Audio/Video, Home Theater

What could be hotter than CES booth babes this year? The ultra-cool Sony XEL-1 LED TV! Yes, I did just do that.

This candy for your eyes is the first available LED TV in the United States and will cost early adopters a cool $2500 for an 11″ high definition screen. This new entrant into the US market signifies the beginning of the end for the old school LCDs and older school plasma that will quickly fade out of the market as additional LEDs come out at cheaper and cheaper prices. This geek’s estimate… OLEDs will outsell LCD and plasma TVs in 2011.

You want some specs on the XEL-1, well at 3mm thick it’s a bit hard to watch from the side. The OLED picture has a contrast ration of 1,000,000:1 which provide the deepest black levels on the market. If you’re green, you’ll be happy to learn that the OLED technology is 40% more efficient than traditional LCD panels and does not require the use of harmful mercury during it’s manufacturing process.

The Geeks have been following this emerging technology and are excited that it has finally come to market.

The Geeks didn’t even realize that Belkin was in the A/V market, but their FlyWire will sure to please plenty of people that mounted their flatscreen to the wall only to realize that they still had to run a cable up the wall from their HDMI components.

The FlyWire is a solution that allows you to play your HDTV anywhere in the house without using wires to connect to your devices eliminating the “cable up the wall” syndrome or costly custom installation.

Wireless? That won’t support true HD at 1080p right? Wrong! Using the 5GHz band frequency, the device offers 1080p True Cinema HD resolution.

The Geeks love the concept but we have a reservation about the $499 to $599 price. As a DIYer, I can definitely do a clean job of running my HDMI through the wall for a clean install. The product would be perfect for those not comfortable with that process as a custom installation would be more expensive.

Belkin had a few new gadgets out this year including one I had no idea that a market existed for. Apparently Gen-Zers love to share music on their iPods with each other. The problem Belkin solved is how to easily share the music with a playing iPod. Belkin’s octopus-looking gadget called the RockStar has five ports where headphones can be attached and music shared. There is also one hard-wired connection for your MP3 player and an included cable allowing you to add an additional MP3 player allowing teens to mix and control fade-ins using two MP3 players!

Availability is March 2008 in the US followed by April 2008 in Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia. The RockStar will go for $19.99.

While wandering through CES Unveiled, the official press event of CES where 80 leading technology companies that were Innovations Design and Engineering Honorees, the Geeks encountered an overly-zealous sales pitch for something called the iTube Light. Read on for more including a video of it.

…

CES 2008: Innovation Illusion with Aquallusion, the iTube LightRead More »