When I was at CES 2008 last week, there was a lot of hype over the Hitachi 1.5. In fact, Hitachi had these mobile billboards driven around all around the town proclaiming “1.5 is here”. I’ve always found ad campaigns like these a little awkward. They tend to assume that you know what the product is, which sort of defeats the purpose of advertising.

For those who do not know, 1.5 is a new display from Hitachi that is as thick as its name: 1.5 inches. Of course, the mere thickness (or in this case, thinness) is pretty impressive, but Hitachi packed even more features.

First, the 1.5 has a search engine that is designed for large-scale image and video archives. This program, also known as Similarity Based Image Retrieval System, can essentially use a picture to search for a bigger or similar picture.

Second, the 1.5 has a Personal Video Sharing feature with a built-in home data center. This allows for content recorded on a video camera to be shared between two homes. No PC is required for this.

The third cool feature is a Wireless HDTV System. This allows high-definition content to be distributed over WiFi from a Hitachi video gateway device. In other words, a user can share content among several displays at home.

The fourth feature is the IPTV user interface for “accessing, managing, and sharing content at home or on the go”.

The 1.5 is planned to be released shortly, and something tells me it will make quite a splash.

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