JVC Perfect Experience Studio Debuts

The JVC EX-D5 desktop audio system has a DVD
player, Wi-Fi and USB connectivity and speaker cones
made of wood. Yes, wood! It was on display at the June
14 opening reception for JVC: The Perfect Experience
Studio in New York. ©2005 Stadium Circle Features


If you were distracted by the music, free food, open bar and fashion models, you might not have noticed the small video cameras, giant flat-screen, high-definition televisions or other nifty electronics gear on display at the debut of JVC: The Perfect Experience Studio in New York. The showcase of products from JVC Company of America opened with a reception for the media and invited guests on June 14 and will be open to the public daily through July 13.

The corner storefront, located in Manhattan at Fifth Ave. and E. 40th St. across from the twin-lioned New York Public Library, will offer free concerts, product demonstrations and other events. The showcase was developed by JVC and Hachette Filipacchi Media US, publishers of magazine titles such as ELLE, Woman's Day and Car and Driver.

Included in the showcase is JVC's new line of Everio video cameras. Instead of using tape or other removable media, the Everio camcorders have internal hard disks, a design that makes it easy to transfer videos to a PC for editing. You can connect to a PC with a cable or burn videos directly to a DVD with an optional DVD burner.

The Everio line ranges from the $800 Everio GZ-MG20, which has a 20-gigabyte (GB) hard disk (good for up to seven hours of DVD-camcorder-quality video), to the $1,000 Everio GZ-MG50, which has a higher-resolution, 1.33-megapixel image sensor and a 30GB hard disk (up to 10.5 hours of video). All of the four Everio models weigh less than 14 ounces with the battery installed, according to JVC.

The JVC EX-D5 executive desktop audio system (pictured above with Fifth Ave. in the background) features speaker cones made of wood. Thin sheets of wood are soaked in saki (Japanese rice wine) before they're hammered into shape. According to JVC, this design provides a richer, higher-quality sound than traditional paper speaker cones.

The unit has an AM/FM tuner and a DVD player that can handle DVD Audio and DVD Video discs as well as DVD-R/RW, CD, CD-R/RW and SVCD/VCD discs. It can play back music stored in MP3 or WMA formats and read images stored in JPEG format.

You can play digital audio files from your PC by linking the unit via a universal serial bus (USB) cable or wirelessly via its built-in Wi-Fi wireless networking adapter. The $604.95 unit will be available later this month.

Hard disks in camcorders? Wooden speaker cones? What do you think?