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Voice-powered technology can be pretty hit and miss at the best of times, but a new approach to creating remote controls that hang on our every word looks promising.

Sharp has just announced what we all knew was coming sooner or later – the world’s first TV sets with built-in Blu-ray recorders.

We don’t have any photos of this for you yet and if we did it wouldn’t really help, so it’s going to have to suffice if we tell you that Panasonic claims it has just created the world’s first 3D HD plasma home cinema system.

Anyone familiar with the conservative nature of big Japanese business will tell you that Toshiba’s decision to drop HD DVD like a hot brick was almost unseemly in its haste, even though the firm had little choice.

One of the marketing bigwigs behind Blu-ray has gone public with an astonishing claim that Toshiba has only itself to blame for the flop that was HD DVD.

Even though we’ve heard of some fantastic customer service for Japanese early adopters of the failed HD DVD format, it seems not everyone’s happy with the brave face being put on by Toshiba.

Amid the rush to wring the last few pennies out of HD DVD’s rancid and yellowing corpse, at least one retailer has had the decency to front up and look after its unfortunate customers.

Should you happen to be one of those people who arranges the books on their shelves alphabetically, you’ll probably like the new recordable media from Panasonic that allow you to record the summer Olympics on Olympic-branded disks.

After yesterday’s Toshiba HD DVD pullout there are still a few loose ends that need to be tied up, so we took to the streets of Tokyo to see how electronics retailers are handling the HD DVD wake in Toshiba’s hometown.

We saw recently how Japanese sales figures for high-definition video recorders make worrying reading for the backers of HD DVD, so it’s no surprise that the latest data on the market for players and recorders as a whole shows more of the same.

Japan’s state broadcaster, NHK, has teamed up with Mitsubishi Electric to create an anti-piracy system that it hopes will put a stop to movie copying from cinemas.

It’s hard to know what to make of the latest statistics on the battle for supremacy between Blu-ray and HD DVD because of the fact that they’re from Japan, home of so many of Blu-ray’s biggest backers. Nevertheless, the degree to which HD DVD has fallen behind in Japan in sales of the crucial high-end HD TV recorders is stark.

We recently speculated that YouTube might one day soon be delivering high-definition online video instead of the grainy clips that proliferate now, but Sony Japan’s eyeVio video-sharing site has beaten the Google company to the punch by starting an HD TV service yesterday.

When it comes to internet speeds, we’ve long-since consigned the humble kilobit-class connection to the dustbin, so a mathematics-based breakthrough has us wondering if megabit- and even gigabit-level connections will one day sound as quaintly archaic.

KDDI, the company that recently started an online service delivering DVD-quality movies to domestic customers has upped the ante to send quad-HD films down the same pipe.

With the increasing number of audio-visual gadgets in our living rooms that require HDMI to be seen to best effect, Fujitsu Japan has announced a hardware solution to help keep costs down.

Next time you go shopping for a second television set for the spare room or bedroom, chances are it might be one of a new breed of smaller full high-definition TVs, such as the new models introduced today by Sharp.

Although today’s Panasonic Japan launch of seven new 1080p high-definition televisions introduced the world to plenty of quality new hardware, one of the more intriguing announcements was buried well below the headline.

Just two weeks after we caught whiff of a rumor that Hitachi would be releasing a Blu-ray camcorder in the fall, the Japanese company has announced that the portable high-definition technology is, in fact, ready now.

The latest doomed attempt to mount a virtual cinema atop the heads of geeks everywhere comes from the oddly named Mikimoto Beans of Japan. Its iTheaterV will be available there next month for ¥39,800 ($320).

After what seems like years of waiting and fiddling around with AVCHD and the like, it seems the world is finally about to get a real next-gen HD video camera after Hitachi’s late-afternoon Tokyo announcement of the first Blu-ray camcorder.

Although Japan still leads the world when it comes to pumping out gadgets, we really have to hand it to those up-and-coming Korean companies for their willingness to go the extra mile and add new features we never knew we needed. The latest unusual addition is a video projector that will be delivered to mobile phones sold by SK Telecom later this year.

Jumbo TV fans had better get their gold credit cards warmed up well in advance of the latest high-definition set due to depart Korean shores from Samsung later this year – the company’s new 70-inch LCD is far from cheap, at 58 million won ($62,000).

Projectors aren’t always the most exciting gadgets we come across in our line of work, but Sanyo’s latest effort really raises the bar by opening up entirely new areas for projector deployment. The ¥600,000 LP-XL50’s party piece is its ability to project large images of up to 80 inches onto a surface from just 8cm away.

If there’s one sure thing about the so-called HD TV format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD it’s that none of us should be rushing out to buy either right now. The latest high-definition recorders from Toshiba Japan underline that in heavy red ink.

Sony chose a rainy afternoon in downtown Tokyo today to unveil a revolution in digital cinema – a projector that can show full cinema-size movies at four times the resolution of standard high definition, with an anti-piracy server system on the side.

European readers with an eye for design and a free afternoon might like to know about the latest Sony Design event being held in Milan, Italy, this week that combines technology with old-fashioned Italian craftsmanship.

As expected, Samsung today announced that it will join LG in releasing a dual-format high-definition video player that supports both Blu-ray and HD DVD.

Everyone knows that watching TV on a computer screen doesn’t quite cut the mustard - duller colors and lower resolution than any decent dedicated television are readily apparent. That, however, is about to change if Samsung has its way with some nifty new display technology.

Konica Minolta has some pretty cool stuff on show at Ceatec, including these eyeglasses that feature holographic displays to offer a virtual view of South Park, “mature” entertainment or, just maybe, something a bit more useful.

Toshiba’s ass-kicking RD-A1 HD DVD recorder with a 1TB hard drive went on sale this morning, after a delay of a few weeks natch, for the wallet-kicking sum of ¥398,000, or about US$3,400.

Sony’s new camcorders based on the AVCHD format can record 1080i high-def to standard DVDs, HDDs and memory cards were launched last week and we were there to bring you the first shots of the intriguing new technology in action.

Sony is expanding its line-up of high-definition camcorders to quickly transition its Japanese sales from standard-definition to HD, the company said Wednesday.

Sony plans to take the wraps off its first high-definition camcorder compatible with the new AVCHD format tomorrow here in Tokyo and we’ll bring it to you as it happens.

Since April Fool’s Day this year most of Japan has been able to enjoy digital TV broadcasts created specifically for mobile devices, particularly for cellphones. The new service has been branded “1-seg” for a very good reason.