Earlier this morning, the most luxurious movie theater ever had it’s grand opening in Tokyo Japan. Shinjuku Piccadilly is a cinema complex featuring a sleek “brilliant white” design and the world’s largest LCD monitor, a 108 inch behemoth from Sharp that’s the largest they can make with a single piece of 8th-generation glass substrate. Picture quality on this thing must be mind-blowing compared to a standard old school projector. God damn, those movie industry folks in Tokyo sure know how to put on an impressive show.

Shinjuku Piccadilly boasts private screening rooms that are available for rent. It costs a 30,000 yen (around $278) to watch a flick in one of these luxury boxes. You can rent one for a whole year for 30 million yen ($278,200). Shinjuku’s “platinum” VIP screening rooms come equipped with customized Italian leather sofas, surround sound systems, and champagne. Good luck trying to impress the ladies with your puny $30,000 DIY home-entertainment system now.

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Sharp updated their line of AQUOS-TV-plus-desktop-PC series, but we are not interested in that. What really caught our attention was the remote the came with it, because it is the world’s first remote controller with a touch pad. Now you can have a real TV-internet experience, just forget about your keyboard and mouse, you can type with the alphanumeric keys just as it is on phones, you can also browse the internet easily with the intuitive touch-pad. Thanks to the touch-pad and the redesigning of the menu, the number of buttons on the new remote has decreased 40% from the older one, which is already really good considering that the OS is from Microsoft. (You can’t exactly compare this with the iMac remote, as this is so much more powerful) We can expect the touch-pad remote be followed by other manufacturers later, or at least be applied to a wider range of Sharp products. The new remote will ship with the new Aquos PC systems in late March. –Sam Chan

Touch-pad remote controller [Sharp Japan]

A lot of Sharp fans are worried because they have not heard any news from Sharp at 3GSM this year, no new models at all apart from minor facelifts. As told by our insider 2 months ago, it’s about time we expect something from the Japanese company. Itmedia spotted this HSDPA (3.6Mbps) slider prototype at the 3GSM Sharp booth, a model that is not even included in the official press release statement. So far specifications are really sketchy, we know that the camera should be a 2megapixel fixed focus (boo!) and the phone should use microSD as external memory. Multimedia functions shouldn’t be bad, podcast is supported and movies can be played in landscape (duh) on the 2.4″ ASV screen. It might also come in colors of cyan, green, yellow, red and black, with matching color in the user interface. From the keypad and the way it is unveiled, we are confident to say that this slider is targeted to the European market. Most of the models shown were plastic mockups, but there were 1 or 2 powered prototypes in the glass box, so our guess is that the phone should be ready by Q3 this year. According to our source, there is also a VGA screened AQUOS phone in preparationapproaching announcement. More pics after the jump.

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The 813SH for Biz is a business version of the 812SH, it is designed for companies that need to protect commercial secrets. Bluetooth and infrared data transfer is banned, but Bluetooth headsets are still supported. On top of that, email file attachment function is removed, external memory slot and Felica electronic money chip are also removed. The “813SH for Biz” supports a new service that allows you to destroy all data on the 813SH remotely when it’s stolen, needless to say the remote-lock is still in place. The super secret phone will be out in the market in March. Japan only. — Sam Chan

Softbank

Softbank Japan made an official announcement of the Sharp 812SH this morning, a phone that we have already shown you the leaked pics. The main selling point here is the availability of 20 color variations. The rest of the functions aren’t weak either. The Face-recognition security program for Felica electronic money and the remote-lock anti-theft function are all in place. The main display is a 2.4″ QVGA ASV screen, external display is a monochrome OLED; the camera is a 2MP CMOS with fixed focus lens, microSD cards of up to 1GB are supported. Size is 49×97x17.6mm and weight is 105g. The 812SH runs on the Softbank W-CDMA network in Japan and can also roam on Tri-band GSM outside Japan. The phone will be on shelves in early February. We’re not optimistic about unlocking such device given the history of 904SH. More pictures after the jump.

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The Sharp 910SH houses 2 things that Nokia hasn’t managed yet, a VGA screen and a 5MP camera with 3x optical zoom. While we know for sure that the 910SH will not be released outside Japan, nor will it be able to roam (even on W-CDMA, yes), it is always good to see how claims translate to reality. Do we need such camera and wouldn’t it take ages to safe pictures? The NikkeiBP team has taken the 910SH for a run, and generally liked what they see.

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Just 4 hours after AU KDDI’s announcement, NTT DoCoMo announced the new WCDMA 703i series in Tokyo. Nothing out of our expectation as we wrote about before. Also announced are the SonyEricsson BRAVIA SO903iTV DMB phone and Mitsubishi’s double-internal screen D900iDS, both of which Gearfuse premiered on Sunday. The 703i series is the mid-low end of DoCoMo’s 3G portfolio, so don’t compare their specifications with that of the W5 series from AU KDDI. Take note that all these phones will only be available in Japan and Japan only, they will not be unlockable, and neither will other versions be released outside Japan as they are co-developed between NTT DoCoMo and the manufacturers. We have pictures and details of all these cool looking phones after the jump.

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Japan’s second largest operator AU KDDI announced 10 new EV-DO phones this morning for the Spring 2007 line-up. Including the W51SH which we showed you the picture way before announcement. To our surprise, the Pantech W51PT which was also leaked earlier has not been announced yet. The 10 phones include one from the AU Design Project- the Media Skin, 2 from Toshiba, and 1 from all Casio, Panasonic, Hitachi, Kyocera, Sanyo, SonyEricsson and Sharp. Out of these 10 phones, 6 of them will support the DMB One-Seg service. Take note that these phones are jointly developed beteen AU KDDI and the manufacturers, they will not be sold outside Japan and neither will they be unlockable. More details on each of these phones after the jump.

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Earlier we reported on new Sharp phones to be released outside Japan earlier, and this week we finally understood what the new index SX633A means- it is only a color update of the popular SX633 (Japanese 9705SH and European 770SH, pictures after the jump). We’re still waiting for a promised, separate new device. Meanwhile, the Softbank 812SH has been leaked (pictured above), and it reminds us a bit of BenQ-Siemen’s El71. If Sharp were to export any of their Japanese phones, the 800 series will be on the top of the list. More pictures of the SX633A after the jump.

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So you think that fridges are used to keep things cold eh? Wrong! Sharp continues to wow us with their new fridges. Now you can frost and defrost food in the same compartment. Sharp is starting to put this feature on to their premium refrigerator models, calling this the Aijo-hotto-ko, meaning “romantic heated container”. While we have no discernment to their Japanese romance, what we do know is that with a turn of a knob you can turn rice-pudding to congee, oreo and warm milk to cookies’n'cream. And that your kids are gonna love this! — Sam Chan

Sharp Aijo-hotto-ko [Sharp]