Takuya Kawagoi has been a Sony man for nearly 20 years now. Having spent all his time based in Japan as one of the graphic designers at the heart of the company image, he has now been appointed head of Sony Design Centre Europe. We stopped in for a chat to see how life in London was treating him.

What is your background?
I joined Sony in 1991 as a graphic designer - that was what I studied as - and I was mostly involved with branding and logos. While I was at the Design Centre in Tokyo I created the Sony Ericsson logo. The idea is that it is in two parts, the silver and the green. It's supposed to be more friendly, more emotional, the green is the organic partner, the end user and the silver represents Sony such that we're balanced between content and life.

Before Sony I was at university. I went straight from there. I'd studied graphic design in Kyoto at KIT, the Kyoto Institute of Technology, where they have a special department for graphic design. Kyoto is a very traditional city in Japan and it was very good for me as a designer to get this mix of the modern style of the school and the traditional influence of the city at the same time.

Who are you biggest design influences?
Well, as a graphic designer, it would be Ikko Tanaka who is a famous Japanese graphic designer. He used very vivid, very bright colours together but in very simple designs. He reminds me that simplicity is the most important part of any design and it's not an easy thing to achieve. With so many functions in our products these days I have to avoid too many things and too much confusion on a screen or UI, for example, at any one time and it's important to remember this. Mr Tanaka and I also happen to come from the same town, Narra, so that's another reason I look to him.

And what about technology design, which products do you respect the most?
This may sound boring to you but I love cars - particularly British cars. Here cars are a real lifestyle for people. There is the space for larger lower cars like Jaguars and for people to really live them and have them as part of their lives, even when not driving them. I bought myself a Jaguar in Japan when I started at Sony in 1991. It was a beautiful car.

So, what exactly is the Sony Design Centre all about?
Sony Design has been there for 50 or 60 years - since 1961 - when the first Design Centre opened in Japan. At the time, the company noticed that foreign products, particularly ones in Germany, for example, had a style that we wanted to bring to Sony. The classic sliver and black looks from Germany gave the products a more premium feel and so the Design Centre looked at aspects such as these to see how we could improve.

Sony design works with the four principles of originality, lifestyle, function and utility and we make sure our products represent each of these. There are now Sony Design Centres in London for the EU, in Singapore for Asia and in New York for North America as well. The idea is for them to both inform Japan of the global trends and styles in these areas, as well as create products on their own for the world market and to make sure that the products coming from headquarters will work in their parts of the globe too. In the EU team we have 16 designers representing 7 different nationalities, which is very good for our design influences. Maybe not so good when the World Cup comes round next year. Maybe there'll be a little tension in the office.

What is your role as Head of Sony Design Centre Europe?
Something that I'm looking into at the moment is really the life of the product all the way down the line - from manufacture to the customer purchase and even beyond to installation and customer care. Total experience, we should be more friendly and we need to collaborate more. Smarter styles. The customer journey is very long and we would like to be with them as far as we can. Retail experience is one area of this that we've been looking at and bringing a more obvious branding to the shops, educating the sales staff and providing digital signage in some of our flagship stores, hopefully by the beginning of next year too. Customers will be able to use touchscreen displays to find out all the information they need about different products.

User interfaces are also something we've been looking closely at too. Recently, of course, we've seen the XMB (cross media bar) used in all consumer arms of Sony - Sony Ericsson, PlayStation and Home - and we've recognised how significant the UI is. It's a very strong part for us, as functions become more and more complex. It's very important.

You said before about making packaging more environmentally friendly. How do you plan to do that?
It's not an easy thing to achieve with so many products and different packing needs, but we're already trying different techniques on some product lines. Bravia TVs are coming with no paper manuals at the moment with all the information in on-screen menus. There are also one box solutions for them with the TV stand packed into the same space and we're also testing out pulp moulds for packing, which are 100% recyclable. It's all in the early stages but obviously it will be good if we can bring it into products like headphones which have all plastic packaging, but it's harder to see how that will work with the current designs.

How do European design tastes differ from those in the rest of the world?
Hmmm, that's a difficult question to answer but a good example would be the Bravia picture frame TV. It's specifically a very strong European design where people do not always wish their technology to be the focus of their space. In fact this is another area where we'll be looking to work with living room related products. Home entertainment is very important to the EU team. We have a very strong will to newly define the living room. TV used to be a static focus but now they are internet connected so that we can change the style of family life and the attitude towards them as well. I would say it's a global idea, and communication would be the most significant barrier. The XMB is a good step towards this. In the future, hopefully, the arms of Sony will become more borderless. Bravia must be friendly with PlayStation and we should navigate and appear to the consumer in the same tone and manner.

Does that mean we'll see the three consumer arms of the business merging? Are we going to get Sony Ericsson phones with Bravia screens?
There already is a Bravia phone available in Japan but there no plans to merge the parts of the business at all. We just hope to homogenise some of the ideas.

Why is it that we don't get all those incredible gadgets we see in Japan?
Well, we cannot experiment with all of the products all over the world at the same time. Sometimes we feel that certain products will work best in certain regions and we try them there first.

So, does that mean you're here to fight for Europe to get them?
This will be the biggest job for me.

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Related links:

• News - Sony launches Bravia E4000 series LCD televisions

Tags: Home Cinema Sony Bravia Features Interviews Televisions LCD televisions

Sony design and the shape of things to come originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:46:09 +0000

A brand usually found in the lower echelons of the flatscreen TV market, Toshiba is making a bid for the big time with this huge LED screen. The trouble is, the 55SV685DB's very large price heaps on the pressure; is it much better than a 50-inch plasma, which now go for under ?1,000?

However unlikely that might seem, Toshiba has strived to make the 55SV685DB seem good value by packing in some new features. The first, and most important by far, is LED backlighting. The 55SV685DB uses perhaps the most comprehensive form of the new tech, called "local dimming" or "full LED" by some brands. Instead of a backlight that's always switched on, rows of tiny LED lights line up behind the LCD panel. Capable of switching on and off individually, it's possible for the screen to show total darkness in one area of an image, and bright white in another.

The second crucial feature is Active Vision M200, a 200Hz anti-blur system, though a film stability mode (aimed at removing that annoying judder in all Blu-ray discs) Toshiba's much-hyped Resolution+ upscaling tech for digital TV and DVD is just as important on a screen of this sheer size.

The 55SV685DB's other features seem frivolous in comparison. Take its SD card slot, an unusual find away from Panasonic's Viera TVs. It's there to provide JPEG photographs for the Picture Frame mode, though the TV itself has so little onboard memory that instead of a slideshow, just a single picture can be transferred – and it's slow to load, too.

Just as distracting is the 55SV685DB's stilted stab at DLNA networking. Fetching digital media from a PC or Mac on the same home broadband network is a fantastic idea, but, like a lot of brands, Toshiba hasn't got anywhere near perfecting it. After quickly finding a networked computer, a slow and rather brutal process begins; a file type must be selected, then a specific file, before finding out whether it's compatible (only AVI and MPEG videos seem to be). The system gets ahead of itself by trying to display thumbnails photos/videos, but they never load and just slowdown the process further (Toshiba may have solved this issue on its Japanese-only Cell Regza 55X1, which offers 143 times more processing power).

The remote control doesn't help; it's unable to cancel commands and return to the previous menu, extending the agony. It's a similar story with the Media Player feature that reads files from a USB stick.?

Resolution+ also fails. The 55-inches of LCD screen just cannot display DVD or digital pictures coherently – digital artefacts and fuzzy edges are everywhere – which leaves the 55SV685DB looking rather forlorn and in need of a phenomenal performance with Blu-ray.

And it makes a respectable stab at greatness. Its LED backlighting is endlessly tweakable, with dynamic bars showing ambient light (plotted on a graph, even!), alongside the light output of each pixel.

And a high-def picture is indeed worthy of such examination. Black areas of the picture are jet-black, with plenty of subtle detail within. And subtlety is everywhere; bright whites, incredible colours and entrancing detail make for a picture that's lusciously cinematic. It's helped by an effective film mode that helps create a smooth image with sharp, well-defined edges even when objects are moving rapidly across the screen.

Verdict:

Toshiba has created a Full HD marvel that uses its LED backlighting to create astonishingly deep blacks and rich colours for a LCD TV, but its ?4,500 price tag proves it's downfall. However well it deals with high-def, it's impossible to forgive the 55SV685DB for its lack of versatility because how many of us just want to watch 1080p Blu-ray? For now, a ?1,500 plasma remains a better deal.

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Tags: Home Cinema Televisions LCD televisions Toshiba Toshiba Regza 55SV685DB

Toshiba Regza 55SV685DB television originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:30:22 +0000

LG is preparing to launch a new range of televisions in the UK under the "Seamless Entertainment" banner.

With the advertising campaign kicking off now, the range will be officially revealed at a launch event on 12 November.

As well as being super slim with a thin bezel and offering LED technology, LG is hoping to capture consumer's credit cards with a new gimmick - Bluetooth connectivity.

Hit play to see the new advert, that appears to suggest society's constraints will melt away with the purchase of a flatscreen telly, and we'll bring you more on the 12th.

Tags: Home Cinema Televisions LG Bluetooth Video Advertising

VIDEO: LG to launch Bluetooth-enabled televisions originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:28:37 +0000

At the Japanese FPD expo in Tokyo, a host of manufacturers have been showing off their latest products. Among them is LG, with its remarkably thin LED backlit display. It's 47 inches across, and has a 5.9mm thick profile.

The company is also showing off a bunch of AMOLED concepts for various functions, including televisions, a rather intriguing transparent display, and a 13.3-inch in-cell projected capacitive multi-touch notebook.

There's no word on when any of them might arrive outside of Japan, but as time marches on, we're sure we'll start seeing them arrive in this part of the world.

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Tags: Home Cinema LG Televisions Video

VIDEO: LG shows off 6mm thick television, see thru TV originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:16:51 +0000

Samsung has launched its first TV slash DVD combo offering in the UK. The LE22B470 LCD TV is angled as "the perfect solution for stressed parents struggling to decide between a TV and a DVD player for their kids this Christmas".

While there's many folk around the world that would love to have such a pressing problem to worry about, if this kind of issue is troubling you, then note that the LE22B470 is said to be "an ideal space saver".

No spec has been revealed but we do know as well as the built-in DVD player, the 22-inch LCD flat screen TV offers a Freeview tuner. It's said to be available now at the likes of Currys, John Lewis, Comet, Amazon and Play for around ?325, although it's certainly not showing up under a model number search just now.

Tags: Home Cinema Televisions LCD televisions Samsung Samsung LE22B470 DVD TV DVD

Samsung LE22B470 DVD TV combo launches originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:09:37 +0000

British retailer John Lewis has launched its own brand range of LCD televisions. Sized at the smaller end of the market, the new John Lewis tellies are available with 19-, 22- and 26-inch screens.

All models get an integrated digital tuner for access to Freeview channels whilst set-up is said to be simple thanks to "one touch" remote tuning. The TVs also get two HDMI inputs, PC input, table top stands - and - screen cleaning cloth.

Complete with a free 5-year guarantee, pricing starts at ?199 for the 19-incher, ?269 for the 22-inch model while the 26-inch version costs ?349.

Tags: Home Cinema Televisions John Lewis LCD televisions

John Lewis launches modestly-sized own brand TVs originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:22:44 +0100

Qulacomm's FLO TV personal television offers American consumers live TV on the go.

Here Tech Vi gets the low-down on the new device from one of the fastest-talking PR men you're ever likely to lay ears on. Hit now to see his pitch - and the 3.5-inch device in the flesh.

Due in time for "the holidays", the HTC-made gadget gets built-in speakers, a 3.5mm stereo jack, and a kick-out stand.

Qualcomm says that it will offer 5 hours of viewing time from a single charge and that US telly viewers should be able to get up to 20 channels ranging through news, kids and entertainment.

Tags: Home Cinema FLO TV Video Televisions

VIDEO: Tech Vi looks at the FLO TV originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:22:20 +0100

Qualcomm is hoping to change the way we watch television with a new portable TV that doesn't need you to be plugged into an aerial on the top of your house.

Called Flo TV, the technology, which is already available on mobile phones from LG and HTC, has spawned a dedicated portable TV called the Flo TV Personal Television.

The device, previously rumoured and due in time for "the Holidays" and made by HTC, will feature a 3.5-inch screen, built in speakers, a 3.5mm stereo jack, and a kick out stand so you can perch it on a desk or table.

Qualcomm says that it will offer 5 hours of viewing time from a single charge and that you'll be able to get up to 20 channels ranging through news, kids and entertainment.

"Our intent is to make Flo TV available to all", Michael Hirsch from FLO TV told Pocket-lint.

The device will cost $250, although users will have to sign up to a further subscription to access the television channels each month.

Stone says that pricing has yet to be fully finalised, however consumers looking to watch TV on the go can expect to pay from $8.99 a month with monthly and yearly packages available.

Those thinking that a 3.5-inch isn't really big enough should hold their breath. Hirsch confirmed to us that the company was working on more devices.

"We expect to see more devices and different form factors in the future," he said.

Promising national US coverage by the end of 2009, Hirsch was keeping quiet on whether or not the new TV would make it outside of the US and to the UK. Qualcomm already owns the spectrum in the UK to offer the FLO TV service, however as yet hasn't turned it on.

Tags: Home Cinema Televisions Qualcomm FLO TV

FLO TV takes TV on the go once again originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:31:17 +0100

Toshiba has unveiled the 55-inch Cell Regza 55X1 in Japan as its new flagship LCD television.

With high quality sound, a contrast ratio of 5,000,000:1, and brightness of 1250cdm2, the 240Hz TV boasts "ultra-high-speed processing and recording, enhanced navigation and seamless network interactivity".

The TV's Opera-powered browser also supports Full HD and can display HD YouTube videos while, thanks to Toshiba's Cell platform, the company boasts processing capability around 143 times that of standard Regzas as well as 512 distict LED backlit areas.

With a 3TB hard disk drive, two of those terabytes are dedicated to the telly's "time-shift machine", which can record up to 26 hours of programmes across 8 channels, so viewers can select to watch a show they've missed and search for content via key words.

The Cell Regza system is made up of a TV and a separate matching box that houses the tuner and the HDD. Both boast a "smoked aluminium finish", as does the remote.

The Cell Regza 55X1 will go on sale in the Japanese market from the beginning of December. We're unsure of pricing, but we're looking at thousands and thousands of pounds, for sure.

Tags: Home Cinema Toshiba Televisions LCD televisions Toshiba Cell Regza 55X1 Opera Networking

Toshiba Cell Regza 55X1, new flagship television unveiled originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:22:44 +0100

HANNspree has announced the availability of a 32-incher into its recently revealed ST series of HDTVs.

The new 32-inch ST321 offers a Full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution and HANNspree's proprietary X-Contrast and X-Celerate technologies.

The ST321 also gets "Multiple Aspect Ratio Support" that sees the default 16:9 aspect ratio adjusted to Full, Wide, Panarama, Zoom, Subtitle, Auto and Normal views as the user sees fit.

Features include a 2 x 10 Watt audio system, 500cd/m2 brightness, 6ms response time, an "X-Contrast" ratio of 10000:1, four HDMI 1.3 inputs as well as VGA, Component, Composite, S-Video and two Scart inputs

The ST321 is available now from www.misco.co.uk for ?329.99 with a 2-year collect and return warranty.

Related links:

• News - HANNspree unveils the new ST series of HDTVs

Tags: Home Cinema Televisions LCD televisions HANNspree Misco

HANNspree ST series gets 32-incher originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:37:51 +0100

Sharp has announced that it's bringing four new televisions to Japan on 10 November, called the LX Series. The products are being released to mark the start of the tenth anniversary of the first AQUOS LCD TVs, and feature LED backlighting, along with a newly developed LCD panel.

The televisions incorporate Sharp's UV2A technology that improves the contrast ratios, and combines with the LED backlighting to offer - according to Sharp - the industry's lowest level of energy consumption. There's also the company's image processing chip, which helps out with fast moving images, and it can control peripheral devices with the AQUOS Familink II technology.

There's a a 60-inch model, a 52-inch model, a 46-inch model and a 40-inch model, but there's no European pricing yet because these are just being released in Japan for now. When they come to these shores, we'll make sure that you're the first to know.

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Related links:

• News - Sharp launches AQUOS HDTVs with built-in Blu-ray

Tags: Home Cinema Televisions Sharp LCD televisions

Sharp launches LX series Aquos TVs originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:43:23 +0100

People getting secondary TV sets hooked up to Freeview has led to a new high for digital television in the UK, reports Ofcom.

The regulator's Digital TV Progress Report reveals that 80% of all televisions in the UK are now digitally-enabled.

23.4 million "secondary" sets were converted to digital, while nine out of ten main television sets are now connected to a digital decoder.

The Borders area, the West Country and south and west Wales are now switched over to digital with the rest of the UK due to switch before the end of 2012.

Today sees a digital "retune" that means consumers will need to retune their set-top boxes in order to continue receiving digital TV.

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Related links:

• Feature - Quick guide to the Freeview retune on 30 September

Tags: Home Cinema Televisions Freeview Statistics Ofcom

80% of UK televisions now digital originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:22:02 +0100

A Taiwanese company, AU Optronics Corp, or AUO, has announced one of its 32-inchers has become the world's first LCD TV set to get "Carbon Footprint Verification".

Claiming the move will "establish the benchmark on the carbon footprint management for consumer electronic products", it could perhaps herald a new era in eco consumerism.

Verified according to international carbon footprint standard PAS2050:2008, the TV has also been included in the UKAS PAS2050 Pilot Project by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service or UKAS.

The carbon emission calculation of AUO's 32-incher includes each stage of the product life cycle from raw material, manufacture, delivery, consumer use and then disposal, or recycling.

AUO says "through the indicator of carbon calculation, consumers will know well what the environmental impact is caused by the electronic products they use in the future".

Following this news, it will be interesting to see how long it takes before a product's "Carbon Footprint" starts to appear on packaging.

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Tags: Eco Televisions AUO Carbon Footprint Verification UKAS

AUO 32-inch TV gets world's first Carbon Footprint Verification originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:51:56 +0100

Wish you could watch live TV in your car? While newer satnav models with TV tuners are about the easiest way for UK consumers to get that kind of content blasting out in their motors, in the States, a dedicated aftermarket auto solution from mobile TV co FLO TV is to launch.

Audiovox and Qualcomm-owned FLO TV will soon deliver an "in-vehicle entertainment system delivering live TV service", due to be available to consumers in the fourth quarter of 2009.

The first FLO TV system will launch under Audiovox's "Advent" brand, and fits in any car with screen sizes available up to 10.5 inches. Car dealers will offer 1 year of the FLO TV Auto Entertainment service starting at $119 per year.

Tags: Car And GPS Televisions FLO TV Qualcomm Audiovox

Audiovox Advent to offer Americans live TV on the road originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:10:54 +0100