We’re all officially home; safe and sound, tired and broken. Another year of not eating all day following by drinking all night, backpacks never leaving our shoulders, our fingers still involuntarily typing even though our notebooks have been shut down for hours.
All in all, it was a good CES this year. → Read More
The hottest ticket in Las Vegas last night was the inaugural 3D broadcast by RealD which featured the BCS Championship game and we were there. After chilling with some big wigs and interviewing Mark Cuban, we settled down in the comfy Paris Las Vegas theater for what we were told was the next big thing. We quickly found out that was a lie; a dirty, nasty lie. → Read More
Skype announced today that it has released a new “thin” client – Skype lite (beta) – available for Android-powered devices and over 100 other Java-enabled handsets from the likes of Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG. The launch of Skype lite also marks the first time a mobile version of the app is available for use in the US. → Read More
Eco is the new buzzword and there is no escaping at CES this year. There isn’t a CE manufacturer out there that wants to be caught dumping toxic materials into consumers livingrooms; Sony is no different. Updated HCFL backlights helps drop LCD power consumption by almost 40%, an ambient light sensor adjusts the backlight appropriately and a motion sensor turns off the set after a period of… → Read More
Sony has a little camcorder aimed at the Internet crowd. The Webbie captures HD MPEG-4 video and 5 MP photos. It has a 5x optical zoom and special software that makes uploads speedy. Content is recorded on Sony’s Memory Stick PRO Duo media. The MHS-CM1 Webbie will be available for order tomorrow for $200 and the vertically-styled MHS-PM1 will drop in April for $170. → Read More
CES brings big changes to Sony’s camcorder offerings. High-def camcorders are getting big HDDs and there are a bunch to choose from with ranging pricing. Non-HD camcorders are getting the same hard-drive treatment too and will start at attractive MSRPs. Don’t want a built-in HDD? Cool, Sony has new HD flash models too. Oh, and there are new DVD models too. Full details after the jump. → Read More
Sony’s 2009 CES booth is showing off some sick, like sickly sick, thin sets. Primarily are these OLED Proof of Technology models that are dead sexy even to me. Chances are none of these will ever see a Euro snob loft. They are just concepts and there is nothing wrong with that. That thin TV, it’s .9 millimeter thick – or is that thin? Hmmm.
Apparently Sony has more OLED news at the CES keynote… → Read More
My, oh my. The Sony VAIO P is a popular netbook. After using some Peter Ha-taught ninja skills, I made my way through the crowd to this tiny netbook. Overall, the netbook feels Sony solid. The nub was a tad finicky but it works. The resolution though is astoundingly high on the small screen. I love small font but at the default setting it was too small for me. Thankfully the P Series does support… → Read More
These new HDTVs from Samsung will consume 40% less energy than TVs of same size. That’s good because watching TV will kill Earth slower, allowing us to look the “LEDs produce darker blacks that appear endlessly deep to the eye” for a bit longer.
Update: Live pics after the jump. → Read More
By raise of hands, who else thinks that all these anorexically thin HDTVs are dumb? LG’s latest set measures only 6.5mm thick and Sony’s isn’t that much more thick. (pictured)
Who the hell cares Though? Why is HDTV’s latest cockfight over TV thickness? This also applies to Blu-ray/DVD players too, btw. → Read More
Poor Toshiba. While every other major CE player is introducing 4th and 5th gen Blu-ray players, Toshiba is still ignoring the winning format. The company does, however, have some nice flat screens coming out in 2009 with widgets powered by Intel and Yahoo that’s going to work nicely with Windows Media Center. The rest of the mundane are simply too mundane to be worth your time. Oh, how about CELL… → Read More
Logic Wireless (who?) is showing off what it’s claiming to be the world’s first projector-packing mobile phone – the Logic Bolt – at CES 2009. This quad-band GSM, 3mp shootin’ candybar handset is supposedly able to project an image up to 64″ and is expected to do so for up to 2 hours thanks to its 1800mAh battery. It also appears to have an external speaker… → Read More
Monster Cable: hate ‘em or love ‘em, they are a driving force in the CE world. Their 2009 lineup, at least according to its wares spread out in front, doesn’t look to innovate. A few headphones we’ve already seen and reviewed, a couple of new power centers, and HP branded HDMI cables that are sure to carry a high MSRP. Hopefully the head monster, Noel Lee, will have something special for us. And… → Read More
Good news, YouTube freaks. Eye-Fi is going to demo the all new video-upload-to-youtube feature at CES. According to the Video End-User Research: 2008, you guys use your camera to shoot videos quite often. It’s the same as before, just with video and in HD. → Read More
Unless you’re down to hobble your own crazy homebrew set-up, tinkering with wireless audio systems is a damned expensive hobby. Everytime I read about these products, I imagine some rich old dude tango’ing himself around his mansion with a rose in his teeth and an air-partner in his arms.
Linksys’ just announced “Wireless Home Audio System” is an obvious attempt at a shot across Sonos‘ bow … → Read More
CES can be a lot of fun, but it’s a whole friggin’ lot of work, too. Meetings, press announcements, booth tours, darting back and forth from hall to hall, show floor to hotel, and a whole lot of trekking around the show floor in search of diamonds in the rough. Media attendees probably walk more in the four days of CES than most people walk in a month – all while wearing a backpack stuffed to the… → Read More
D-Link announced two new products today, something they are calling a “networked video recorder,” or NVR, system. This is intended mainly for small business surveillance, however I’m sure there would be some crossover to the home market. → Read More
This is dedicated to my friends (and enemies!) who’ll be spending this week, know colloquially as Hell Week, in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, or CES. While I feel for y’all—I was scheduled to attend until three weeks ago, when an angel descended from Heaven and told me, sweetly, I didn’t have to go—I can’t help but feel that the show is largely a waste of everyone’s… → Read More
Rough times for Sony. Even though it revealed a corporate gutting last month, a new report in the (UK) Times today says that even more could be on the way, ones that could see the abolishment of “several major divisions.” Sony has denied these allegations, as is its wont. → Read More
The annual Consumer Electronics Show is going to be so boring this year that even Bill Gates is not showing up. He gave his farewell keynote (and his 13th) last year. This year, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will try to rouse the crowd.
Ballmer is a high-energy guy who can be entertaining to watch, but Microsoft just doesn’t have anything exciting to announce this year. (Who does, right?). When… → Read More
I’m not going to CES this year nor am I going to MacWorld. I’m not doing this in protest or in a misguided attempt to seem “above it all” – we just had a new baby and I don’t want to subject my wife to two monsters of yawp during CES/Macworld week – but I’m extremely pleased with my decision. I’ve been covering trade shows in some form or… → Read More
3D sporting events are becoming more and more commonplace but that doesn’t take away from their appeal. This year’s BCS Championship game is going to get the same treatment as the NFL game and the NBA All-Star game. The game is going to be shown, not only at CES ’09 to a select group of 1,200 geeks, but also to sports fans in 35 states. (check for your local showings) The CES… → Read More
Looking to revive the once-mighty Palm smartphone brand, the struggling company turned to Jon Rubenstein in mid-2007, a former Apple SVP who was instrumental in the development of the iPod and now Palm’s executive chairman in charge of product development, to help turn things around. More than a year later, it looks like we’re finally about to see the fruits of Palm’s efforts… → Read More
A netblet, eh? Here’s the Amtek T10L, a device that’ll apparently be shown of at CES this year. While it’s quite possible that this would never make it to the US and/or it’s not even meant for consumer use, the specs seem to indicate that it could very well be sold as a low cost netbook-class device: Intel Atom N270 chip 512MB RAM, expandable up to 2GB Battery life of “at least” three… → Read More
Samsung has shown off some incredible OLED advancements over the last few months but the best might soon be revealed at CES. The company might, might bring a 50-inch display to the Consumer Electronics Show. “We can make larger displays, and we may demonstrate a 50in OLED TV at the CES show in January, though we haven’t decided yet,” he said, “But how much more would you… → Read More
Hop-on is planning to release a new open Android phone at CES early next year. It will reportedly sell for less than $200. “Hop-on is committed in bringing the latest technology to the market, the Android open platform makes Hop-on competitive in the high end mobile phone market. This will create market value for our share holders,” said Peter Michaels, Hop-on’s CEO. It’s nice to… → Read More
Sirius XM CEO Mel Karmazin said yesterday that he expects interoperable radios (that is, radio that can receive both Sirius and XM, full-on) in less than nine months. (The FCC gave the combined company nine months to come out with such radios.) Whether or not that’s in time for the Holiday shopping season… Now, radios that work with the a la carte service—you have XM but want one… → Read More
I didn’t want to weigh in on this because I know all the parties involved, I used to run Gizmodo, and I understand the impetus behind this prank. This is a nasty hack performed by punchy, hungover kids that, as we see, got the CE world’s attention. Will Gizmodo be banned? Nope. Nothing will happen, this tempest will die down, and next year someone will buy some electrical tape. But… → Read More
I started Brief 288 talking about Rovio, a home exploration and telepresence robot, but the photo we showed, we think is called “Mr. Personality.” Samsung had a couple cool announcements. The HT-X715 5.1 home theater-in-a-box includes Bluetooth for streaming audio from a phone or other Bluetooth audio source. The SyncMaster 2263DX is the perfect monitor for Adobe users. Oh Gizmo live… → Read More
It’s a particularly silly day for us here at CrunchGear, as is any day when you find out that one of your close friends had a rather successful career in amateur pornography. (We’re all very proud of him, believe you me.) But that photo up there for Sanus Systems, that may well win the prize for strangest CES advertising we’ve seen yet. It’s just that we’ve never seen… → Read More
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