Unlike practically ever other brand, Hitachi didn't take the wraps off of its 2009 HDTV line at CES. Instead, it waited until summer officially began, and we can't really argue with the tactic. At any rate, the company is following JVC, LG and Sony with their respective HD news by announcing new members in the long-standing UltraVision line (shown left) as well as the Alpha series (shown right). In the former, we'll soon see the 55-inch L55S603 ($1,799), 46-inch L46S603 ($1,299) and 42-inch L42S503 ($999) hit the streets (in September, August and June, respectively), while the Alpha crew contains the 42-inch L42A403 ($849) and the 32-inch L32A403 ($499), both of which ship this month. The UltraVision sets all boast 1080p panels, 120Hz dejudder technology, up to five HDMI sockets and built-in ATSC / QAM / NTSC TV tuners. As for the Alphas, you'll find a total of seven HD inputs (four HDMI), a 1080p panel on the fat kit and a 720p display on the little guy.

It may be a Japan exclusive for now, but Hitachi's Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Wooo has folks drooling from sea to shining sea. The cats over at Akihabara News were able to take a glimpse while KDDI unveiled its summer lineup, and they seemed to be quite impressed with the video quality and ease of use. Check the read link for a video of the flip phone in action, but remember, don't get too attached unless you call Japan home.

Japanese carrier KDDI au has now followed Softbank and NTT DoCoMo in pulling the red velvet cover off its summer 2009 devices, and as always, there are some neat tricks in here. From Toshiba, the Biblio is billed as an e-book reader; granted, it's using an LCD instead of an E-Ink display, but it's a doozy at 3.5 inches at 960 x 480. It features 7GB of user-accessible storage on board for books, and also has a slide-out dynamic keyboard that can display a numeric pad in the portrait orientation or full QWERTY in landscape. Moving on, the Sharp Sportio Water Beat -- as its name suggests -- is a waterproof sports-oriented set with advanced calorie and distance tracking (a la Nike+), but you're still never too far from your true destiny as a couch potato thanks to the phone's one-seg reception. Next, the Hitachi Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Wooo is the latest in the multimedia-centric Wooo series, becoming KDDI's first phone capable of 720p video recording at 30fps -- and there's HDMI-out on board for when the time comes to enjoy your footage. Finally, the SH002 is the realization of Sharp's solar phone concept from earlier this year, delivering one minute of talk time for every 10 minutes of charge time. There are other announcements in the mix here -- eight new phones in total -- but those were the killers of the bunch, and as always, this post is about as close as most North Americans will ever get to them.

[Via Engadget Japanese]

While it won't be the first handset to capture 720p video (hello, OmniaHD!), Hitachi's Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Woo is still apt to garner quite a bit of attention. As the leaked images hosted down below show, this clever flip phone packs 1,280 x 720 video recording, a 5 megapixel sensor, HDMI interface and a microSDHC slot for good measure. A generous tipster has informed us that said phone is slated to launch this coming Monday on KDDI, though we fully expect that envious North Americans won't ever get to toy with one on their home turf. For shame.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

This year's edition of the Hitachi Wooo line of flat panels look a lot like their predecessors on the outside (120Hz IPS LCDs, 250GB HDD equipped models with iVDR slots for additional hard drives and Wooonet DLNA network support) but it's what's inside that counts. The four new XP plasma models range from 42- to 50-inches and promise even better contrast ratios, as high as 40,000:1, with better color reproduction and the promise of greater energy efficiency. The ultra-thin 35mm / 1.4-inch thick LCDs are back in four new models, with UWB wirelessly connected tuners, auto sensing/adjusting brightness and aforementioned "eco" power sipping improvements. The relatively fat XP line of LCDs consists of just three displays, but just like all the rest, buyers can still hook up to the 'net and pull down video on-demand or Yahoo! Japan's web TV portal -- features unlikely to make the jump when we see U.S. versions of these later this year. The XP plasmas and LCDs go on sale in Japan later this month or next, while the ultra-thins will be crash dieting until October.

Read - Hitachi, recording double-35mm-thin LCD TV "Wooo UT800"
Read - Hitachi, 7 new plasma / LCD

Funding that stimulus package just got ever-so-slightly easier -- Hitachi is the latest company to fess up to LCD price fixing, and as part of its deal with the US Department of Justice, it's paying a $31m fine. The company has specifically admitted to fixing the prices on panels sold to Dell from 2001 to 2004, and while no Hitachi execs are due to join their comrades from LG and Chungwha Picture Tubes just yet, we'd encourage them to book their vacations now, since the DOJ seems like it's staying on the warpath.

We keep hearing that it's a buyer's market out there, and for anyone with any amount of cash (that'd be Hitachi, in this scenario), the getting is pretty great. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (GST) has just announced that it has snapped up Fabrik, Inc., a privately-held supplier of personal and professional storage solutions. You may be more familiar with the said company's brands, as G-Technology and SimpleTech tend to ring bells much better than a name easily mistaken for clothing. According to Steve Milligan, President of Hitachi GST, the acquisition will soon become "the cornerstone for the next phase of Hitachi's business transformation," though he certainly didn't bother to elaborate. Who knows -- maybe one day soon we really will see Hitachi taking on the likes of Western Digital and LaCie in the external sector.

We've seen quite a few hardware-encrypted disks hit the scene lately, but to be honest, we've always thought they were a risky investment, since all the systems were proprietary -- we wouldn't want to store our encryption-worthy data on a disk that can't be read at all in a few years, after all. That's happily about to change, though -- the Trusted Computing Group has just announced that virtually every drive maker has agreed on a set of 128-bit encryption standards covering SSDs and HDDs. That's Fujitsu, Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, Western Digital, IBM, Wave Systems, LSI, and ULink Technology, if you're keeping score at home (and we know you are). Ideally this means that we'll see easy cheap disk encryption filter onto mainstream consumer storage, which would basically invalidate all those "I'm stealing this hard drive out of your laptop and using it to log into your Facebook account" crimes of passion we know the kids are into these days. Best part? Fujitsu, Seagate and Hitachi are all already shipping drives that support the TCG standards.

[Via Digg]

So KDDI's latest lineup of new phones features the usual array of 8.1 megapixel cameras, wide VGA displays, one-seg TV tuners, and teleporters, but one particular handset stood out: Hitachi's Wooo H001. The dual-hinge flip's claim to fame -- well, besides the bizarre color scheme -- has to be the stereoscopic IPS display that presumably uses the same parallax barrier method shown off by the carrier late last year. The phone will happily serve up 3D-ified versions of various UI elements and mobile TV content, and when you start to get woozy (or Wooozy, as it were), just flip a switch and you're back to the reassuring flatness you're used to. It'll launch in three colors in April, and naturally, you'll have to be in Japan to get it.

[Via Akihabara News]

Hitachi asked itself "what if...?" prior to CES 2009, and its best idea included a "Style-Unlimited" corner for its booth, said to feature design ideas that match the craftsmanship of its TVs with stands and frames made of Japanese lacquer and gold leaf. Immediately refocusing on "what is..." -- a questionable economy and wary buyers -- the 2009 line of UT HDTVs will expand primarily by carrying a more mainstream pricetag and now standard 1080p / 120Hz features. For those still living the dream, Hitachi's managed to narrowly beat its previous best with a 15mm thick 37-inch LED backlit display , while the 50-inch UltraThin plasma from CEDIA comes along for the ride. Also making celebrity appearances? 2010's finest Super Resolution upconverting technology plus the always hilarious Gesture Control TV demo. Excited or depressed, we can't decide.

NVIDIA has yet to step in and confirm this publicly, but a purported leaked memo from the outfit has been posted over at VR-Zone. What's it say, you ask? Only that the company "strongly recommends that customers transition to the latest revision of the NB8E-SET GPUs as soon as possible." Said revision taps a new Hitachi underfill packaging material that "improves product quality and enhances operating life by improved thermal cycling reliability." If you'll recall, certain PC vendors such as Dell issued their own firmware updates to combat the weak packaging set in the chip maker's faulty GPUs earlier this year, but it appears that NVIDIA's solution is to just let bygones be bygones and get on with the new and improved.

[Via Electronista]

Hitachi's latest trifecta wasn't designed for your surely swank abode per se, but we suppose those with enough cash and willpower can do anything they darn well please. That said, the CP-X10000 (1,024 x 768), CP-WX11000 (1,280 x 800) and CP-SX12000 (1,400 x 1,050) can all handle professional (read: lit) settings with ease, featuring 7,500 / 6,500 / 7,000 lumens, respectively. The whole lot also boasts a 2,500:1 contrast ratio, 10-bit signal processor, HDMI / BNC connectors, Ethernet, an RS-232 control port and a lamp good for 10,000 maintenance-free hours. Mum's the word on price, but don't worry, these are going on the corporate card anyway.

[Via I4U News]

It's all here: 2.5-inch, 9.5-mm thick form factor; 3.0Gbps SATA interface; 250GB per platter for a 500GB total capacity; 5,400 RPM spin; and hardware-based data encryption using a 128-bit key (we presume, they don't say). That puts Hitachi's new 500GB Travelstar hard disk drives on par with pretty much everyone else. Even the 1.4 watt read/write power draw that Hitachi says, "is lower than any other 500GB 2.5-inch hard drive on the market today" was just matched by Fujitsu who goes even further with 256-bit encryption. No use crying Hitachi, that's what happens when you show up late for a party. Expect to see the 5K500.B disk ship worldwide in December while the 1.4 watt E5K500.B ("E" for Eco) is expected by the end of March 2009.

If you're still in disbelief that wireless HD is finally catching on, here's yet another demonstration that just may sway you into being a believer. Hitachi demonstrated a wireless HD camcorder setup at CEATEC in Japan, which saw a hacked up handycam get fitted with a protruding wireless card and stream high-def content to a nearby TV via DLNA (got all that?). Obviously, there's no telling when or if the company will clean the application up and bring it to retail, but in all seriousness, we have our doubts about the value proposition here.