HP's 'Big Bang' into consumer imaging

SHANGHAI: Digital printing giant, HP announced a major expansion into the digital photography and digital entertainment segments, at a media event in Shanghai, China.

The company unveiled a range of over 30 products, including all-new ones, newer versions, and previews of future products, to an unusual group of journalists. The group largely comprised of journalists from lifestyle publications including Femina and Elle from India, signaling that it wanted to step out well beyond its traditional technology audience.

The new HP Media Center PC, which forms the center of a home entertainment system. HP demonstrated it in a 'living room' environment within a lifestyle store, at the center of a high-end Nakamichi home theater system. The PC, whose older version retailed at $999 in the US without display or extra storage, can support a hot-swap removable disk that packs 160 GB or more, and connects internally or externally through USB 2.0.






The products that were launched include the new HP Media Center PC, which forms the center of a home entertainment system. HP demonstrated it in a 'living room' environment within a lifestyle store, at the center of a high-end Nakamichi home theater system. The PC, whose older version retailed at $999 in the US without display or extra storage, can support a hot-swap removable disk that packs 160 GB or more, and connects internally or externally through USB 2.0.





The company also launched the HP ep9010 Instant Cinema Digital Projector, which is a rather bulky but all-in-one unit that integrates a DLP projector, a DVD player and Harman-Kardon speakers. The system can also output to 5.1 surround sound to an external speaker system





The HP Pavilion dv1100 series Entertainment Notebook PC — a laptop that includes a video subsystem that can 'QuickPlay' DVDs and audio without starting up (i.e., bypassing) the Windows operating system.





New inkjet print cartridges with 'HP Vivera' inks, rated for over 100 years of color stability (of the color printouts).


Other products include a series of photo printers with integrated displays, flash memory slots, wireless connectivity, and basic editing capability, a range of digital cameras which include HP-proprietary technologies such as in-camera panoramic stitching, and in-camera red-eye correction of an existing image,





LightScribe, a device that laser-inscribes disk labels with text and graphics directly onto specially coated CD-R and other optical media.





HP also launched the iPAQ rz1700 series PDAs, with an integrated four-band GSM-GPRSS mobile, camera, Bluetooth, and 802.11b wireless. This iPAQ can receive streaming video from the HP Media Center, letting you watch movies on it anywhere in the house.

"It's a big shift for HP," Chris Morgan, HP's APAC head of the IPG group, told CyberMedia News, "from our traditional strengths on the business side, to a strong play for the consumer and mass home market." He calls it, HP's third big bang in imaging: first, HP revamped the consumer printing lineup; then it "built up digital photo leadership" and invested over $100 millionn in growing the APAC market, and now it's "making the whole experience easy and integrated."

Prasanto K Roy in Shanghai, China