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What you’re seeing here is a bit of a tragedy: A vintage Lasonic TRC-931 (v2), vivisected to include a built-in DVD player and screen where once lived a tape deck. There were other TRC-931 on display in Lasonic’s booth, some with audio minijack inputs, built-in MP3 players with SD slots; that sort of thing. Taking…
Sony’s mighty and epic press gathering ended up being mostly a flop. Some of the highlights were the already mentioned E-Reader, some new displays, and a whole bunch of crap about the PSP that we already knew about. A firmware upgrade that includes a browser!? Welcome to three months ago, Sony. No information about the…
XM has a new solution for bringing your XM radio around with you. Instead of lugging around the insanely ugly XM Car/Home receivers, your XM information is stored in a tiny chip dubbed the “XM Passport”. The Passport works with the new XM equipment coming out seamlessly – all you do is just plug the…
The mystery of where consumer electronics products go when they die has been solved: the men’s bathrooms at the entrance of North Hall. The toilets at CES this year reek of the offal from seven different continents. Please, can anyone tell me where to find a bathroom that I don’t have to hold my breath…
Come on, people. Let’s not drop the ball on this one. Those PUNKS over at BoingBoing and all those OTHER sites have been eating our lunch EVERY YEAR! Are we going to let them push us around? We’re like Daniel-san and they’re like that evil Cobra Kai karate club and we’re going do the flying…
Parents and parents-to-be and anyone of gestational age: the following are my picks for the best early baby gear. This stuff helped us get through this first week. This isn’t must-have stuff, but if you’re in the market, consider it v. v. good. iPhoto and iPhoto Books – Apple.com – I’m kind of pissed because…
Yamaha is big in the musical instrument biz and thinks that your prodigy son who wants to learn the guitar is the greatest thing in the world. So Yamaha has introduced 2 new “learning” guitars targeted at beginners to help with strumming techniques, learning chords, and playing in general: The EZ-AG and EZ-EG. Shaped like…
Thomson was also featuring the very first Windows-licensed universal remote to be used with Windows Media Center. This remote features Thomson’s Gyration hardware to control the Windows operating system and the remote also supports IR for universal control of the rest of your home theater devices. This has a range of up to 100 feet…
While walking through the Philips CES booth, I came across the Entertaible. It’s a 30″ LCD touchscreen that has speakers built in, and it sits in a tabletop. The game was a kind of silly taxi driver thing. You roll the virtual dice and move these clear cubes around the screen, arrows show you where…
Looking for HD content? Echostar and Dish Network are coming to the rescue with more than 1700 hours per week of the stuff. Claiming that its new high-definition television package offers the most HD channels in the pay-TV industry, this year we’ll see five new original VOOM channels and other new networks including ESPN2 HD…
Congratulations, Tivoli Audio! Your products have been knocked off by one of the dozens of Chinese product cloners showing off in the dark corners of CES’s backwater halls. That is a high honor.
Played around with the XM Helix, which is the Samsung portable audio player with an XM antenna in it. That means real, live XM while you walk around—none of that docking, record and listen later crap. The interface is not bad, the color screen makes the branded channels appealing and easy to figure out (hey,…
Yamaha announced its so-called mid-range home projector yesterday—only $4,200. But it’s got the goods: native 720p outfitted with the TI DarkChipII DLP tech. The 4,000:1 contrast ratio and up to 1000 ANSI lumens and a six-segment color wheel round out the display. HDMI connection, and a 26dB quiet operation. One day, one day… And if…
What’s better than a solar-powered streetlight? A solar-powered streetlight that also provides free WiFi or MiMax connections. The Abertay Center for the Environment (ACE) at University of Abertay in Dundee, Scotland, is now in cahoots with a company called Compliance Technology to build these wacky streetlamps using Photovoltaic technology. Called Project Starsight, folks from the…
Thomson has debuted two new remotes that support its Gyration hardware. Yesterday we reported on these devices as we heard about them from the Thomson Press Conference, but today we got the chance to talk with a Thomson rep and get a little more hands-on action with these Gyration controls. https://gizmodo.com/live-from-ces-thomson-press-conference-pt-ii-146465 The gyration ultra-small remote…
Cowon is debuting a hard-drive-based MP3 player at its CES booth. The iAudio 6 has a .85-inch 4GB hard drive. This player also features a 1.3-inch OLED screen that allows for video viewing. They have a control system called “Swing Touch,” basically a touch-sensitive controlling scheme. This MP3 player is slated for a February, 2006…
Yup, figured I’d give you a quick break from all the tech to take a look-see at the brand new Porsche Cayman S, shown at the Greater LA Auto Show, which is also going on this week. So basically, the biggest geeks in the world are all over on the West Coast right now. The…
Google is getting into the non-bootleg video kick by selling video of some sort, possibly from CBS or the NBA, using its new Google Video service. No further info just yet, but that’s what they seem to have up their sleeve this week instead of some amazing little lump of hardware nobody wants. They’re also…
More road trip news for ya. The SpeedRay 3000 by RaySat basically turns anything on wheels into an instant WiFi zone. Just place this round antenna onto the roof of your car and you’ll get satellite TV as well as broadband access in a lickety-split. Using GPS, the system will give you an always-on connection…
HP has dumped iTunes off of its desktops and laptops and is using Rhapsody—”The Media Download Service No One Uses! (TM)” —and is no longer selling the HP iPod. What does this mean to you and me? Not much—iTunes is still free and our Windows iPods won’t burst into flames. However, there is a definite…