushita has found a solution to get rid of this discomfort — it introduced a rodeo horse style fitness machine, called Joba.

For just JPY 187,000 (about US$ 1,700), the Joba lets your lower back make left-right / front-back swings and slides. We have tried the Joba in the Matsushita showroom in Shiodome and enjoyed the ride — we did not fall-off though …

Many young Japanese use coin-laundry to wash their clothes because there is not enough space in their 15 sqm rooms. These coin-laundry shop are un-staffed and can be used around the clock — not a big problem as vandalism is not existing in Japan.

Sanyo Electric has developed a communications adapter for coin-laundry machines that connects through NTT’s ADSL or FTTH to the Internet. This feature will enable the users to see if a machine in their favorite coin-laundry shop is available. It furthermore, sends a mail to the user’s mobile phone or PC once the washing is finished. The shop owner can use the connection to monitor the sales and usage of his shop.