February 11, 2005 Sony continues to push the edge of the envelope with new and exciting technologies being debuted in its homeland and the Japanese giant's latest winner is its Location Free LCD LF-X5 TV - a 7"television you can take with you anywhere on the planet and watch your favourite television shows IN REAL TIME (i.e. as they are showing in your home country), with the data delivered to the Location Free via the internet. It's easy to carry and watch anywhere partly because it's small, but mainly because it's wireless - the accompanying base station plugs into the video source in your home in Japan and transmits via the internet to wherever you happen to be using a function Sony calls NetAV.
So you can be anywhere in the World where there's a wireless LAN connection and your LocationFree can receive via the net from your base station at home and can be viewed in real time from your local television program or perhaps the DVD in your home.
There's obviously some lag but not enough to make it worth worrying about.
The LocationFree is approximately A5 in size with a 7" screen and a resolution of 800 x 480 - the unit is roughly the size of a paperback book - with a width of 20.6 cm, height of 11.1 cm, depth of 2.6 cm and it weighs approximately 555g with the battery included.
The LocationFree has a touch screen so you can pause, stop, replay or program your home video recorder or change the channel on your home TV via the internet too. It can also record television broadcasting and video. There's also a memory stick duo slot for viewing still images you've taken in album fashion and there's all the functions you'd expect from a device with internet connectivity such as web browsing and email access.
It's only just surfaced in Japan so don't expect to see it elsewhere soon. It's anticipated local price is 125,000 Yen - about US$1175
