New Sharp refrigerator freezes, then thaws

You know, we love a good "love hot warehouse" (thanks Google Translation!) as much as the next guy, but we're not really sure what that has to do with Sharp's new refrigerator. From what we can tell based on our poor Japanese language reading skills and our uncanny ability to decipher strange cartoons, it appears that this fridge has a thawing mechanism inside one of the drawers so that you can unfreeze that meat you bought a month ago. We're still not exactly sure how it this fridge works its magic other than by blowing warm air into the thawing tray, but perhaps all you Nipponophiles can help us out, ok? The only other information that we can glean from this cartoon is that apparently this mechanism takes place by sacrificing your right eye to the Japanese fridge gods.

[Thanks, xman]

[polobunny @ Sep 7th 2006 3:58AM]

[...]sacrificing your right eye to the Japanese fridge gods.


Hahaha, I couldn't stop laughing. Interesting idea. (the thawing refrigerator, mind you)

[Sushi Boi @ Sep 7th 2006 5:00AM]

dows anyone kno what they mean by "love hot warehouse"?

[Teddy-O @ Sep 7th 2006 5:52AM]

Sorry, don't have time to read it too carefully...But it doesn't look like it's so much as simply defrosting your ground beef to make hamburgers, which it will do just fine. Rather, they also seem to be saying that their special loving hot warehouse can partially defrost your precious items enough to make them soft enough to cut and portion out, but still stay cold enough that you can return the unused portion with out ruining it.

I assume that most of you know that it's not a good idea to refreeze food after thawing it out. Not only does food taste worse after one or two freeze/thaw cycles, but it's also begging for some nasty bacterial action...

[Teddy-O @ Sep 7th 2006 6:02AM]

"Aisyo hotto co" (love hot warehouse) doesn't really mean anything directly but is kind of an emotive phrase. Basically, it's just marketing speak, which is why why it's set off in quotation marks in the original ad. Anyway, with my half-assed understanding of Japanese, I'd say it means something like "Love your hot refrigerator". I dunno, just my best guess.

[Me @ Sep 7th 2006 8:50AM]

Looks like they routed the cooling sustems exhaust into a thermostat controlled bin. Instead of wasting the heat generated by colling the frig freezer section they are creating a "Thaw zone" with the warm air.

[superiorinferior @ Sep 7th 2006 8:53AM]

I've heard that food defrosts if you take it out of the freezer.

[jr @ Sep 7th 2006 10:25AM]

Yeah, my freezer defrosts too, you just take it out and stick it on top, takes a few hours...

[Arseny @ Sep 7th 2006 10:47AM]

Probably just put part of the radiator inside the thawing compartment, a good way to utilize otherwise wasted energy.

[Teddy-O @ Sep 7th 2006 11:33AM]

No, I don't think it's warm air recycled in or a part of the heat exchanger moved to an inside compartment. Actually, it looks like they are used air from the freezer and refrigerator compartments, in about a 1/3 mix, at least to feed the fan. Other than the stream of air it it says that it also uses convection which together will warm your frozen goodies from about -20 degC to -8 degC in 10~15 minutes. It must have a temperature sensor to tell it when it's done...maybe. Apparently, when the warming routine is over, and probably when it's not in use, the temperature is between 0 and 2 degC.

Anyway, the goal isn't to defrost your stuff fully, but to make it soft enough to cut, but still remain cold enough to refreze the unused part.

[superiorinferior @ Sep 7th 2006 12:51PM]

"Probably just put part of the radiator inside the thawing compartment, a good way to utilize otherwise wasted energy."

Putting a heater in a freezer compartment [i]saves[/i]energy?

[nikster @ Sep 7th 2006 6:50PM]

Guys, this is fridge has a compartment which can:
- quick freeze stuff down to -17 deg celsius
- heat up stuff up to 60 deg celsius
- defrost steaks up to 250 grams and 2 cm thick and this infomercial seems to be rather heavy on stats.

If the metric system is just too weird for you try google converter, like so:
http://www.google.com/search?q=convert+-17+celsius+to+fahrenheit&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

[Hiroshi Yasukawa @ Sep 9th 2006 10:42AM]

This fridge basically has a feature to thaw the food from -17C (celcius) to -8C. At -8C, food becomes soft enough to be cut with a knife, and if you don't use all of the thawed frozen food, the rest can go to the freezer again without any taste degradation.

It seems thawing to -8C is the key.