NEC Corp. in March will launch Japan's first desktop personal computers capable of receiving digital satellite television broadcasts, the company said Tuesday.

The latest additions to NEC's Valuestar desktop PC series will allow users access to both terrestrial and digital satellite television broadcasts, NEC said.

The company said it will start shipping on March 8 the Valuestar T, which has a 38.9-cm wide digital liquid crystal display that can automatically start showing a selected TV program.

The new model is equipped with Intel's Pentium III CPU and a 60-gigabyte hard disk drive.

Retailers will be free to set the price for the computer, but it is expected to sell for around 350,000 yen.

The computer will be able to record terrestrial TV programs but not digital programs because of property rights.

NEC said it started taking orders Tuesday over the Internet for the Valuestar G, which can be customized from 192 different combinations of display, software and memory.

It said it will start shipping the model, which will cost from 195,000 yen, on March 16.

NEC said it expects sales of 500 a month for the two models.

Mitsubishi's latest TV

Mitsubishi Electric Corp. announced Tuesday that on March 21 it will begin offering a 165-cm projection television set featuring digital light processing.

Digital light processing technology allows the 65-DL1 to project high-quality pictures onto a screen, the electrical machinery maker said.

The company has not yet set a suggested retail price for the new model, but it is expected to sell for around 1.6 million yen.

The company said it expects to produce 500 units a month.