Industry insider

Took a bit of a nose around Samsung's history gallery, which you enter past a bust of company founder  Byung-chull Lee. He started a small store in 1938, and developed that into a trading company in 1950.

Not that electronics were centre-stage then: early enterprises included a sugar company, and trading dried fish with China, and it wasn't until 1969 that Samsung Electronics was founded.

Early products included valves, before the company moved on to TVs like this, a black and white model from the early 1970s, which is very much of its time, and came complete with lockable dors to cover the screen and controls.

But Samsung has always been on the pace with technological developments: this big ol' unit is its first videocassette recorder, from 1979, which was only the fourth model produced in the world.

while in the following decade it also made products using  the 8mm video format, then being heralded as the portable video system of the future.

And the company has always majored on service, which is one of the big secrets of its success in its home market

as well as getting on board new trends at a very early stage.

This is its first-ever mobile phone for fhe Korean market

and not so many years later it had miniaturised phones down to the point where it could market a wristwatch phone, for all of us with Dick Tracy fantasies.

And it's never missed a trick when it comes to marketing, from sponsorship to product placement. This display of Olympic torches celebrates its role as an Olympic sponsor, and its involvement with the Olympic Torch Relay

while below is a limited edition Matrix mobile phone, from 2003.

But not every product is a runaway success, and there have been times when Samsung has found itself rather ahead of the trend. This, from the 1980s, is a microwave oven with a 5in TV built-in on top.

Who said convergence was a new thing...?

You may remember I told you yesterday about the huge research and development complex at Samsung's Suwon HQ here in Seoul. Well, the picture above shows the massive research and development tower I was talking about, and where we've been spending quite a lot of our time over the past couple of days.

And it's not the only R&D facility here: in the foreground of the night shot below is another tower, not quite so large, where the company does all its telecommunications research and development - no small matter, given its prominence in the worldwide mobile phone market.

Security is tight in these buildings: it's all pass cards, X-ray machines for your bags, and devices designed to stop even those who have access taking anything they shouldn't in or out. We had to wear tags enabling security to track where we were, and there are even rumours about special systems designed to stop cameraphones working while in the buildings.

All of which is why, although we've just had a tour of the company's amazing EMC (Electromagnetic Compatibility) testing facilities, designed both to ensure nothing harmful is being emitted from the products and also that they can resist external signals, I'm waiting for some pictures to arrive by email before I can show you.

Watch this space...

The main R&D tower here at Samsung's complex here in Suwon, some 65km south of Seoul, rises 38 floors, dominating the skyline for miles around.

9000 people work in this gargantuan bulding, out of a total of almost 23,000 on this site. That means it doesn't take a huge leap of faith to believe the company's claim that last year it spent a fairly staggering $6.3bn, or almost 10% of its total revenue, on research and development.

But with R&D also comes testing, and the building also goes five floors down, with labs to test products for EMF radiation and RFI susceptibility, electrical and mechanical safety, at extemes of temperature and humdity, and for compatibility.

I visited the lab where the company tests its displays and TVs with an impressive range of products from other brands - set-top boxes, DVD and Blu-ray players and the like - and another where testing is done with stacks of computers and video cards.

I also spent time in the optical testing departnment, illustrated at the top of this piece, where a highly automated system checks sample TVs - and those from other brands - for colour, brightness, contrast and even power consumption.

SAMAS - Samsung Automatic Measurement and Analysis System - works with an industry standard colour analyser, but bolts onto it a suite of in-house tools designed to measure and combine all the parameters of a TV's picture into one report.

It can take separate measurements for each colour, different picture modes and even a variety of inputs, and analyse them to give a complete overview of what the set is doing, as well as drilling down to the real nuts and bolts stuff.

But that's only step one.

The lab also uses VAS - its own Visual Analysis system - to compare a wide range of real pictures, stored on the computer and viewed on the TV under test, with reference measurements made on an optimised set kept in the lab. The testing uses a Canon digital SLR, its zoom lens set to 70mm to fill the frame with the TV picture, connected back to the computer.

The system cycles through a wide variety of off-air stills, from movie scenes to a lot of lip-glossed and big-haired US TV anchors - and that's just the men - taking pictures and referencing them back to its database. 157 items are checked, covering factors such as overall tone, grayscale handling, skin tones, red/blue/green colour fidelity, saturation, noise and so on.

But it's not just picture quality that's tested. In a large anechoic chamber, the audio output of TVs and other products can be tested, both on and off axis,

And there's also a large listening room, with variable reverberation time, another measuring system and electronics including several pairs of B&W speakers for reference use.

Both facilities would have most specialist audio copmpanies casting envious glances, but when I visted the listening room, testing was underway on a smallish CRT TV, a reminder that such sets still make up a significant part of the company's TV business, especially in some Asian countries.

If testing all of Samsung's consumer electronics products for sound quality wasn't enough, the audio test engineers have a sideline: in the noise room. They check everything from air-conditioners to washing machines, working to reduce the amount of noise the rproducts make, and eliminating any wayward squeaks or whirrs.

It's a given that anyone visiting Japan on their first consumer electronics press trip will mention two things: one is Blade Runner, the other is the Akihabara, Tokyo's 'electric town', which they're likey to say is unlike anywhere else in the world.

Well, i have news for them: Korea's Yongsan Electronics Market, here in Seoul, has Akihabara beat hands down, both on the choice of stores and the sheer diversity of products available.

Whereas Akihabara has increasingly moved away from hardware and into software, becoming the haunt of the anime and gaming otaku, Yongsan has stick to what it kinows best - and that' selling everything from the very latest TVs, cameras and computers right down to the smallest components.

And while guesses vary as to the number of companies trading here, it's not hard to believe the official estimate, which says 7000.

For many visitors, the ETLand - ElectronicLand - building will be the place to go. It's home to a huge number of competing businesses, all selling similar ranges of products - or at least so it seems. Down on the ground floor are camera stores and general electrical shops, selling TVs, fridges, dishwashers and of course the inevitable rice-cookers - lots of rice-cookers.

It's not surprising that this building has become a must-visit for the city's newlyweds, who go along to equip their new homes with a complete set of electrical and electronic appliances, from the fridge to the big TV and home cinema system.

We're just moving into prime winter wedding season here - the ads are everywhere in department stores, jewellery retailers and the like, and ETLand is clearlly keen to stake its claim.

Move on up through the building and the wonders continue as you find an entire floor dedicated to mobile phones

or LG's walk-in service centre. Here, in booths rather like those you used to find in the dole office, divided off by partitions, you can drop in an go one-on-one with a service technician while they put right whatever's wrong with any LG product you can carry to the centre.

And the concept of service goes even further in ETLand: There's a large nuimber of these custom-built computer shops

where you can sit down with a consultant and spec out the computer you want, then have it built for you while you complete your shopping. It's an unusual sight, but you do see many consumers lugging completed computers out of the store and into taxis, having spent a while in these shops, which vary from the smart to the 'explosion in a computer factory;, with boards, drives fans and wires everyhwere.

And then you find the hi-fi - serious high-end hi-fi, in stores from the minimalist

to the outlandish - note the array of McIntosh amps below, not to to mention the massive Avantgarde bass-bin at the centre of the rear wall, which I've previously only ever seen at high-end shows in Germany, and never 'in the wild'.

There are also stores conforming to the familiar 'how much very expensive equipment can you cram into the smallest possible space?' Asian norm, such as the one below,

and others with a smaller, but still impressive array. One for the B&W fans below.

Sitting alongside the latest shiny new high-end stuff are the vintage audio stores such as this

selling everything from ancient valve amplifiers, radios and massive professional horn speakers to these pristine-looking reel-to-reel machines.

Even the nearby record store has a serious system in its classical department, combining Musical Fidelity amplification with these big Tannoy pro monitors (below). We'll even forgive them the use of a Pioneer universal player as the source, but the choice of Sarah Brightman singing Christmas carols was a bit harder to excuse.

And just for the Forum poster who asked the other week about using amplifiers on their side, here's a glimpse through the window of used audio dealer Dr Hi-Fi - yes, those are players and amps racked up like library books!

But there's more to Yongsan than mainstream consumer electronics brands. The place is full of small specialists shops, some selling only scales, others specialising in clocks or fans, many lightbulb stotres, and one majoring on deeply scary looking replica weapons. This is Buy the Gun:

Out in the back alleys you find the tool-shops and component suppliers,

such as this one selling only plugs and sockets

and then just when you think you've seen it all, you cross the railway lines at Yongsan station and wander eyes wide open into iPark Mall, where it all starts all over again.

Here we have a department store the likes of which you have never seen before. Each floor, going from front  to back, goes 'fashion, masses of consumer electronics, normal department store stuff' so you can walk from sportswear to computers to bedding.

And up on the  top floor are music stores on a huge scale. There's a massice Yamaha store, selling what I swear is enough product to equip an orchestra, and other stores such as this one

where you can buy anything from a triangle to this amazing church organ - every good home should have one.

And on that festive note I'll end with the perfect stocking filler, courtesy of the Vestax concession nearby. Yes, it's the groove-chewing SoundWagon, the little VW Microbus with a stylus underneath, an amp within and a speaker on the top, which plays your LPs as it trundles round in circles on them.

But then with used LPs selling for as little as 20p here, perhaps one shouldn't worry too much...

When I attended my first-ever journalist's law course, the trainer was a Fleet Street hack who mainly covered the Old Bailey, and had had his own fair share of run-ins with Messrs Sue, Grabbit and Run.

He fixed us newbie writers, most of us fresh from university, with a stern stare, and barked "What's the one question you never ask an interviewee?"

A long silence descended over the room, while we considered enquiries about marital status, sexual proclivities. fraudulent businesses and so on. Feet shuffled, virgin pages of brand-new notepads were studied in minute detail.

"Anyone? No-one? Let me put you out of your misery - the one question you never ask is 'Is that on or off the record?'

"You say nothing, they say nothing, and provided it's an accurate report and you have the notes to back it up, you're home scot free."

A modern development of all this is the embargo or (increasinngly commonly) a Non-Disclosure Agreement, or NDA. We get the information, but the provider determines when and where it can be publishied.

I've covered stuff under embargo in the past, and on one memorable occasion signed an NDA with an open-ended date on it/ That was for the launch of Bang & Olufsen flagship Beolab speakers, and it allowed me to get access to the whole design and testing process at a very early stage.

Mind you, I've also been involved in NDA fiascos, such as the pan-European launch in Japan where we had to sign on the dotted line before were allowed into the product presentations. All well and good except, unbeknown to the rest of us, the journalists from one country refused to sign, on the grounds that the release date on the NDA was just after their magazines came out, so they'd be a month behind the rest of Europe.

The company in question crumbled, allowed them in, then told us after showing all its new TVs for the next year, but not allowing photography, that the NDA no longer existed. Trouble is, they then wrongfooted themselves totally by not having any press material available -  it was going to be sent to us just before the NDA expired - so all the TVs then had to be hauled back in so we could photograph them.

I don't mind NDAs, as long as there's a solid reason for them and the rules of engagement are clear. I'm reminded of the company that tried to put an NDA on some new products being launched in Europe, despite the fact we'd been to the worldwide event and already reported on them some time ago.

Anyway, on this LG launch things again went a bit pear-shaped on the when and where front. Nothing was said before the 2009 TV presentation on Tuesday, and so I frantically took notes ready to deliver you a blog on all the new stuff just as soon as I could get somewhere quiet and get the laptop hooked up to Korea's excellent 3G phone system.

But then one of my fellow trippers made the most screaming error. Just after we'd been told the really juicy stuff. he piped up with "Is all that covered by an embargo?"

Don't ask, they don't say anything, and you're home free. Not going to happen now - and I think my sharp intake of breath was possibly heard across the border in North Korea.

By Wednesday evening, having now seen much, photographed little and having nothing much to report in terms of hard news, we were handed an NDA, to be signed before we get a set of pictures of the new products delivered to us next week. Everyone else on the event had already signed, so what could I do? Refuse, and get the information later than everyone else?

And the embargo date? The moment the 2008 CES opens in Las Vegas, in the first week of January. We'll be bringing you all the news as soon as we're allowed to, but in the meantime here's a nice picture of some kimchi in the raw, outside a shop across the road from LG's R&D labs..

By the time the Seoul housewives buying the heads of cabbage from this outdoor mountain have finished making and maturing their kimchi, you should be reading about the new TVs...

Driving North-west out of Seoul towards Paju, home of one of LG's major display panel facilities, the crippling city traffic soon thins out.

Here the highway runs beside the river, and the country's car companies take advantage of the light traffic to test heavily-disguised prototypes - all matt-black paint and camouflage body panels. It's also apparently popular with Seoul's street-racers: they head up here at night to burn some rubber.

But there's a more ominous presence: the left side of the highway is lined with barbed wire, with regular observation posts (above) manned by young South Koreans doing their national service, and keeping watch across the river for incursions by those from the North.

"They have real guns," our tour-guide tells us with some seriousness - and rumours abound of rather more potent deterrents also being deployed, from stones set to fall if disturbed to concrete blocks filled with explosives to head off a tank invasion..

We're staring from the bus windows out across the DMZ, the demilitarised zone separating the two countries, and hearing that this part of it has become a nature sanctuary, simply because it's left alone. The flocks of birds we see are on their migration route from Siberia to warmer climes.

Soon, just past the hilltop Reunification Observatory (above), we swing off the highway, and into Paju itself, taking LG-ro (road) before hooking a right onto LCD-ro, the bus labouring up a hill between high banks with the look of a massive ancient fortification - well, apart from the huge LG Display sign on them.

We're at the 4.5 square kilometre site of the Paju Display Cluster, where the company makes the plasma and LCD panels used in its TVs, and displays used by other companies for everything from mobile phones to computers and advertising signs.

Until this year, the plant was an LG/Philips joint venture, but now LG has bought out its partner, and owns the whole enterprise.

Here we visit the P7 factory, where huge sheets of mother glass, 2.25x1.95m, just 0.7mm thick but weighing 7.7kg, are moved around by robots as they undergo the photographic process that creates plasma panels from raw glass.

It takes 5 days to complete a sheet of the glass, which will yield eight 42in screens, but plans are already underway for P8, due onstream in the first quarter of next year, which will up the sheet size to 2.5x2.2m.

Only 38 staff on each of three shifts run the factory, which operates in ultra-clean conditions, but the Paju facility has everything from its own dormitory and apartment complex to football pitches - and even a friendly neighbourhood South Korean army base, located right on the edge of the 'campus'.

And things are serious here: as we drove in, a Black Hawk helicopter briefly appeared in the sky before dropping below the trees to land.

Up at the top of the P7 plant, however, LG is doing its bit: in the Success Tower, visitors are invited to use a pair of huge tripod-mounted binoculars to peer out over the plant, and across the DMZ toward North Korea.

We have pointed out to us the North Korean guard-posts atop the distant hills, and the 'disguised village', which we're told is being built almost as a stage set, as a show of prosperity to those in the South.

That's nothing new: until recently huge banners and high-powered speaker systems traded blows across the border, until an agreement was made to avoid such obvious disturbances to the neighbours - not to mention those Siberian visitors.

But you can't help wondering, as you peer into the haze through the binoculars, whether someone out there isn't staring back, and keeping an eye on the world's largest 7th-generation TV glass factory...

So the world is undergoing financial meltdown, and most consumer electronics companies are wringing their hands, battening down the hatches, lashing themselves to the masts and preparing to weather the storm.

So why are the guys in LG's Twin Towers HQ here in Seoul, which I visited today at the start of a two-week trip to Korea, smiling almost as much as their corporate logo?

Well, it seems they've analysed their target market segments, designed their products to suit them, crunched their number and come up with a rosy picture for the company's TV's business over the next couple of years. And that, the company says, puts it in a very strong position to solve the market problems worrying most of its main rivals.

Indeed, Morris Lee, Vice President of the company's LCD TV European Marketing team, says that what the rest of the world is seeing as a financial crisis, LG views as an opportunity.

"We have made tremendous progress in our global business," he says, "and also in Europe. We have a clear strategy to move forward with technology-driven products, and we have strong confidence of our 2009 business."

And the figures given by his colleagues certainly bear that out: while the European market for LCD TVs is expected to be around 30m units in 2009, and only rise to 31m in the following year, LG's plan is to raise its market share from the current 11%, both worldwide and in Europe, to 15% worldwide in 2010, and 16% in Europe.

It expects that growth to come from larger screens, as well as technological advances such as faster screen refresh rates, lower response times, Bluetooth/wireless connectivity and greater energy efficiency.

How's it done this? Well, it's segmented its customers into Premium Seekers - the home cinema buffs and technocompletists -, Brand Followers, Value Maximisers, Basic Watchers and TV Minimalists. And its 2009 TV range, to be rolled out early next year, will contain line-ups aimed at targeting each of those target segments.

But the company will continue to run LCD and plasma TV ranges side by side, seeing growing demand for plasma TVs across the size range, and the European market for plasma TVs moving ever closer to 5m units as we close in on the 2010 World Cup and 2012 Olympics. In this sector, too, the company will be targeting its segmented buyer profiles, and applying much of the same technological thinking it expects to keep its LCD business more than buoyant over the coming years.

Speaking to WHFSV after the main presentations were over and we toured the company's showroom (above), Lee agreed with me that there seems to be a trend for consumers to 'nest' in the current financial situation, diverting money they might have spent on a new car, a house move or a holiday to the purchase of home entertainment.

In fact, the company's sales are up 30% in value terms and 60% in volume year on year in both the UK and Europe.

And while his colleagues agreed that new technologies may be on the way, such as LED backlighting for LCD TVs and OLED displays, the message from the people at LG is that you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for existing TV technologies to be superceded.

For LG, the solution to the current situation is all about finding the market, and then building products to serve it as well as possible. And the Korean solution looks like it's going to pay off.

Yes, it's a telephone.

But not just any telephone: this is the Fuji-type phone which in 1935 started Fujitsu. Which is why it now has pride of place in the subterranean Technology Hall at the company's HQ in Kawasaki, which I visited a few days ago.

The company that phone created now has worldwide sales of over $50bn, and with an annual spend on R&D of almost $2.5bn.

After the Second World War, Fujitsu soon found itself moving into new fields, with the development of its first relay-driven computer, the FACOM (Fujitsu Automatic COMputer) 100 in 1954.

The machine in the Technology Hall is slightly more recent - it's a 1960 FACOM 138 - but it still works, the relays clattering as it does its thing.

The programming and storage in those days was impressive stuff, the machine chewing through large reels of punched paper.

By 1965, the company was linking up computers in the first online data system, and by 1975 it had Japan's first supercomputer, the FACOM-230-75 ARU.

Personal computing has also played a major part in the Fujitsu story: this is a 1981 FMB, the first computer to use LSI RAM as its main memory. The capacity? A staggering 64KB - and note the audio cassette on the right used for programming.

As personal computers became popular, so salesmen wanted to take this awesome processing power on the road with them.

The 1985 FM16 weighed 2.9kg and was supplied in a case with a small thermal printer, used for printing out orders. On return to base, the data could be downloaded.

Fujitsu was also heavily involved in mobile phone development, and in the landline world also developed technology for the undersea cables used extensively in the age before sattelite communications, and still carrying much of the world's data.

This optical booster's designed to work at depths of 8000m, and used in the SEA-ME-WE4 cable. which runs from South East Asia, via the Middle East to Western Europe - hence the name.

It can withstand a pressure of 800 atmospheres, the equivalent of supporting a Boeing 747 on the surface area of your two hands, and carries 8.8Tb/s.

Of course, Fujitsu is also known as the developer of the plasma TV, with a team under Tsutae Shinoda having developed the technology despite the company, along with rivals, being unimpressed with the short service life of early prototypes, and trying to discontinue research.

Shinoda, now known as 'Mr Plasma', continued his work, and in 1983 invented a three-electrode surface-discharge structure that overcame the observed short-life issue.

He also invented further vital technologies and successfully developed the world’s first practical video graphics array plasma display panel, a 21in model able to deliver 260,000 colours. He came up with the first 42in model in 1995, and one of the early screens is on show in the Technology Hall.

He's now Chairman of Shinoda Plasma, and also serves as a professor at Hiroshima University.

And Fujitsu's research continues to look into new ways of handling and displaying data - during my visit I was introduced to MIRACLES, which allows data to be searched in the internet by visual as well as text search.

The acronym stands for Multimedia Information RetrievAl, CLassification and Exploration System - and I can't help thinking the name came first and then the developers tortured the words to fit!

But what it does is impressive. It can analyse pictures on the internet and then classify them by shape, colour and so on, meaning it has obvious applications in, say, online shopping - 'Find me all the red handbags for sale', for example.

So what's that got to do with home cinema and the world we live in? Well, the system - which is already being used internally to search for and retrieve technical drawings - can also work with video.

And that means it could soon be classifying all the content stored on your computer, along with that out there on the internet, and allowing rapid search for that clip you wanted without you needing to know what it's called or even where it came from.

Friday:- Over the border into mainland China to visit the Shinhint Group factory in Chang An, Guangdong, where NXT's Balanced Mode Radiator drive units are made.

We're driven from Hong Kong by Ernest Ip, Shinhint's COO, and entering China proves remarkably simple, given all the faff involved in getting a visa back in the UK. Another 45 minutes drive north from the border at Lo Wu, and we're at the factory.

Shinhint is the sole licensee for the manufacture of NXT's BR drivers, and while all the research is done back at NXT, the team at Chang An develops new versions of the drive units for customers. Another factory makes finished products such as PC and portable speakers.

The development team is headed by Professor Wei: Wei Shi Xiong was formerly a professor at  Qingdao University, and joined the company five years back.

He has electrical and mechanical teams, an acoustics facility and a rapid prototyping workshop, and the focus is on applying NXT's research into products.

At the moment, for example, it's working on expanding the range of HARP drivers into a variety of different sizes, from the tiny to the large, as more TV manufacturers get interested in the technology.

Making the NXT HARPs is a little trickier than with some drivers - glueing the diaphragm in place requires a machine to do a bit more of a bob and a shuffle, rather than just spinning a circular driver.

But some things remain the same: this guy is taking magnets and - umm - magnetising them:

Stacks of finished drivers build up at the end of the production line - the company has some 1200 staff working at the factory, under the eye of the jovial but clearly no-nonsense Senior Operations Manager, Suzanne Lo.

 But Shinhint also takes the product further, building the drivers into completed speaker housings for a TV manufacturer

each one of which is subjected to a listening test before being packed for dispatch

Other products being made at the factory include speaker systems for a mobile phone manufacturer, and a whole floor dedicated to making drive units for in-car use, servicing the likes of Ford, GM and VAG.

Or, as the sign over the entrance to the production floor says,

Anyone who tells you that two-channel audio is dead, and home cinema is the new black, only needs wander into one of the several consumer electronics stores stacked above each other in the Yau Shing Commercial Centre here in Kowloon.

Step out of the tiny elevator, turn right and this is what you see.

Row upon row of speakers, lined up and waiting for audition. And they range from the JBLs, Sonys and Mordaunt-Shorts of this world through to Tannoy-made TEAC Esoterics, big Tannoy Prestige models, ProAcs, NEATs, PMCs, Harbeths, Spendors and more. They just go on and on, and not just in one store:

Each shop has a similar array, all set up and ready to go on the shop floor.

They're all connected to racks and racks of equipment, ranging from high-end  Esoterica  to Cambridge Audio, Musical Fidelity, Creek and Myryad, not to mention a scattering of Arcam.

Patchbays allow any player and any amp to be connected to any set of speakers - you can see the plugboard to the right of the shot below

Each shop has a couple of good demonstration rooms - this one is one of two at the Famous Audio and Video Company on the 11th floor

and each also has a clean, tidy main showroom layout for instant buyer appeal. This is Famous again:

There's plenty of stuff you'll never see in most British stores, too. Here's a pair of brand-new 60th anniversary Rogers LS3/5As

while mixed in with a whole load more equipment in a small demonstration room at another shop on the 16th floor is the kind of range of Naim equipment you'd normally only see in a truly dedicated UK retailer:

If you're after a serious two-channel system, I know just the place to go...

Worked out what it is yet? No, it's not a UFO over Causeway Bay here in Hong Kong, but a floating speaker from JVC, deisgned to deliver bathtime music. It has a built-in MP3 player and amplifier, and at its heart is a a speaker driver from NXT.

Yes, that NXT - the company founded amidst all that hoo-hah back in the days when it was under the same roof as Mission and Cyrus, but now doing its development work here on the shores of the South China Sea, just a couple of blocks from the former home of Bruce Lee. That home's now not a museum to the martial arts star, by the way, but a 'rent by the hour' love hotel. In Hong Kong, things move on...

And NXT finally moved its operational base here three years back, after an earlier relocation of some key staff a few years earlier, although the pure science is still done in the UK.

Here, among design and advertising companies in the Innocentre in Kowloon Tong, is the compact lab, design and sales operation of NXT, with the staff just about equally split between ex-pat Brits and locals. Other offices are in Japan and California.

Why Hong Kong? Well, for the same reason there are those other satellite offices - to be close to the customers, and where the products are produced. For as well as licensing its technologies, which now go far beyond the original 'Flat Panel' speakers, to manucaturers, NXT now designs and develops products sold as own-brand models through a wide range of distribution channels, and works with factories in mainland China to make drive units for both off the shelf and custom applications.

It has getting on for 15 licensees for its original SurfaceSound Distributed Mode Loudspeaker technology in China, and its products and technologies, covered by around 350 patents, find applications as diverse as advertising billboards and in-car audio.

Some Citroen vehicles, the C4 and C5, use its Audio Full Range drivers in place of conventional in-dash drivers, the speakers veing developed in association with Philips, while Toyota uses Distibuted Mode Loudspeakers in the headlining of vehicles such as the Alphard mini-van (above) in Asian markets, and its Tacoma and FJ Cruiser in the States.

NXT works closely with a wide range of manufacturers and brands including Hitachi, Maxell, Philips, Parrot, Revo, Targus, TDK and  TEAC, along with some undisclosed major names. For some of these it develops entire products, while with others - such as Revo - it's a matter of joint development of products.

There are also less expected applications for its technology. 3M uses its bending wave touch screens in the development of advertising and kiosk touch panels, while with its partner Qinetiq NXT's producing solutions for use in transport applications such as high-end executive jets and even some locations on the London Underground.

Work is also going on with printed electronics and other unusual applications: luxury birthday cards from Hallmark now use NXT technology to play high-quality greetings music when they're opened!

The popular Hitachi AX-M133 system was the first to hit the shops using NXT's Balanced Mode Radiator speakers, which are now being made available to a wide range of manufacturers.

The BR High Aspect Ratio Panel, or HARP, at the top of the picture above, is particularly well-suited to use in flatscreen TVs, and NXT is working with its driver manufacture licensee, Shinhint, to develop this driver in a variety of sizes to suit different requirements. There'll be more on the Shinhint link in a later blog.

The drivers are already in flatscreen TVs from the fastest-growing company in the US TV market, Vizio, and Viewsonic models. What's more, to make sets even slimmer the dispersion characteristics of the driver allows them to be angled or even used in a downward-firing orientation.

While I was with the NXT team, there were ongoing discussions underway with some of the biggest names in TV manufactuing about the use of versions of versions of this driver in their products.

NXT's original technology is now found in a variety of applications, the company having found that the EVA foam used in bag manufacture makes a good diaphragm for the speakers. Targus backpacks are made with an amp and stereo speaker panel, while the SoundBags below combine an iPod case and speaker.

Similar technologies are applied to a wide range of standalone speakers for use with computers and personal music players, with the company having a wide range of designs available to customers.

And it also has a variety of designs aimed at the 'road warrior' wanting to use the laptop for entertainment as well as work. This model is designed as a 'soundbar' to clip on the top of a notebook display

while these can be used freestanding, or clipped either side of the screen.

A variety of connection and power options are being investigated, from USB power and connectivity to conventional 3.5mm jacks and batteries, and even Bluetooth.

The company is also working on devices to drive the displays of laptops and handheld devices directly, turning them into speakers.

I was shown a development implementation for one current ultraportable computer, and it was explained how this SoundVu technology can not only save precious space inside a product, but also deliver stereo sound where previously there was only room for a single conventional mono speaker.

Parallel research is also going on into a side benefit of this technology, which allows screens to be touch-sensitive and also provide feedback when used. This 'haptic' technology allows the sensation of writing on a screen to be akin to that of writing on paper - instead of a stylus skidding on plastic, the screen appears to produce a degree of drag, just like paper.

But for all this, NXT still considers itself a hi-fi company, and is proud of its UK audio heritage. It's developed these ultra-slim speakers from its experience with the Hitachi system:  book-sized, they sounded very good indeed on the brief demonstration I heard, and i could imagine them slipping between the volumes on a shelf to give an all-but-invisible small room/second room hi-fi solution.

The company's circular BMR drivers have already become familiar from their use in the new Revo BLOK iPod dock, and NXT and its manufacturing partner have developed these little cube speakers.

With drivers just 4.5in across, and no crossover to sap power or create phase problems, they again sounded very convincing on the end of some Cyrus electronics, and could be an interesting add-on for small systems.

Other developers are also workjing with the BMR technology: I had a brief listen to a pair of the speaker on the right below, which combines the small square driver and a passive radiator, together with onboard amplification and a metal housing designed to act as a heatsink.

On first seeing it, the NXT materials and engineering people were intrigued that the external designer had used a  transparent material for the passive radiator diaphragm. 'Why?', they asked, 'Does it sound better?'

The answer was somewhat more prosaic - the designer had run out of space on the housing for an receiver for the infrared remote control, so putting it behind the radiator panel seemed the logical solution.

 It's just one of many designs which will be featured on the NXT stand at the massive Hong Kong Electronics Fair, which opens here on Monday, and the company has been working on prototypes right up to the last minute.

Having spent a day visiting the Shinhint speaker factory in China with NXT Sales and Marketing Director James Bullen and Matthew Dore, who overseas sales and marketing of the Balanced Mode Radiator technology,  we retired to a local watering hole for a few cold ones.

I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised when Bullen produced from his bag some more designs for portable player speakers, freshly arrived from the builders. Earlier in the day the two had explained to me that one of the advantages of their current location is how fast products and components can be taken from idea to existence - here was all the evidence I needed of that process in action.

It's clearly needed: on this showing, the small but highly innovative team at NXT has a lot more ideas on the way.

This little unit could revolutionise the way you think about iPod speaker systems. At first glance it looks like a conventional iPod dock, and you wonder why Yamaha didn't simply build it into its new PDX-50 speaker system (below), on the way for next year.

Then it's explained to you that the wire is simply there to charge the iPod, and that the unit attached to then player is a wireless sender, using the company's AIR Wired radio technology to transmit music and control signals back to the speaker unit.

It's at that point your jaw drops a little.

Powered from the iPod, the Yamaha unit lets you play music through the system across the room, while also controlling the volume of the sound from the touch wheel on the player. You can even turn the system on and off from your iPod.

The company claims the system has a latency of just 12ms, so you can even use it when watching movies or video clips on your iPod without lips getting all out of sync.

The PDX-50 launched in Japan a week ago, and will be in the UK next year, along with three other iPod speaker systems.

There's the TSX-130 (above) which combines alarm clock, CD and radio - the UK version will come with DAB/DAB+ reception -, and the TSX-120, which is a similar model but without the CD player. Instead it gets a 3.5mm stereo input jack.

These have a unique Beep + Music alarm mode - three minutes before your chosen alarm time, the system starts playing music, fading it up until the alarm itself sounds. Hit the snooze button and the alarm stops, but the music continues.

Both models use 8cm drive units and rear ports to deliver a superior sound, and on the showing they put up in the Hamamatsu demo room could create some waves in the iPod system market.

They're joined by a simpler dock speaker system, the PDX-30, which will be available in four colours including pink and blue. All four should launch in the UK next April.

Piano tuning in hard hats may seem extreme, but when you're stringing a concert grand and working up a tension equivalent to 20 tons, it pays to be careful.

It's just one of the things we discovered during our behind the scenes tour of Yamaha facilities in and around the company's home town of Hamamatsu, taking in visits to the grand piano and brass/woodwind manufacturing operations as well as the company's audio and home cinema divisions.

The company's slogan is 'Creating Kando Together', the Japanese word meaning something like a state of inspiration, and by the end of the tour I was regretting never having been inspired to learn an instrument, so much care and attention was going into making the products.

I guess I'd never wondered how musical instruments were made, let alone imagining them leaving the factory in the familiar Yamaha boxes.

What I discovered was a mix of high technology - robots making one of over 200 different kinds of brass instrument mouthpiece every five minutes - and hand -crafting, with employees beating out trumpet bells by hand from a single sheet of metal.

Mellowing the molecules
It's possible to make the basics of a trumpet by soldering two flat sheets together then spinning them into shape, we're told, but the hand-beating alters the molecular structure of the metal and gives a more mellow tone.

Amazing, too, was the engraving of the saxophones made in the company's Toyooka plant, just outside Hamamatsu: the logo may be put on by a robot, but  the decoration is done entirely by hand, with a tight-knit group of guys working with chisels to carve out the decoration just 0.1mm deep into the metal.

If you want to see them in action, check out this short Yamaha video.

It takes some 4000-6000 strokes to engrave a single sax, over about half an hour, and the company produces around 200 units a day, so the engravers are kept busy.

Work, rest and play
200 trumpets come out of the factory every day, too, each one relaxed, seasoned, played and tested before packaging, and the factory is as full of statistics as it is full of music as instruments are tested.

For example, there's the 0.2mm tolerance on trombone slides, the yellow light used to check for leaks in brass instruments, and the toothpick with a piece of paper just 0.02mm thick used to check for leaks on flute keys.

Taking pride of place in the Toyooka showroom is also this lump of wood. 100 year old African Grenadilla wood, in fact, used to make the company's professional woodwind instruments, but only after three years of seasoning to bring it to the right quality. Student versions of clarinets, piccolos and the like are made from ABS resin, which has similar characteristics.

Just not quite the same.

Musical 'Skunk Works'
Toyooka is also home to Yamaha's custom instruments division, which is like a musical Skunk Works, making special instruments for special, un-named, customers. Everything is handmade here, from brass and woodwind to guitars and violins, and the products are each unique, and built to order.

One craftsman works on a single instrument from start to finish, taking a week to build it. No wonder one of the company's custom made gold flutes will cost you 1.5m-4m Yen, or between  £8000 and £20,000. And if you fancy one of Yamaha's custom-made acoustic or electric guitars, count on a wait of anything up to six months.

Pianos on wheels
Back at Hamamatsu HQ, we walk round the grand piano factory, delighting at robotised transporters trundling from one building to another carrying pianos and playing music as they go, and learn some of the fine points of grand piano manufacture.

Yes, they use robots, and laser measurement, but so much is done by hand and eye, from the adjustment of mechanisms with super-thin papter shims to the tuning of the piano and conditioning - picking away at the tightly-packed wool of the hammers with little metal pins to get just the right hardness.

Oscilloscopes, or by ear?
In soundproof booths, employees have oscilloscopes to hand to ensure pianos are tuned correctly, but most do it by ear and experience, and each piano goes into climate-controlled storage several times during it manufacture to season it to its intended delivery location.

Oh, and there's a machine that plays evey key 300 times automatically - pianos, it seems, benefit from running-in.

It's all come a long way since medical instrument service technician Torakusu Yamaha, passing through Hamamatsu in the 1870s, was asked to take a look at a broken reed organ at a local school. At the time such instruments were in demand with the growing popularity of western music, but were all imported, and thus not to many people knew how to fettle them.

Yamaha fixed the school instrument, and decided to set up a company making reed organs in Japan.

One of the first is in the Yamaha showroom, along with an early grand piano made by the company soon after, and having had a number of illustrious owners, including  - allegedly - the Emperor.

Proudly displayed on it is the original name of the company, the Japan Musical Instrument Manufacturing Co..

These days Yamaha makes everything from a huge range of instruments - it claims to be the only single company able to completely equip a symphony orchestra, and as official supplier to the Vienna Philharmonic, that includes some old-style instruments not used by any other orchestra - to the familiar hi-fi and AV equipment. And that's before you get on to the range made by sister company Yamaha Motors.

But there are also lesser-known Yamaha products, including routers, interior design solutions and the speakers you're likely to find inside many mobile phones. It even uses the same woodworking skills it's developed over many years of making instruments to other fields. If you drive a Lexus, a high-end Nissan or an Audi, and it has wood trim, it will have been made by Yamaha Fine Technologies, or FineTech as it's known internally.

So when a Japanese businessman drops his child off at Yamaha music school with her Yamaha flute, then drives his Lexus to the Yamaha golf centre, enjoying his mobile phone's polyphonic ringtones, before unloading his Yamaha clubs, maybe - just maybe - he's getting his head around the Kando concept.

Last night, I attended a recorded panel discussion organised by speaker manufacturer B&W. The  discussion was about surround sound and its importance to listeners, and it will be posted on the B&W website at the beginning of October. So, just one day after the fabled What Hi-Fi Sound And Vision Awards ceremony, I dragged my weary, tired body – and the attendant hangover that loomed over me like Javier Bardem in a foul mood – down to the Strongroom Studios in Hoxton.

 Danny Haikin of B&W provided the room (along with beer and cocktail sausages), while the opinions were provided by the following:

Martyn Ware chaired the discussion. Martyn is a musician, artist and record producer. He was a founding member of both Heaven 17 and The Human League, and through his company, Illustrious, is the designer and developer of revolutionary new surround systems. Andrew Walter is the Surround Sound mastering engineer at Abbey Road Studios. Verbally sparring with these lumninaries were three journalists: David Price, John Bamford, and yours truly.

 It was a fascinating and enjoyable evening: Martyn and Andrew banged the drum for surround sound in all its forms, while David Price and I expressed a certain sceptcism about whether the public is yet genuinely enthused by the idea of multichannel music.

But we all agreed that surround sound points to a future of genuinely immersive listening, and if there's enough appropriate content available (and hardware, and all of it at the right price),  then multichannel music might take off a a great deal more than it has already.

 As I say, the podcast will be up on the B&W website in a week, so head over there around the first of October to listen to the discussion in full. In the meantime, what do you think? Do you use your surround system just for movies, or do you use it for music, too? Is music simply better in stereo? Or do some genres of music suit multichannel while others get turned into a dog's dinner by the transfer into 5.1?

Let us know what you think.

There are many things you’d expect of a consumer electronics company celebrating its 90th anniversary – but changing its name and predicting a radical reduction in the range of products it may eventually sell aren’t necessarily on the list. Yet that’s precisely what Panasonic has just done.

Until now, Panasonic has been just one brand name of the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company – founded in 1918 by the 23-year-old Konosuke Matsushita, his year-younger wife and teenage-prodigy brother-in-law (15). 

The company began making attachment plugs to make the most of light-sockets , and now sells everything from white goods and fitness equipment to industrial machinery and even houses, under sub-brands as diverse as National and Technics. As from this year, it all becomes Panasonic, from flatscreens to fridges.

Panasonic and the future of consumer electronics

The man driving these changes is company president, Fumio Ohtsubo – with whom we recently enjoyed an exclusive, hour-long interview.

Firstly, we asked him what the singular Panasonic brand will stand for around the world. He says: “Panasonic sees everything from the point of view of the consumer – making their lives more comfortable and more practical”.

“I don’t think there’s any consumer electronics company that’s closer to the consumer’s everyday life in its consideration of development, manufacturing and service”, he claims.

Mr Ohtsubo recognises that pricing plays a major part as well as branding, but stresses that Panasonic aims to offer “quality and service at the lowest price. You need to cover that whole range to deliver true value to the consumer”.

As well as a vision of a single-brand company to bring the business in line with mono-monikered rivals such as Sony and Samsung (the key two manufacturers Panasonic benchmarks as competition), Mr Ohtsubo has plans to streamline his customers lives – and their power consumption – too.

TV and mobile takeover

He predicts a consumer electronics future where a multi-tasking TV does everything in the home – including recording and playback – and a multimedia smartphone informs and entertains you everywhere else. It’s no coincidence, naturally, that Panasonic plans to re-enter the European mobile phone market sometime after 2010, “with an incredibly advanced offering”.

In the meantime, its TV-as-the-hub-of-the-home concept is even more advanced, with the European introduction of internet-enabled VieraCast flatscreens in Spring 2009. Such sets are already available in the US and Japan – and in the case of the latter are already interfacing with other web-friendly systems such as security cameras.

“Before, TV was passive: it was broadcast and you watched it. Now, the TV is becoming an interface to link home with society,” says Mr Ohtsubo.
He strongly believes TVs will remain the key viewing medium, despite the rise of people tuning in an increasing array of devices.

“Yes, you can watch anytime, anywhere, but TV’s main place is in living rooms – laptops and mobiles are just satellite products,” he says, adding that he feels younger viewers who now consume large amounts of TV via PCs and mobiles will migrate to traditional TVs as they get older.

The rise of ever-larger, ever higher-resolution screens - check out Panasonic's prototype 150in Super HD plasma below  - should only cement TV's central role.

Technology with an environmental conscience

Even with larger screens on the menu, Panasonic plans to be the most eco-friendly electronics manufacturer, too – by making the manufacturing process for its products – as well as the products themselves – more energy efficient.

As Panasonic builds the machines that make the products (not to mention the factories themselves), it’s able to apply energy-saving measures at every stage of the process – and even at the end of a product’s lifecycle, via a growing recycling division that’s even starting to take in other company’s kit.

Panasonic’s 350,000 employees also have to get in on the act – each wears an eco badge (see Mr Ohtsubo's below) to remind them of their responsibilities, and is expected to contribute to the company’s aim of cutting its carbon emissions by 300,000 tonnes by 2010, plus get involved in other environmental projects such as tree-planting or river clearance.

All very admirable, obviously, but does the average consumer care? Mr Ohtsubo admits they might need some persuasion: “Consumers are already in the eco mindset, but manufacturers have to push it. We’re planning more marketing and education on the issue”.

Super-slim, energy-efficient plasmas

Doubtless some of that marketing will accompany Panasonic’s key 2009 launches, which will include ultra-slim (24.7mm) plasma TVs that’ll use just 100W of power (the average 42in plasma currently uses 180-200W).

Those sets, which will also boast Wireless HD connectivity (using RF – so you can bung that Blu-ray player in the cupboard), should be in the shops by next Christmas.

Panasonic is also launching a range of energy-efficient white goods (fridges, freezers and washing machines) into Europe next March/April – though sadly the Panasonic fuel-cell-powered bike won’t be pedalling its way over from Japan just yet.

Panasonic's plans with Pioneer

Returning to TVs, 2009 will also see the first Pioneer Kuro sets using Panasonic plasma panels. Mr Ohtsubo says all of Panasonic’s panels – including the new slimline designs – will be available to Pioneer and there’s “no deal” as to the Kuros keeping to different market sectors than its own, Viera TVs.

He added that from next year, Panasonic will also start to supply screens to further manufacturers, but he doesn’t know how much longer so many TV rivals can remain competitive – something already borne out by recent market withdrawals. “Whether it’s plasma or LCD, manufacturers will definitely decrease over the next few years,” he predicts.

He has no worries about Panasonic itself, however, despite refusing to be drawn on just what technologies the company is working on to keep itself at the top of the TV tree. “OLED, LCD, plasma – it’s less important than the role of TV itself, that of being an interface between home and society. Panasonic will be number one in TV – whatever the technology”, Mr Ohtsubo bullishly believes.

To see more of the manufacturer’s 90-year milestones, you can visit the dedicated Panasonic Design Museum website for a showcase of legacy lovelies - such as the dual light-socket adapter below.

 
We're also expecting some more 90th anniversary announcements later this month at the CEATEC Show in Japan, from which we'll be reporting live on the plans, predictions and innovations of Panasonic and many other of its rivals.