The Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF2 was announced late last year and will go on sale later this month. And now Panasonic has announced pricing for the Lumix GF2 for the US.

The Panasonic Lumix GF2 will cost you $499.95 for just the body and it will come in black, silver, white and red. Panasonic will also be selling the Lumix GF2 with a 14-42mm lens, which will cost you $599.95, and there will also be another option with a 14mm lens which will cost $699.95.

Panasonic is launching two new overhead headphones in Japan. They are called the RP-HX300 and RP-HX200. Both models feature a new colorful stylish design and are made to be super light for comfort.

The Panasonic RP-HX300 weighs just 99 grams and provides an impedance of 32-Ohm, a sensitivity of 116cB/mW and has a few 35mm driver units. The Panasonic RP-HX200 weighs 88 grams and comes with a pair of 30mm drive units. No info on pricing just yet though.

Blu-ray recorders with integrated hard drives are no big deal, but Panasonic is offering something different in their DMR-BR30 that was announced for the Japanese market. It features a slot for swappable hard drives. The idea must be to mimic VHS cassettes. It’s not a bad idea really.

The problem is that you won’t be able to swap just any hard drive. You’ll need to buy Panasonic’s DY-HDD500 500GB hard drives for $240 each. It connects via a USB connection and is only supported in this recorder. Users will be able to copy videos from Blu-ray discs or DVDs to the hard drive or vice versa. But only if you have that hard drive.

CES is in full swing and another of the cool things unveiled is that Panasonic and Skype have announced a partnership that will allow Skype voice and video calling on any 2011 Panasonic VIERA CAST-enabled Blu-ray Disc Player. So you can either pop in a Blu-Ray disc or spend some time with your loved ones face to face.

Skype-to-Skype voice and video calls are free. Calls to landline or mobile rates use Skype’s low rates with other options like: receiving inbound calls, voicemail, and conference calls with up to 24 other parties. All you need is a VIERA CAST-enabled Blu-ray Disc Player, HDTV and a Skype compatible web camera and an Internet connection.

There are so many tablets, which one do you choose? Panasonic is hoping you choose theirs and they have several of them on show at CES. They have unveiled a new line of tablets under the VIERA brand, which is normally associated with its TVs.

It’s described as a tablet-type terminal and is designed to be a secondary display for your pictures and data related to the programs that you’re watching on your Panasonic VIERA TV. These tablets come in 4-, 7- and 10-inch sizes and feature a shock resistant design and a long battery life. The VIERA tablet is launching in Japan today. No info on pricing yet though.

The Panasonic VIERA TH L42G3 is a 42-inch HDTV with an IPS LED-backlit full HD display and an SDXC memory card reader. This allows you to record HD television shows directly to the card for later playback. SDXC cards support up to 64 GB in capacity and will give you 5 hours of full HD content.

But that’s not all. You can also connect an external hard drive into the USB port to record more content. Of course what you record can only be viewed on the VIERA set, which is sad. You also get an Ethernet port, two HDMI ports, VIERA LINK, and DLNA support.

Panasonic isn’t a name you associate with consoles, but the company is indeed looking to some select US consumers to test out its upcoming Jungle gaming handheld. We don’t have any details, but it is a step forward for the company’s gaming plans. We have no idea what the Jungle will cost or when it will arrive.

They must be pretty confident to go up against the big boys: “We know other companies out there have traditional hand- held gaming covered… We’re doing something very different.”

Back in 2008 Panasonic introduced the TH-103PZ800, a 103 inch full HD Plasma. Fast Forward to today and Panasonic has improved the technology and introduced the TH-P103MT2, which supports 3D playback. It lacks a TV tuner, but supports full HD resolution and comes with a new dynamic black layer, better gas discharge technology and improved luminous efficiency.

It features a contrast ratio of 5,000,000: 1, 24Hz image processing and even comes with a pair of 3D glasses. This mammoth TV weighs 320 kgs and consumes 1350 Watts of power which is the equivalent of 10 40 inch LED televisions.

Panasonic has sat out of the smartphone explosion of recent years, but now it apparently wants a slice of the pie. At a news conference today, the head of Panasonic’s mobile division said that the company “misjudged the speed at which smartphones would be taken up in the Japanese market,” and that “with the rapid shift to Android, we want to catch up quickly.”

Panasonic’s phones will be based on Android, and the company hopes to differentiate them by emphasizing their networking capabilities with other Panasonic devices. Panasonic will kick off sales in Japan next year, with overseas markets following in 2012.

It seems like we’ve been hearing rumors of a successor to the GF1 forever now and now Panasonic has officially announced the Lumix DMC-GF2, Panasonic’s smallest and lightest interchangeable lens system camera. Some features include a 12.1 megapixel Live MOS sensor, compatibility with the company’s 3D Lumix G 12.5mm F12 interchangeable lens and a body that is seven percent lighter and nineteen percent smaller than it’s predecessor.

There’s also a three-inch touchscreen, a contrast AF system, a newly designed Touch Q user interface, internal dust reduction system and you can capture 1920 x 1080/60i video in AVCHD. The GF2 will ship in January, available in silver, red and black, and bundled with a 14mm F2.5 pancake kit lens or a 14-42mm zoom lens.

Panasonic has introduced a new compact Blu-ray recorder for the Japanese market. The DIGA DMR-BF200 is a compact device that supports BD-R/RE discs and features a 320GB hard drive, a built-in digital HDTV tuner and an SD card slot. It won’t take up much room either.

It also sports several connectivity ports including HDMI, Ethernet and composite. The DIGA DMR-BF200 will be available in Japan on November 15th for around $860. No word on whether it’s coming to the US or not. Probably not.

The stadium here in Texas where the Dallas Cowboys play football has a massive video wall hanging from the ceiling of the stadium. The idea is to let everyone be able to see what is going on the field even if they have bad seats. NASCA fans that watch at Charlotte Motor Speedway next year will be able to see the world’s largest video wall.

The new wall will be used to show race coverage, leader boards, and other interactive entertainment at the track. The massive screen will be placed between turns two and three on the track. The video wall will be 200-feet wide, 80-feet tall, and will weigh 165,000 pounds.

Panasonic has unveiled a new camcorder that grabs the title of world’s first micro four-thirds camcorder. The camera is rather big and bulky looking and reminds me of the old camcorders from the 80′s with its square design.

The camcorder is called the AG-AF105 and it has interchangeable lenses using the micro four-thirds system. The camera apparently works with the same lenses the still cameras from Panasonic support. The large image sensor allows for wide-angle video.

Even though we can already stream Netflix to our home theater in countless ways, if you have a 2010 Panasonic HDTV or Blu-ray player, you can now join in on the fun. The video streaming widget was originally promised way back at CES and now shows up in a software update.

Just hit up the VIERA Cast menu next to existing tools like Amazon VOD, Skype and Pandora. So now everyone can officially access Netflix on one device or another.

Panasonic is doing some upgrading. The company has announced some new upgraded notebooks in Japan. The F9, S9, and N9 all have specifications similar to the originals and offer an Intel Core i5-560M processor clocked at 2.66GHz, 4GB of RAM, WiMAX, and Wi-Fi.

Battery life is 14.5-hours, with the F9 is only doing 9-hours. Panasonic allows these models to be customized to your liking, if you want to increase the RAM, hard drive, SSD, or choose an Intel Core i7-650M processor.