The major consumer-electronics companies have their hands so full figuring out what they're going to do about the exploding market in wired and wireless broadband content distribution (how's that for a mouthful?) that they didn't have time to conjure up anything earth-shattering for the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. But the show was so full of bigger, better, cheaper HDTVs, powerhouse DVRs, ingenious iPod accessories, and other audio and video goodies that nobody really noticed. Here, our editors offer up their choices of the hottest products and trends for the year ahead.
High-def Disc-o-mania
The HD-disc format war was in high gear at CES, with partisans from both the Blu-ray and HD DVD camps boasting of victory during 2006. Even so, peace broke out in the form of Warner Home Video's Total High Def Disc, a hybrid format containing both HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of the same movie. The company announced that the first Total Hi Def Disc releases would arrive in the second half of '07. LG, meanwhile, displayed its dual-format Super Multi Blue player (shown here, and reviewed here).
Like most of the press, I was locked out of Toshiba's overstuffed event at CES. But I did get a chance later on to check out its new HD-A20 HD DVD player. Price-wise, the $599 player will sit in the middle of Toshiba's HD DVD lineup when it arrives this spring. It doesn't have an HDMI 1.3 connection, but it will offer 1080p output and built-in decoding of Dolby True HD soundtracks. In other HD DVD hardware news, I was told that a number of Chinese makers plan to release really cheap players during 2007.
Sharp, Samsung, and Sony showed new Blu-ray players at CES. Samsung's second-gen model, the BD-P100 ($799, March), will be outfitted with HDMI 1.3 and Ethernet jacks along with Silicon Optix HQV processing. Details on new players were in shorter supply at the Sony and Sharp booths. Sony showed two prototypes, both tagged with the mysterious code name "Sapphire," and little else. Sharp's player doesn't have a model number yet, but it will cost $1,200 and is scheduled to arrive in stores by summer. — Al Griffin
