CES 2008

The Toshiba's onscreen keyboard.

We're always interested to see what's coming up for ultramobile PCs, the handheld platform better known as UMPC. We've seen previous iterations from the Sony UX to the OQO model 02, to the Vulcan Flipstart, but none have totally scratched our ultramobile itch, because of awkward interfaces, poor battery life, or underpowered processors.

Toshiba is showing off a new UMPC at CES, and while it doesn't yet have a name or release date, it incorporates a number of new features that move the category forward--but it's clearly still not "the one."

The Toshiba UMPC is a slightly bulky silver box running Windows Vista. Unlike other UMPCs with BlackBerry-style thumb keyboards, this uses an iPhone-like onscreen keyboard, accessed by flicking your finger up from the bottom of the screen. A flick from the left or right sides brings out a quick-launch dock of useful apps.

While the prototype we played with had a traditional disc drive, Toshiba says solid state drives will also be available (and they make much more sense in small devices such as this). A built-in accelerometer lets you flip the screen on its side, and in perhaps the most interesting touch, tilting the screen forward and back lets you scroll up and down Web pages.

Toshiba says its UMPC will hit Japan in the not-too-distant future, but no solid plans for a stateside release--or even a name--just yet.

The non-tech media's been full of articles deploring the inferior sound of the MP3 era. Apparently Pioneer agrees. At CES, the company is demonstrating technology it calls Advanced Sound Retrieval, or ASR, which promises to restore some of the signal lost when audio is compressed into a "lossy" format like MP3 or compressed WMA or AAC.

Technically, it's much tricker to restore signal than it is to cut it--that's one of the first rules of audio recording, which is why you want to get the broadest dynamic and frequency range possible, then pare it down, rather than trying to fill it in later with effects and EQ. What Pioneer appears to be doing is looking at the signal from moment to moment, making an educated guess about signals with frequencies above 15kHz that have been cut, and reinserting those signals.

Pioneer ASR

(Credit: Matt Rosoff)

I didn't get to test it at real world volume, in a real car, with music I know and love, so it's hard for me to be objective. But at the booth, when I listened to an MP3 file of Rage Against the Machine with ASR on and off, I definitely noticed a lot more high end with the ASR on. But it didn't sound louder--it's not like the Loudness button you used to see on some stereos (which was basically a compressor...that's another post). And it wasn't as if somebody simply turned up the EQ on the high end. So, it does seem as if Pioneer's doing some pretty sophisticated work here, and it probably will make your compressed audio files sound better--not CD-quality, but better.

ASR is featured in 12 new automotive single-CD players from the company. According to the people at the booth, it's also included in the company's Premier line of products.

As a sidenote, a huge thanks to the person who programmed "Scratch" by Morphine into one of the Gigabeats at Toshiba's booth. Most demo music at CES is brash and trebly, so it was a pleasure to hear all this low-mid--bari sax, upright bass, and a baritone singer. It also happens to a personal favorite: it's one of the only cover songs an old band of mine used to do. It was a great way to take a five-minute break on the floor. And I still think the Gigabeat was a beautiful-sounding MP3 player that got caught in the PlaysForSure crossfire--in fact, that's probably why I enjoy listening to my first-generation Zune so much, as it's basically just a rejiggered Gigabeat.

Toshiba's Qosmio G45-AV690

With Intel's new Penryn series of laptop CPUs, PC makers, including Toshiba, are revamping their lines to offer the new parts. You'll be able to find the new chips in the Toshiba Qosmio line, the Satellite X205, and select Satellite U305 laptops.

One of the more impressive new Toshibas is the Qosmio G45-AV690, which the company calls the "world's first notebook to feature an HD DVD-R/RW optical drive." Although we admit, that might have been more impressive news before last week's Warner/Blu-ray smackdown.

Toshiba's Qosmio systems are still among our favorite multimedia desktop replacements, featuring 1080p-compatible screen resolution, an HDMI output for sending those HD DVD movies to your big-screen plasma or LCD TV, and most exciting, an external OCCUR TV tuner -- also known as CableCard. Setting up CableCard, for recording hi-def TV signals with your computer, is still a major pain, but it's a vast improvement over old-fashioned TV tuners. You also get Intel's new Penryn T9300 Core 2 Duo processor, and a decent Nvidia GeForce 8300 video card.

The tricked-out Qosmio G45-AV690 is available now for $3,199.

Toshiba's flagship Cinema Series Regza line

(Credit: Toshiba)

A lot of people walked into Toshiba's 2008 CES press conference expecting a train wreck in the light of Warner's pre-show Blu-ray bombshell. But after a quick obligatory mention of it being "a difficult day" for the godfather of the HD DVD format, it was back to business: namely, highlighting the company's 2008 line of LCD flat-panel TVs. The company touted five new series of models, all of which will be released this spring. Full details after the jump. ... Read more

LAS VEGAS--"Disappointed" probably isn't a strong enough word to describe when a major focus of your business plan and the highlight of your Consumer Electronics Show pitch is derailed two days before by one of your former partners.

As the most prominent backer of the HD DVD high-definition video format, Toshiba's press conference at CES this morning drew a lot of interest among the tech press, mostly out of morbid curiosity. What could it say after Warner Bros. announced Friday it would exclusively back rival Blu-ray, after the studio had played it neutral up until now?

Toshiba didn't waste any time addressing the 800-pound gorilla in the room. President and chief executive of Toshiba America's consumer division, Akio Ozaka, took the stage to lament the studio's announcement despite strong sales of HD DVD players in the last quarter of 2007.

"Unit sales of HD DVD in Q4 were the strongest yet. Therefore we were surprised by Warner Bros. announcement that it plans to abandon HD DVD later this year," said Ozaka. "We were particularly disappointed this decision was made in spite of the momentum HD DVD has gained in this market."

Toshiba vice president of marketing for digital audio and video products Jodi Salley was even more somber.

"As you can imagine, this is a tough day for me," she said as she took the stage. "I fully expected to come here this morning to share with you the successes of the last year of HD DVD, (but) the events of the last few days have shifted the focus of my comments."

Instead of announcing a fourth-generation HD DVD player as expected prior to Warner Bros. announcement on Friday, Toshiba took the opportunity to simply reaffirm its faith in the format, and point out features like Web connectivity and the presence of Ethernet ports on every player, which Blu-ray does not have.

"It is difficult to read pundits declaring HD DVD dead...but we've been declared dead before," Sally said.

Despite that sense of optimism, she didn't offer any details on what Toshiba's next move will be.