When you say plasma display most of us immediately think of a big flat panel TV. In the home theater realm plasma is losing ground to LCD displays as LCDs improve in contrast and brightness. For years now LCD has been the dominate player in the cell phone industry for displays.

Panasonic and AbleComm announced today that Panasonic would be building a cell phone that uses a small plasma display to operate on the newly announced AT&T Mobile TV service. The small screen will require only 1.5 volts to operate and will require no special wiring or power supplies.

Panasonic unveiled today its first touchscreen digital camera. It is called the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500 and pricing is set at around $400.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500 sports a three-inch display which serves double duty as a LCD touchscreen. From this touchscreen one access the bulk of control options this camera makes available. It also makes use of joystick control for selection of options.

That’s right, another device that looks like a tasty candy bar. This is Panasonic’s D-Snap SV-SD870N, and it’s a bit slick looking with the display giving it a 2 tone design. It’s a digital player that offers over 100 hours of audiophile quality audio play using noise canceling technology.

It supports most audio formats and you can even record directly to a 2gigabyte SD card. Panasonic will start to ship the SV-SD870N in 5 colors starting April 18th in Japan.

Have you had enough digital camera announcements yet? Sorry – got another one for you. This time around we have a compact shooter called the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS3 and pricing is set at around $200.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS3 offers up 8.1 megapixels and a a f2.8 Leica DC VARIO-ELMARIT lens with 3x optical zoom. Panasonic has also outfitted this camera with a new image processing engine, a 2.5-inch LCD screen which automatically adjusts its brightness level and your choice of five body colors.

Panasonic expects the DMC-FS3 in stores in February. For more details check after the jump.

Panasonic announced the DMC-TZ5 as another Lumix camera heading for shelves soon with very similar features to the DMC-FX35 model including a wide-angle lens and high-def video recording. The TZ5 loses a little in megapixels compared the FX35 with 9.1, but gains in just about everything else.

The DMC TZ5 Lumix has a 10x optical zoom, generous 3-inch LCD display and a 28mm wide-angle lens that can get almost twice as much panorama compared to typical lens. It also features Panasonic’s big 5 Intellegent Auto features for automatic adjustments for exposure, scene selection, image stabilization, facial detection of as many as 15 faces and ISO Control to adjust shutter speed for moving images. This model can also record video with 1280 x 720 HD resolution at 30 frames per second with an HD out component cable port.

Panasonic is expecting to have the TZ5 available by the end of March with a retail price of just under $350. More detailed release information below:

Panasonic unveiled today some new Lumix LZ-Series compact digital cameras which are point and shoot models with a decent set of features. These are the DMC-LZ10 and DMC-LZ8, priced at around $250 and $180 respectively.

Both LZ-Series models feature Leica DC VARIO-ELMAR lenses and wide-angle shooting — 30mm on the LZ10 and 32mm on the LZ8. Manual controls are available for use, there’s 5x optical zoom and battery life is provided via AA batteries.

Panasonic says the DMC-LZ10 and DMC-LZ8 will both be available in February. More details after the jump.

Panasonic is answering the call for HD home videos with a couple of new hi-def camcorders, one of which being the new HDC-SD5. The HD5 uses Panasonic’s original 3CCD HD-camcorder that records video at a 1920×1080 resolution along with an advanced O.I.S. system to help keep your shots from having the shakes, even when you do. The HDC-SD5 also makes use of a lens from the well-known Leica Camera using 12 lens elements in eight groups with a low-dispersion glass to help keep crisp, defined colors in the video.

Media is recorded onto SD/SDHC flash memory cards and contributes to this camcorder being what Panasonic calls the worlds smallest 3CCD full-HD camcorder to date. An 8GB SDHC card used with the SD5 camcorder can hold as much as 180 minutes of HD video and allow fast transfer from the card to your computers hard …

Panasonic has recently unveiled two new high definition camcorders with some big screen features in tiny packages. The HDC-SD1 and HDC-DX1 are similar camcorders but both record high def in slightly different ways. The HDC-DX1 (pictured on the left) records onto DVD discs, and the HDC-SD1 records onto small (in size not capacity) SDHC memory cards.

The HDC-SD1 has some advantages with recording onto the memory cards by having no moving parts required in order to save the data. It has fewer parts to break, and is more resistant to shock. Also, it can potentially hold more data. A 4GB memory card can hold up to an hour of high definition video, where a dual layer DVD can hold up to about 40 minutes. And of course if you add a larger memory card, you can hold more recording time. Another …