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Portable mini television sets these days are nothing like their clunky predecessors of the last couple of decades and Sony’s latest Japanese model is a perfect example of the new wave of good-looking, multi-functional devices.

This one sneaked in under the radar last week, but a medium-sized company from Cambridge, England, called DisplayLink has landed a significant contract with Toshiba that is almost certain to change the way we look at our computer monitors.

Over the years we’ve seen plenty of photo frames that include LCD screens for displaying digital photographs but few have been as cheap or as versatile as the Exemode DPS700 from KFE Japan.

You know those little supermarket price tags that are designed to fall off the end of the shelf just as you reach for that loaf of bread? Well, Sharp in Japan has come up with a far more expensive version that is destined to be trampled underfoot too.

Later this year, anyone with $20,000 to spare and a really big wall at home might want to consider Sharp’s new claimant to the world’s-biggest-TV crown, the newly unveiled 108in Aquos LCD it was pimping at CES on Sunday.

The FPD International show in Yokohama was filled with amazing next-gen displays, from TVs to cellphone screens. Check it out in the video for yourself.

Sharp raised the bar for high-definition LCD screens this week with the demonstration of 64in prototype with a resolution of 4,096 pixels by 2,160 pixels — four times higher than current high-definition displays.

Fujitsu’s new color e-book we reported on yesterday is good to go and here’s the proof. It seems a little slow to me but judge for yourself in the vid by the ever-reliable Martyn Williams.

Fujitsu has made progress in its development of flexible, paper-thin displays that consume very little power.

Toshiba and Canon demonstrated a television with a 55in SED screen today at the Ceatac exhibition in Chiba, Japan, saying they plan to put the screens into production next year.

Hitachi will soon ship two large plasma televisions equipped with internal hard drives and a chip that can reprocess high-definition video at a lower bit rate in real time, allowing users to double the amount of video they can record.

Sony’s main LCD TV factory in Japan is due to produce its 3 millionth flat-panel television set on Wednesday.

Sony is planning to build a new LCD television plant in Slovakia, the company said Wednesday. The new factory will have a capacity of 3 million sets per annum when in full operation.

Tax breaks, low labor costs and the benefits of collocation are resulting in a rush of investment in Eastern Europe by flat-panel screen and TV makers.

Samsung announced Wednesday that it has developed a new device driver to make handheld-device screens brighter, even in broad daylight.

Those jumbo 103in Panasonic plasma TVs the high-def world is going ape over are about to get even more exposure after becoming part of NBC’s fall lineup.

A team of U.S. and British researchers have created a software program that uses high-level mathematics to turn facial expressions, such as the scrunch of an eyebrow or a wide-eyed stare, into digital art.

Epson’s newest business-level projectors cost a pretty penny but with good reason, as all four of the EMP-17 series are capable of working in tandem to create a jumbo video wall of your very own.

This time next year you could be watching TV on a 70in LCD from Samsung if production of the new world beater goes ahead as planned.

Asahi, the purveyor of fine Japanese beer famous for its golden unchi (turd-shaped) building is adding a technological twist to the joyful slaking of the great Japanese thirst during a typically torrid summer in Tokyo. Put simply; buy beer and (potentially) win a 1-seg TV Watch from Willcom that doubles as a cellphone.

Although sales of LCD TVs failed to reach the levels predicted by experts in advance of this year’s World Cup, it turns out the big players — Sony, Sharp and Samsung among them — made out pretty well, while lesser-known companies took a hit.

Sanyo and Taiwan’s Quanta Computer have agreed to align elements of their respective TV businesses with the creation of a new joint venture.

Good ole Samsung has just announced the world’s first 3in LCD with VGA (640 x 480) resolution that is fit for use in digital cameras; you know, the bit on the back that shows how blurry your snaps are?

Buffalo is taking a break from unbreakable HDDs to put out a nice widescreen WXGA+ 19in display that will be in shops in Japan mid-August.

Remember that 8,000 square-foot LCD screen we told you about last month? Seems it’s just been featured on Japanese television in typically breathless fashion.

Users looking for a new LCD TV might want to consider a purchase over the next few months because the days of rapid price declines could be over.

Quixun is going to put out a nice bargain 32in HDMI LCD TV on August 7.

They may not set the world on fire, but iiyama continues to produce good displays at nice prices, as with the 17in ProLite E431S-6 that’s coming out in the middle of August.

LG is planning to expand its global line-up of “full HD” high-definition LCD televisions by adding two smaller models, the company said Wednesday.

Good news: The world’s biggest high-def screen is a full 218 feet long and 37 feet tall. Bad news: If you want to see it you’ll have to spend an afternoon with some of the smelliest, most obnoxious people in the universe.

Yesterday marked the start of the final five years of analog television broadcasts here in Japan, so what better way to celebrate than with a huge countdown clock and a bunch of gray politicians?

The falling prices and growing popularity of flat-panel televisions pushed domestic shipments of big-screen CRT TVs to almost zero during June, according to industry figures.

NEC Display has been working hard to refresh its MultiSync lineup, and it will release the latest 19in model at the end of the month.

Speaking of Samsung, as we were, we had to share this wacky loved-up photo the company’s press office just fired over from an event in Korea this morning.

Sanyo is putting out two 8in screens for in-car entertainment early next month.

Eizo Nanao has just followed up its ColorEdge CG221 with another cool monitor, the 19in SXGA FlexScan S1961.

Eizo Nanao is set to release a 22in panel that can show A3 sizes and has a viewing angle of 170 degrees.

Press your finger on a cellphone touchscreen in 2007 and the screen could press right back. Hapatic — or force-feedback — specialist Immersion said Monday that it plans to license its force-feedback technology to handset makers, to make virtual buttons on cellphone screens.

We just got our video act together on that intriguing wireless photo frame we mentioned yesterday.

A digital photo frame that can receive images from camera phones was on show at last week’s SEK 2006 in Seoul.