CES 2008

LAS VEGAS--Asked about the state of the U.S. economy, Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson said on Tuesday that it is clearly a concern.

"People that are getting their first (home heating) oil bills at $3 a gallon," he said, even as the U.S. mortgage crisis continues to hang over the economy. "The share of mind that the 'r word' is getting in the media has us concerned," he said, alluding to but not uttering, the word recession.

But Anderson said it was the transition to digital television that posed the biggest threat to his industry, warning of the dangers if consumers find themselves having TVs that don't work once the broadcasters end their analog signals in February of 2009.

"We're very nervous about the potential risk," Anderson said. "I think the industry will be damaged if we as an industry don't handle this well."

At the Consumer Electroncis Show on Tuesday, CEA Chief Gary Shapiro asks retail executives, including the heads of Best Buy and Circuit City, for their views on the U.S. economy, the digital TV transition, and other issues.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com)

His comments came as part of a panel discussion of several retail executives at the Consumer Electronics Show here.

Circuit City CEO Philip J. Schoonover, meanwhile, was most concerned with his own company's performance, which has lagged the industry.

"I'm not smiling," Schoonover said, after Anderson and other retail executives beamed at their own growth last year.

"We're trying to fix the plan while flying the plane," he said. "It proved to be more challenging than I think any of us estimated."

Best of CES Awards

(Credit: CNET Networks)

For the third year in a row, the Consumer Electronics Association has asked the expert editors at CNET to pick the hottest new gadgets from the International Consumer Electronics Show. The 30 finalists for Best of CES 2008 have been announced, and you can vote your favorite for the People's Voice Award.

Winners will be announced live on CNET TV at 2 p.m. tomorrow, January 9, so check back then to see who the winners are, and which lucky gadget will earn the coveted Best in Show award.

Snap up to four modules onto the BugBase, and you've got your own custom gadget.

(Credit: Bug Labs)

It's the rare product that excites CNET editors across all categories. The Bug Labs platform, which has been the subject of several conversations around the CNET booth, is one such rarity.

Described as "the Lego of gadgets" by Webware's Rafe Needleman, the Bug Labs platform starts with a minicomputer, the Bug Base, onto which you can snap multiple modules, such as a digital camera or an LCD screen. You can then program your own software to run your custom gadget or download software others have written from the Bug Labs site. Need a GPS-enabled digital camera that will automatically upload your images to Flickr? With the Bug Labs platform, you can build one.

Aside from being eager to tinker with the product, we're thrilled to see such an innovative approach to consumer electronics. The Bug Platform is totally open source, highly configurable, and designed to go wherever consumers' imaginations take them. Plus, the company has a unique "early adopter" pricing scheme, in which the price is lower during the first 60 days; this is a great way to encourage people to start developing software to share.

For more information, check out Tom Merritt's video from the CNET Stage.

Voltaic Systems on Tuesday is set to announce a bag with a 14-watt solar panel for charging laptops at the Consumer Electronics Show, a company representative said.

(Credit: Voltaic Systems)

It's expected to be released this spring and will cost $599.

A wide variety of solar chargers are available to power up cell phones, iPods, or other gadgets.

As it turns out, I spent many hours during my Christmas vacation researching solar-powered laptops. (News.com will be running a column and photo gallery later this week.)

According to retailers, a 14-watt panel will be good for charging up the laptop when not in use. But running it directly from the sun would require larger, and more expensive, panels.

Still, it looks like Voltaic Systems has done a good job of putting together the charger and bag in a neat package. And it ties into the green theme at the Consumer Electronics Show this week.

Creative InPerson

(Credit: Creative Labs)

Video phone, videoconferencing--there's really no good vocabulary for discussing video communication over the Net without rendering your audience glazed and confused. Nor are there any glitzy new technologies to get their geek juices flowing. But Creative's doing its darnedest to spark some new life in a product category that never quite took off. And it seems like a pretty good effort, at that, with a product that strives to liberate videoconferencing from the tether of the PC or the conference room.

The company's portable InPerson conferencing system consists of a device that resembles a 1.6 pound, 10-inch laptop, with a VGA-resolution Webcam with a nice wide-angle view, built into the hinge. The hardware sits in your living room, hotel room, or any other room, running off the two-hour capacity battery or AC. The H.264-compressed video can stream on the 7-inch wide-screen LCD, or you can hook it up to your TV for a more life-size conversation. It connects to the Net via Wi-Fi or wired Ethernet, going through Creative's servers for the video and VoIP audio (it adheres to the SIP telephony standard). Creative claims it has very good low-light performance (which seemed to be true when I took a brief look at it), as well as above-average audio quality. When not in use, you can stick an SD card in the slot and use it as a really expensive photo frame.

That's really the rub: it seems quite pricey to me. The device itself costs $699.95, and there's a $10 per month subscription fee for the Web service. On the plus side, it doesn't require another InPerson on the other end; any old Webcam will do.

Can Creative InPerson save your foundering long-distance relationship? Probably not. But it has the potential to save you some money and time on the extra travel.

We checked in with Ricavision earlier today and got to see its new Vave 100 Windows SideShow Universal Remote Control in person. As the name suggests, this slick-looking device combines Windows SideShow capability with a universal remote control. Via both Bluetooth and infrared, the Vave 100 is suited to driving both home-theater PCs as well as standard home entertainment hardware. Ricavision speculates the price will come in around $350 (expensive, but cheaper than the Logitech Harmony 1000), and it targets early Q2 of this year for availability.

The Vave 100 nestled in its standard docking station

(Credit: CNET)

The remote comes with a basic charging station/receiver, but Zune owners (all seven of you), might also consider upgrading to the SoundVave Dock, a charging station with a second Zune dock and a set of built-in speakers. If you don't have a Zune, you can still use the SoundVave Dock to play music, via the Vave remote, which can stream MP3s through SideShow.

The SoundVave Dock is a bit more involved. A Zune fits in front of the remote.

(Credit: CNET)

We should also point out that the Vave 100 is not the Ricavision prototype we got to play with in March of last year. That model was supposed to become Microsoft's official Windows Media Center remote, which it would supply to various desktop vendors. We're told that project is still in development.

The SlingProjector feature mirrors anything on your PC screen including streaming video

(Credit: CNET)

Watch the SlingCatcher video on CNET TV.

But this is the year, the company insists, that the long-awaited product will indeed be on sale. No specific date has been set, but the word is sometime in the second quarter. Though it originally planned to have it out in time for holiday sales, "sometimes these things take time," said Sling CEO Blake Krikorian, in a statement.

(Credit: Sling Media)

The SlingCatcher is a separate set-top that can be used to bring content from a Slingbox to another TV in the house, or from an external hard drive. Though it works fine on both HDTVs and standard-definition sets, connecting the SlingCatcher to the new Slingbox Pro-HD is the only way to transmit high-definition video around the home.

The SlingCatcher also lets users project Web content to a TV screen, either wired or wirelessly, through an application called SlingProjector. Navigation can be done with either the included remote or through a PC.

SlingProjector software has been updated since last we saw it. When browsing Web video on a PC, the software automatically detects windows with video and projects it to the TV screen it is connected to.

Celestron Handheld Digital Microscope

(Credit: Celestron)

They're not the highest tech at the show, nor are they the easiest to find--I tripped over a couple in the furthest reaches of the exhibits--but I find myself intrigued by a couple of handheld digital microscopes I encountered while killing time before a meeting. These gadgets connect to your system via USB and allow you to capture megazoomed (albeit not terribly high-resolution) closeups of life's minutiae.

The first, from well-known Celestron, seems like it'd be a great gift for the child prodigies in your life. Reasonably priced at $139.95, the Handheld Digital Microscope can record 640x480 snapshots or 15 or 30 frames per second (fps) video at 20x or 400x magnification. It's about five inches high with an LED light. Although the company declares "It's not a toy!"; it's also not really a pro tool--the lenses are plastic, after all.

Celestron does offer a slightly better quality consumer LCD Digital Microscope, which will ship in February. It's not handheld, but a fixed, traditional microscope design. It's got a nice, large 3.5-inch LCD display and a built-in 2-megapixel digital camera. It supports 4x, 10x, and 40x optical magnification levels. At $299.99, it's also pricier.

Big C, the other company showing its microscopic wares, offers the irresistibly named Dito-Lite handheld models. They're even more expensive--the plastic-shelled AM413T runs $349, and its new-for-the-show, metal-hulled sibling AM413M costs $595--but they're also a bit more powerful. They have built-in LED lights, capture 1.3-megapixel images, 10x to 50x (continuous) or 200x zoom, can capture 15 or 30 fps video, and support add-ons like a stand and calibrator.

Netgear's ReadyNAS Duo systems are a new but still expensive attempt to bring networked storage to the home.

(Credit: Netgear)

Innumerable technology companies are trying to grab their share of consumer gadget spending, and storage makers are no exception. On Monday, Seagate, Toshiba, and Netgear all unveiled new products for the market at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

One of the bolder products, in my opinion, is from Netgear, which moved its ReadyNAS line, acquired from start-up InFrant, more in the consumer direction with the introduction of the ReadyNAS Duo 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB network-attached storage (NAS) devices.

These systems attach to computers over a local network rather than a USB, Firewire, or eSATA port, meaning that multiple computers can share access. But connecting over Ethernet is a new challenge for home computer users who already have enough trouble being sysadmins and might not want to advance their network admin skills, too.

The systems support two hard drives, the optional second one mirroring data for greater protection. Like most NAS devices, though, they aren't cheap, though: a model with a single 500GB drive costs $500.

Toshiba has given a new look to its external drives.

(Credit: Toshiba)

The ReadyNAS Duo products will ship late in the first quarter, Netgear said. The products include the NTI Shadow backup software tool.

These aren't just low-end business-oriented devices in a shiny enclosure. For one thing, customers can plug cameras into the included USB port, and the devices will automatically copy photos. For another, they support a number of streaming media protocols, including UPnP AV, iTunes, and Logitech Squeezecenter, for sending video and audio over the network.

Seagate aims for the security-conscious
Seagate had a plethora of announcements. First is the Maxtor BlackArmor external USB drive, which has built-in encryption and will cost $150 for a 160GB drive when it ships in the second quarter.

Seagate's DAVE storage device can connect wirelessly to share data.

(Credit: Seagate)

Next from Seagate is its PipelineHD series of hard drives, which have features such as low noise, low power consumption, and high capacity and are specifically geared for digital video recorders. Initial capacity will be 320GB when the products start shipping in the first half of the year, with later capacities planned to reach 1 terabyte.

Most unconventional is the Digital Audio Video Experience (DAVE) products, a 60GB storage system that connects wirelessly through Bluetooth and 80211.b/g, as well as with a USB connection. The systems can be customized and extended, and partners that will offer DAVE-based devices include Sanyo, PortoMedia, and HarmanBecker, Seagate said.

Seagate's Maxtor BlackArmor drive has built-in encryption.

(Credit: Seagate)

Toshiba's tiny external drive
Toshiba announced that it's built its 1.8-inch hard drives into an external USB-connected storage system with 60GB, 80GB, and 120GB capacities. The company plans to include encryption and backup software with the devices, which will go on sale this spring. Toshiba didn't announce a price.

A larger 2.5-inch drive will be available sooner: Toshiba announced a 320GB, $200 model that will ship in January. It includes NTI Shadow backup software. Toshiba's personal storage products (the 2.5-inch drive line also includes 250GB and 160GB models) also sport a new glossy finish and colors including gray, red, and green.