panasonic

A sense of order has been restored to the North American TV market this quarter.

A few months after newcomer Vizio stunned the flat-panel television industry by ranking No. 1 in market share for the second quarter of 2007, the old stalwarts have reclaimed their positions. Samsung moved back to No. 1 in overall flat-panel shipments with 11.8 percent of the total market, according to DisplaySearch. Vizio fell to No. 2 with a 10.2-percent share, down from 12 percent the previous quarter. The rest of the list includes Sharp at 10 percent, Sony at 8.6, and Funai (… Read more

Just what we needed: another competitor in the portable navigation market. Panasonic is using this year's SEMA show to launch the CN-GP50U, its first portable navigation device, and the second product in its Strada navigation series. The CN-GP50U features a 5-inch display, and comes with text-to-speech technology for reading out road names when under route guidance. An optional real-time traffic service from Clear Channel is also available on the device with the purchase of a separate receiver.

For in-car connectivity, the CN-GP50U comes with a built-in Bluetooth hands-free calling interface, which copies over full cell-phone address books. Like the … Read more

Tamron will start shipping its image-stabilized 28-300mm lens on Monday--but only in Japan and for Canon SLRs, the company said.

The lens, formally called the AF 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC, is one of a host of new image-stabilized superzoom lenses on the market. Nikon has said its 18-200mm model is its all-time bestseller. Sigma recently added its own 18-200mm competitor. And Panasonic, whose lenses are compatible with Olympus SLRs and vice versa, also offers a 14-150mm model, which is the same range when translated into 35mm camera terms.

Tamron had planned to release the lens in August, … Read more

While most of the car tech attention in the Northern hemisphere is focused on the forthcoming DARPA Urban Challenge, a very different--but equally compelling--challenge is about to start in Australia. Next week, 41 teams from around the world will line up to compete in the 2007 Panasonic Solar Challenge, an 1,800-mile race from Darwin to Adelaide. As the event's name suggests, competing cars have only one source of fuel for the cross-continental race: the sun.

One of the brightest U.S. hopes for the contest is the University of Michigan Solar Car Team, a four-time winner of the … Read more

Panasonic has caught up with its Japanese compatriot Sharp by introducing three HD recorders equipped with Blu-ray and hard drives for the Japanese market. The top of the line is a 1-terabyte DMR-BW900 capable of recording up to a whopping 381 hours of HD video. To accomplish this, the new entries are all outfitted with advanced MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 in addition to the usual MPEG-2 encoder. The former is the same compression technology found in Blu-ray and HD-DVD products.

Besides a pair of high-definition broadcast tuners, the higher-end DMR-BW900 and 500GB DMR-BW800 models also claim "judder-free 1080p24," … Read more

CHIBA, Japan--The decisive battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD is at hand, says a prominent Panasonic exec.

Blu-ray manufacturers are going to start cutting prices and go out on a promotional binge this holiday season, Matsushita Electric Industrial's Kazuhiro Tsuga said during a briefing with reporters at Ceatec, a large tech trade show that started here Tuesday. At Matsushita, which is best known for its Panasonic brand name, Tsuga is an executive officer who oversees networking efforts, some home electronics technologies and overseas labs, and other areas.

By the end of the Christmas season or the end of the … Read more

DVD-recorders with hard drives may be old technology, but they're commanding astronomical prices on the free market these days. Case in point: We reviewed the Panasonic DMR-EH75V about a year and half ago when it had a list price of $500. If you search for the DMR-EH75H on Amazon, you'll see three resellers (all with reputable ratings) selling them for insane prices:

New DMR-EH75V: $1,895 New DMR-EH75V: $1,899 Used DMR-EH75V: $1,498

Is it just a glitch with Amazon? You might think so, but that's pretty clearly not the case. Jumping over to eBay, we found some recent auctions for the same product.

New Panasonic DMR-EH75V: $750 Refurbished DMR-EH75V: $675 Used DMR-EH75V: $760

Sure, that's less than half of the Amazon prices, but they're still very high. How often does the price of electronics increase after being used for a few years? What's going on here?

The answer is pretty simple--if you know the gritty details of consumer electronics and a little economics.… Read more

Panasonic has added four new laptops to its Let's Note line in Japan. Though they're sold under the ToughBook brand here in the States, the shiny portables aren't exactly what we'd call rugged. They are engineered to survive a drop from 30 inches--about desk height--and incorporate a spill-resistant keyboard, but we've always felt the greatest strength of the Let's Note line has been the laptops' remarkably light weight. These new models are no exception: The lightest laptop of the bunch, the 10.4-inch R7, weighs just 2.1 pounds. The 12.1-inch W7 weighs … Read more