HDD recorder with AVCHD support

I found only one DVD recorders so far, which can support AVCHD.
  RDZ-D900A(DVD Recorder with 400MB HDD-98,000JPY).

Following Blu-ray Disc Recorders support AVCHD, but they are still too expensive equipments.
SONY
  BDZ-V9/V7
Panasonic
  DMR-BW200/BR100 

Ghibli Museum, Mitaka visiting

Ghibli Museum, Mitaka (三鷹の森ジブリ美術館), opened in 2001 and headed by Miyazaki, is a museum of Japanese anime work of Studio Ghibli.
Ghibli Museum is located in Mitaka, a western suburb of Tokyo, Japan, close the Inokashira Park (井の頭公園 Inokashira Koen).

There is no parking space in the museum for cars, but around the museum, actually, around the Park besides the main road you can easily find a cheaper time pay parking area.
If you are accessing it via train, you can use Mitaka Station on the JR Chu-o Line, then take the community bus from south exit of the station.

From 2006/05/20, the museum holds the exhibition of the animation work from Aardman Studio too.

Some short original anime films are showing in the museum too, like The big adventure of Koro, Water Spider Monmon, etc. They are not bad for children.

For me, I like this life-size model robot from the animation Castle in the Sky on top of the Ghibli Museum.

Sony walkman NW-A800 series

Sony announced this new MP3 & Video WALKMAN series for Japan market selling from Mar. 21.

Official site is here.


Features

• 2GB/4GB/8GB (NW-A805/A806/A808)
• Compatible with MPEG4 & H.264 AVC baseline profile
• ATRAC , MP3 , AAC (non DRM) and WMA (non DRM) compatible
• JPEG viewer with slideshow mode
• Lithium-ion rechargeable battery with great Stamina of 30 for music and 8 hours for video
• 2.0" 240x320 QVGA colour LCD
• Clear Stereo, Clear Bass & DSEE sound enhancement systems
• EX-type headphones for superb sound quality
• Bind with SonicStage 4.3 software

The design is neither cool nor sharp comparing to iPod. The support of H.264 AVC baseline profile should be sell point for this device, but the screen is too small to boom up the demand.

MP4 portable player - UNIbit X-813(Upgrade 2)

New upgrade for UNIbit X-813(0303) is available.

There are some improvement in this release.

• Improved the performance of video playing
• Improved the MLC file system
• Support ASF audio format now
• Support more SD, MMC card types and improved the FAT file system detection
• Fixed the browser status, display issue
• Improved the battery charging algorithm

After upgraded, the version becomes NOPA SP100 V1.0.0.3.

Refer to here for the upgrade procedures.
NOTE: If you are using Non-Chinese Windows to perform the upgrade, be sure you have renamed the folder names into English names. Otherwise, you may fail with the upgrading with a "DFU error" message sent by DFU.exe reflash tool.

Doraemon The Magic 2007

The anime movie "Doraemon The Magic 2007" (Doraemon: Nobita's NEW Great Underworld Adventure) will be released within 3 days on 10th Mar., 2007.
It is the re-make movie of Doraemon: Nobita's Great Underworld Adventure which was released in 1984.
Looking forward to enjoying it soon :-)

Dora-magic official site

You will like this cute Doraemon I took days before.

MOTORAZR by DOLCE & GABBANA

Motorola adds DOLCE & GABBANA FOMA M702iS model for Japan market on Mar. 01.

• Dimensions: 103x53x14.9mm
  
• 2.2” internal TFT LCD, QVGA (240x320 pixels), 262K colors
• 1” external CSTN LCD, 96x80 pixels
• 1.3-megapixel CMOS-camera and an additional 0.1-megapixel camera for video telephony
• Slot for microSD cards
• Bluetooth interface
• Video call time - 85 minutes
• Standby time - 345 hours (static)
• Talk time - 170 minutes
  
• Weight - 109 g

The price is 75,000JPY.

MOTORAZAR by DOLCE & GABBANA

MP4 portable media player - Unibit X-813(Parameters)

Researched more on UNIbit X-813 PMP player.
X-813 is the first PMP player based on S2100 chip-set solution.

• Core CPU: 240MHz ARM926EJ 32bits
• Internal Memory: Spansion Flash Memory
  
• Battery: 950mAH

By meaning of this powerful S2100 solution, X-813 can last 40hours for Mp3 playing and can have 10 hours long playing time for even movie playing.

I was very much satisfied with the performance it has in hardware and playing. But I still think there are many things UNIbit should do on software improvement.

• No resume feature for media play, you have to select again and again the next media to play if you switched the functions between music, movie, radio or book reader. Of cause, if you power off the device, you need select the play point again too.
• I didn't find the bookmark function with it
• Don't support folders/categories for music or movie, you can't organize your media files with folders or categories
• Expects synchronization function with PC, so you can organize your media files more efficiently
• Operation is not uniformed, the operation of +/- and <> sometime confusing
  

Of cause, for hardware, I think following points can be considered for improvement.

• Key touch feeling is not satisfied, to hard to be pressed
• Layout for +/-, <> is not rationalized, especially you feel confuse when you are playing games
• MiniSD slot is too shallow, the MiniSD is sticking out, it will be easily removed from the slot

Hope there will be better new coming products for this very high performance S2100 solution.

MP4 portable player - Unibit X-813(Upgrade)

There are many issues with my Unibit X-813 MP4 player.

• Slow response for music selection
• The volume reduces automatically when you >> or <<>
• Can't play MP4 file large than 200MB file

I decide to update my X-813 since I found the new firmware is released in Unibit official site.
Unibit X-813 firmware upgrade 20070207 version was used.

The procedures to update the firmware.

• Switch OFF the X-813
• Press REC key and connect the device to PC, if it your first time to do this, the device drive needs be installed. Following to the device drive manager to install the device driver.
• Run the DFU, firmware upgrade utility.
• From File group, click Browse for Download selection and select the new firmware file (there are 4 files in different folders, you can try one by one in this order 新凌达->旧凌达->丰奇->金永达)
• Click Start Download to flash the new firmware file.
• When flash is finished, "DFU succeeded" will be displayed.
• Unplug X-813 and connect it to PC again,copy all resource files into the root fold in it.
• Unplug and connect it again.
• Updating will be displayed in a white screen for 1 or 2 minutes.
• Wait until the normal screen is displayed.

Congratulation! Your X-813 is upgraded now.

• Goto [Menu]->[Display settings]->[System Information]->[Software version] to confirm the version has been changed to "NOPA SP100 V1.0.0.2".

The issues list above should have been resolved.

MP4 portable player - Unibit X-813

I purchased a MP4 device(X-813) from Unibit.
It is quite nice with very clear voice also can play big MP4 movie etc.
Unibit X-813

Here are some features of Unibit X-813.

• 2.5" 320x240 262,000 colors TFT
• Audio: MP3/WMA/ASF/AAC/MIDI, S/N reach 90dB
• Video: SWF/AVI/MPEG2/MPEG4/FLV/H.264
• Image: JPEG,BMP and GIF
• FM(China/Japan/EU/US)
• Digital recording, A-B repeat function
• With multi-task operation supporting
• Support E-book
• Games
• Support external SD/MMC card(Up to 1GB)