2004 Consumer Electronics Show

The stakes are high in Vegas this week for consumer electronic makers as they preview their wares to over 110,000 trade, press and industry insiders gathered at the world’s largest Consumer Electronics Show (CES) opening tomorrow (Jan 8-11th). Here is a sneak peek of products sure to be making news in the days to come.

Aside from acres of high definition flat panel televisions, aisles are filled with the latest wireless technology including one I predict you will be hearing a lot about in 2004 called Bluetooth.

While it sounds like a dentist’s nightmare, bluetooth technology is a low grade wireless (up to about 30 feet of transmission) that allows similarly equipped devices like cell phones, PDAS, digital cameras, printers computers even digital TVs to all communicate.

Logitech Bluetooth Wireless Hub
Logitech announced that its wireless hub for the PC supports the latest Bluetooth phones from Sony Ericsson and Nokia; new PDAs from Toshiba, HP, and palmOne; as well as hands-free headsets from Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia.

With a Logitech wireless hub, the PC becomes a control center for Bluetooth mobile devices, enabling convenient synchronization between the PC and the calendars and address books that reside on a mobile phone or PDA. The Logitech wireless hub also integrates PC and mobile phone technologies to provide greater flexibility for voice and messaging communications - including the ability to use the PC to receive and respond to text messages sent to a Bluetooth mobile phone. $250 for keyboard, mouse and Hub. Bluetooth enabled phones and PDAs generally cost about $100 more. www.logitech.com/bluetooth

Intel Personal Video Player
For those of you who need to catch your favorite TV show, home movies or movies on the go, a new category of product called Personal Media Players will be one of the hottest portable products in 2004.

Not much bigger than a PDA and outfitted with more efficient and smaller Intel X scale Processor chips plus huge hard drives, these portable devices allow you to connect directly to TV, digital camera, camcorder, computer even transfer movies for viewing on its 6-8 inch high resolution screen The screen quality is unbelievable and the portability allows you to carry just about 70 hours of every digital format available with room to spare. www.intel.com

Satellite Radio hits the beach
Another innovative wireless technology (Satellite Radio) is going from the car to the beach. Sirius Satellite Radio just announced its Satellite Radio Boombox. Now you can take your satellite radio with over 100 stations, 60-commercial free and listen to tunes on the beach, in the car or in your house. $99 boombox, $99 SRS satellite radio receiver, $12.95 month service. www.sirius.com

TV to Go
For the ultimate in wireless portability it gets no better than Sharp‘s new AQUOS LC-15L1U 15-inch flat LCD TV—the world’s first wireless TV.

Complete with carry handle and built –in speakers, simply connect its included transmitter to your existing cable or satellite feed or DVD player and the 11-pound TV receives video and audio wirelessly up to 300 feet away—sans cable. Perfect for the back yard or by the pool, the 11 pound flat TV operates on a rechargeable battery for portability or can be plugged into a wall socket. $1,799. www.sharpusa.com

Price Busting Announcement from Canon
If you have been waiting to get one of today’s state of the art digital camcorders, Canon offered us the exclusive scoop on its new line of digital camcorders with an entry level model ZR80 loaded with plenty of bells and whistles starting at only $399 and a top of the line model going for under $600. That’s a huge price drop and one that will ignite a price war in the category ultimately benefiting consumers with rock bottom pricing on high tech.

The Canon ZR80, ZR85, and ZR90 will be available in March at estimated selling prices of $399, $499, and $599 respectively. The three camcorders offer one of the longest optical zoom range in its category: 18x for the ZR80, 20x on the ZR85, and 22x on the ZR90 -- all exceeding the entry level category. All three camcorders offer a high-quality image stabilization system to avoid camera shake. The trio features a low shutter speed for low light shooting and The ZR90 includes Super Night Mode which can add light to a dimly-lit area. www.usa.canon.com

Samsung HT-DB390 Home-Theater-in-a-Box
Modern DVD movies and audio products offer multi-channel sound that goes wasted without the right equipment, so meet Samsung’s new HTIB System With Wireless Rear Amplifier. It combines a Samsung 480p DVD player with 400 Watts of total audio power using a Wireless Rear Amplifier (Bluetooth Wireless Technology) SWA-1000 + Rear Speakers. Samsung offers everything you need in a single package --DVD, CD Audio, CD-R, CD-RW, CD-MP3, MP3, AM/FM. For audio, the HT-DB490 integrates a digital multi-channel audio decoder and amplifiers for powering speakers and subwoofers. The HT-DB490 includes Optical Digital In, Dolby Digital, Pro Logic II and DTS, SDSM (Auto Sound Calibration, LSM, V-H/P, Super 5.1 from standard two channel stereo), MP3, WMA compatibility, and can play a JPEG slide show. Available in Q1 2004, for $499.99. www.samsung.com