Hitachi Maxell has released a pair of noise-canceling headphones that work a bit differently from their cousins. The HP-NC20 headphones don’t require separate power. They simply connect to iPods via the dock connector. They manage about 20dB of noise reduction via their "Active Noise Rejection" system. They also manage to reduce your battery life by as much as 50%. The headphones will also only work with 4th gen or later iPods and iPod touches. They do not work with the iPhone. They are available now for about $80.

Hitachi has developed a steering wheel with a tiny device that reads the driver’s finger veins. This lets the driver use his/her fingers as switches for the engine, car stereo, and navigation system.

"If I place my index finger on this reader, it recognises it’s me. If I put the finger again, it starts the engine," Masahide Hayashi of Hitachi’s sensor design department explained at the Tokyo Motor Show near the capital.

No word on when we might see this in cars, but Hitachi said it hopes to launch it within three or four years.

Hitachi is aiming to replace your GPS with a cell phone / GPS combo. The newly announced W53H (AKA Wooo) will come in 3 colors: Japan Black, Nordic White, and Euro Purple. With its 2.8″ OLED TV like screen, you’ll see where you are going, even if you have no clue where you are.

It accepts microSD cards, has a 2MP camera, an infra red port, and even a TV receiver which can you watch up to 4.5 hours after a full charge. And of course, the GPS!

Available via pre-order in Japan.

Hitachi is making the bold claim that they will provide 4TB desktop (3.5-inch) and 1TB laptop (2.5-inch) drives within the next 4 years. The new recording heads are more than 2x smaller than existing gear or about 2,000 times smaller than a human hair.

Hitachi is showing off its upcoming world’s first Blu-ray Disc camcorder. planned for an August 30 launch in Japan.

The two 5.3 megapixel CMOS models, the DZ-BD70 and DZ-BD7H hybrid which packs both an 8-cm BD writer and 30GB disk…

… have a system which captures, records and stores 1920×1080 full high-definition video throughout the whole process with its newly developed full high-definition lens, with effective 2.07 mega pixels for video and 4.32 mega pixels for still photo, the newly developed full high definition signal processor "Picture Master Full HD," and the world’s first 8cm BD drive, which can record 1920×1080 full high definition video on a 8cm BD which has 5 times more capacity than a 8cm DVD.

Priced high at $1,347 and $1,600 respectively, but all "firsts" are, so wait a while for them to become more affordable.