Around this time, the Western society is celebrating Christmas or Hanukah and having big feasts. In the Chinese culture, the same time span represents the winter solstice which is a very important solar term in the Chinese Lunar calendar.

Being a traditional holiday as well, it is still celebrated quite often in many regions. Early during the Spring and Autumn period, 2500 years ago, Winter solstice was first determined as the Chinese traditional solar term among the total 24 terms. In a Gregorian calendar, it is around Dec 22nd or 23rd.

Midwinter day is the very day in the Northern hemisphere with the shortest day and longest night year-round. After it, daytime will become increasingly longer and the coldest climate will invade all the places on the Northern part of the globe. We Chinese always call it “JinJiu”, which means once Winter solstice comes, we will meet the coldest time ahead.

Ancient China paid great attention to this holiday, regarding it as a big event. There was the saying that “Winter solstice holiday is greater than the spring festival”. Nowadays, many regions still celebrate it as a big holiday. Northerners may have dumplings and raviolis that day while southerners may have dumplings made by rice and long noodles. Some places even have the tradition to offer sacrifices to the heaven and earth.

In all words, whether you are going to celebrate Christmas or Winter solstice holiday, I wish you all to have a good time and enjoy yourself with family and friends.

IT Month is the most important exhibition for consumers in Taiwan. The Vendors will introduce new product releases at the show and lower their prices to encourage consumers to buy immediately. This is important now especially since the whole world is under an economic sag. Taipei is first stop of the tour and moves on to Taichung, Kaohsiung ,Tainan. In total, the traveling vendor exhibition attracted around two million visitors throughout the duration of the show in 2007.

The president, Mr. Ma ,in the middle attend the 2008 opening ceremony.

Samsung promoted their LCD TV 5 & 6 Series and BD player at the exhibition but took different approaches in their sales strategy. For example, the original price of the Samsung「BD-P1500」BD Player is NTD22,900 (approx. USD $690). However, the consumer can get a price of NTD14,900 (approx. USD $450) if they buy a LCD TV along with the BD player. Samsung is offering the consumer to get a free「BD-P1500」or get a discounted price of NTD6,990 (approx. USD $200) depending on which LCD TV they Buy.

BD Player of Samsung「BD-P1500」

Also during the show, Pioneer introduced a new Blu-ray Disc. It is transparent with a 400GB capacity (16 layers of 25GB each). Sure it can hold an amazing amount of data, but at what’s sure to be an astronomical price, we’ll have to see if it is worth it or not.

400GB transparent Blu-ray Disc

Although, it doesn’t matter whether the news is about new products or promotion of existing products, we can tell that the Blu-ray market is improving and will have an influence on the end user in the near future.