Slashdot Mirror
Cool Japanese Gadgets You Can't Have
CitizenC writes "C|Net is running a story on really cool gadgets that we don't get here in the US or Canada. (At least, not yet anyway.) Included are an in car, dashboard mounted DVD player (VERY bad idea), a digital camera that stores images on a MiniDisk, the PlayStation 2 (Although we WILL be getting it this fall), colour LCD cell phones for web-surfing, and finally (my personal favorite), a digital fish tank!"
For the past two years, I've been dying to buy a MiniDisc package.
One (1) MiniDisc Recorder/Player -- capable of recording compressed voice at AM, FM and CD quality (so that I can get 1 to 10 *hours* transcription recording) with variable-speed playback
One (1) Car Audio deck -- capable of playing back my audio MDs
One (1) Home Audio deck -- capable of ripping CD to MD, with options for AM/FM/CD quality. If I'm out downhill skiing, I frankly don't really care if I'm getting CD quality sound... I'm not actually gonna be listening all that closely to the music!
One (1) megapixel Digital Camera -- saving its pix to the MD.
One (1) Computer Interface -- capable of storing data and creating music MDs... and reading my pix, playing my transcriptions, playing my music, whatever.
Hell, I'd be happy to pay a fair schwack o' change for that package.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Jeesh, that's one of the FIRST things I ran on linux, must be 5 or 6 years ago already. Of course it's not as good as the modern one's ....:)
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
You've never come close to being killed by some asshole on a cell phone. I came off a light one day and some jerk ran the red and sped right in front of me. He was wearing a shirt and tie with a cell phone on his ear and looking over in his passenger seat at something (papers I suppose). Had I gotten off the light faster I would have had a Lexus symbol embedded into my skull. Lets analyze the phrase "watching a DVD". You are "watching" which is defined as paying attention to. What are you watching? A DVD movie in the dash of your car. Now correct me if I'm wrong but it is generally good form to "watch" the road in front of you rather than your dashboard. I would assume one wants to watch the area in front of your car being that the dangerous things are out there and not on the DVD screen. Geeks like gadgets, not being crippled from car accidents.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
you can already get dashmounted dvd players in australia, i saw one at the car stereo shop while buying a cd player, i think the dvd holds 6 disks and goes in your boot, i dident get to see it, only the screen
This guy put in a DVD drive in his Nissan 300ZX along with an 8.4" screen (and loads of other stuff: it functions as an MP3 stereo, a gaming machine, et. al.).
He's my hero.
For now we will just have to live with Mopy fish and Aquatica.
Combine these with the tv-out feature on many video cards to display the fishtank on a TV set and Voila! Instant fishtank, no hardware needed. You could feed the fish and change things (background, fish, "treasures") via the computer.
Who needs those "Cool Japanese Gadgets You Can't Have", anyway!
For that matter, why didn't the minidisc take off here in the states?
The same reason that Beta died.
Hint: Both are made by Sony and both have restrictive licensing.
Update: To continue the long line of Dumb Sony Things, Sony has released their Memory Stick, with restrictive lisencing, and in the face of Compact Flash and Smart Media! Way to go, Sony!
In other news, I just bought a scsi reader for my 32MB smartmedia and compact flash cards...
And people said the same thing about radios being dangerous and distracting in cars 80 years ago.
It's relatively obvious that people learn to adapt to higher information bandwidth, and have been doing this successfully for decades now. We know that people are capable of correctly processing volumes of information orders of magnitude larger than the most geekified car could provide because we see jet pilots do it every day. Certainly the amount of information to be processes in a modern fighter's HUD (head up display) is considerably greater than what would be in a DVD HUD. (I do agree that it's necessary to see where one is going, so HUDs beat in-dash screens badly. [grin])
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
I'm really surprised at the number of people on /. that are so adamantly opposed to the use of personal electronics while driving. (You sound more like Luddites than geeks...)
Seriously, there was a huge debate early in this century about whether or not *radios* should be allowed in cars because they were so distracting to the driver and would surely lead to hair, teeth, and eyeballs all over the road. After all, who could possibly concentrate on driving while they were listening to music?
A recent issue of American Heritage's Invention and Technology magazine (required reading for geeks, IMHO) carries a story on the numerous technical problems involved in getting radios to work in cars and a reference to the anti-car-radio) forces. There were even laws passed in some locales prohibiting car radios in an effort to prevent the inevitable roadside carnage. Fortunately cooler heads and the eventual availabilty of factory car radios prevailed. (It was the radical idea of a factory car radio that Bill Lear (later the father of the Lear Jet, and the 8-track tape) used to start a company you may have heard of: Motorola!)
In spite of the doomsayers, we've managed to survive reasonably well with not only radios, but also tape and CD players in our cars, and few people consider this to be an undue hazard. Hopefully, this attitude that bashes cellphones and other personal electronics use in cars will die off just as did the bias against radios. In a few years, the idea of not being able to talk on the phone while driving will seem as ludicrous as not being able to listen to your tunes while driving. (And to many of us, it already does...)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
More than that: It has a built in IP stack for that Ethernet (actually in the battery replacement power supply) and...wait for it...a Web Server!
I know, because I demoed this unit for an audio-video store in Kansas City. You can set the IP to anything you want, and serve an intranet with the sucker. Works passably well, though I wouldn't want to actually put it on the big, bad Internet (H3y d00D!!!! I 0wN y3r Cam3ra!!!!!!!)
It's one of those "what the..." products that the Japanese seem to come out with as trial balloons. It's a poor choice for a video recorder, but a killer video-res still camera...2600 stills on one disc should keep even the snap-happiest happy. The idea purchaser is a person who needs to shoot loads of 640 x 480 images and share them quickly. A real estate agent is a logical buyer.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
somebody please tell the RIAA! It is obvious that the in dash DVD Player is used to smuggle DVD's out of the region for which they have been manufactured.
we definitely need DVD checkpoints at all major metropolitan areas to make sure that the in dash dvd player has no dvds in it.
extending on the same logic, it is obvious that the in dash dvd player is actually used to copy and pirate DVDs and it is mounted in a car so that you can escape from the RIAA!
...my 2 yen
Probably the SONY Discam. Here some links to more info it:
SONY's spec sheet, a page from MiniDisc.org, and a ZDNet Review.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
You can order your very own Iron Chef to cater parties. That's ok...we have Emeril.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
At least in the state of Oregon, it is explicitly illegal to have a television screen within view of the driver, even if turned off. In-dash displays would definitely illegal to drive with, and probably even illegal to sell. IANAL, but it's in the Oregon Driver's Manual. Similar laws probably exist elsewhere.
I'm involved in a project to distribute music over fiber or isdn to kiosks where they are written on minidisc. It is Linux based with a (don't ask why, it just is) lisp-based custom VRML browser, and is in operation.
We developed a faster MD writer and liscensed it back to Sony. For the U.S. I wanted to get a CD version (2 yrs ago) but MD was done first. MD is actually a very good medium, there is even another gadget probably not yet in the U.S. a boombox with LAN connection so you can edit your MD title data on your computer easily. I believe there is a computer peripheral.. MD Data format. My guess is Sony is pushing their own secure music initiative standard with DVD instead now.
Coolest gadget I've seen so far are the magnesium versions of Sony products (MD player, camera, etc). You should be able to order these things from web shops in Japan though you might need someone who can read kanji characters.
Actually this is a pretty big thing in Finland(for those of you who don't know the relative number of cellphones is largest in the world). I should know since I go there about half a dozen times a year(have a passport too).
Basically you just send a sms-message to a special number and it gives you an index of the latest tunes and then you can download your choice to the cellphone automatically.. All for about 0.50$. Or you can always look your favourite tune up from operators website and have it sent to your phone(yup, this really works).
Practically all of the current cell-phone models on sale support this feature and it is very widely used(you wouldn't want to have the same melody as someone else?) This has been around from at least 1997 and the special tunes in cellphones at least from 1995. And by special tunes I mean melodies.. Special ringing tones have been around since early ninetys for sure..
It certainly is wierd to hear a cellphone play just about any popular tune there is(as I don't spend much time there it certainly is even more so). Probably get used to it by time but with the non-stop ringing of cell-phones it actually gets kind of annoying.. Being a third party I might even prefer the more traditional ringing tones..
Its sort of ironic to see mention of "in dash
DVD players" when about an hour ago a friend of
mine called me on the phone to vent about his
problem...
Today some hooligan threw a brick through his
car window and stole his CD player while he was
at an apointment.
Yes, I would imagine in dash CD players can be a
very bad idea.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I heard a while back that one device available for sale in Japan (which was in fact a best seller) was a little electronic jammer that you could turn on to disrupt all cel phone traffic within a range of about 100 feet. Great for restaurants (and obnoxious gabbers) or for driving.....
DAILY ROTATION
technology is progressing faster than mans capacity to fully understand the consequences of its use. only in retrospect do we notice the damage technological progress has inflicted on the world at large. Japan is out there...on the very cutting edge of technological development. I can only hope that their discipline and responsibility plays a major role in further development of technology.
These peripherals DO exist. Unfortunately, they are outrageously expensive.
MDs are cool, but they're not that well suited to using as general purpose storage devices. MD music sounds so good, because it is ATRAC compressed - an MD only holds about 150MB of information.
Other disadvantages:
- Throughput/latency isn't that good, either. I think it's aproximately equivalent to a 2-spin CD drive.
- The media is expensive. To store general purpose data, you need higher-quality minidiscs that cost more than 5 times what regular music MDs. ATRAC encoding can compensate for bit errors, wheareas to store general purpose data, bit-errors are not tolerable.
--
--
#include <malloc.h>
free(your.mind);
I've often wondered why there are no minidisc peripherals for computers. They would make great data storage devices if a standard format could be decided on. For that matter, why didn't the minidisc take off here in the states? If you've ever tried one you know that they can record incredible digital audio, they're rewritable, you can insert track markers and tap in your own labels for each track. It's also compact. Maybe someone else has more information.
(Offtopic): It seems many moderators misunderstand the meaning of "Troll". Many of you mark a post as Troll when it is really "Flamebait". To quote the Jargon file: "The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. "
Moral: Don't dignify a stupid post by labeling it a troll unless it really is subtle and clever enough to deserve it. Mark it flamebait or offtopic instead.
-JD
Having lived in Japan for three years, I know this list is DRASTICALLY understated. There were things out in Japan before I arrived there which STILL are not available in the States. Take a vacation there sometime, I think you'll be very surprised....
In the article please read "Are not available anywhere in this world except Japan" instead of "Are not available in .us and .ca".
.us, .ca and .jp.
:)
The europeans have nukes too! Try to comprehend that the world is round and bigger than
Someone give CmdrTaco a map
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
You have to PRINT stuff in order to keep it alive. I tried this. HP's really sneaky, eh? You have to print gobs and gobs of stuff so you can keep your fish alive. Then you go and buy more printer cartridges. Thus HP gets your money....HP, sneaky sneaky.
Welcome to Slashdot. Please do not feed the trolls.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
Very often, historically, U.S. invents or creates some very useful or cool technology, and Japan put its touch on it - basically ultra-commercialize it for consumer use. They add a bunch of really cool features, switch a few more things around and come up with some pretty innovative stuff. Then it gets copied by the other Asian mass-producing copy-without-regards-to-anything countries like Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong. These countries have creative energies of their own, but is strongly influenced by Japan. And then everything is Made In China (nowadays), because it's so cheap and there are so many people there.
Japan has tremendous cultural influence in the world of commercial technological consumerism. The way it most often played out is in the gadgets and appliances. They keep some of the most outrageous or cool stuff in Japan, because very often, they are the only ones who can really appreciate it.
If anything, I would expect Japan to come out with very cool Internet gadgets, because that is what they are great at. They are a force to watch in the rapidly moving world of Internet technologies, because they can commercialize and consumerize anything.
A lot of Japanese products may seem utterly frivolous and useless, but nothing is ever really totally useless. There's always a lesson to be learned in creating completely computer generated fish tanks, etc.
Sony has recently released a second gen minidisc format. It stores 640 Megs (like a cd-rom) but keeps the small minidisc form factor.
It also has built in ethernet. For a camera it's pretty cool. Although the video capture is only crummy at best.
Sony has released a special Digital Camera that uses the format. (In the US even). Check it out at http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/mddiscam
I have a quantum CD evaporator. (Note use of quantum here because it just *has* to enahnce the coolness factor of whatever your talking about!) Alright im sitting there installing FreeBSD munching some Oreo's mudding and doing some C code for binary tree's thinking this is great!.
,after a 2 hour unsucesful CD hunt you tend to de devolve with prejduice.
:p
Then my CD player evolved without telling me. Suddenly the FreeBSD install stops and goes "I/O error, there was an error parsing some binary information" or something like that. So I scratch my head and pop the CD open and low.. the CD has disappeared. Im like hmmn maybe I took it and did something with it. So I gather up my posse (my cat's) and send them on a CD hunt. No such luck so I break out my devolution tools (screw driver) and begin to de evolve my cd drive
So I peek at my highly demolished CD drive and there it is! The Golden FreeBSD CD. I gently lift it out and with the casing off of my CD drive I pop it back in.. My cat seemed to find it highly entertaining to SLAP a cd spinning in a 40X drive. *mutters* Anyways its not really a quantum CD evaporator thingie but it was damn frustrating!