First CES Finds

The 2005 Consumer Electronics Show doesn't officially begin until Thursday, but scores of scoop-thirsty journalists mobbed the opening press event Tuesday night at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Called CES Unveiled, it was an Arabian nights-themed showcase (okay, the sushi seemed sort of out of place, but the bartenders wore genie-esque costumes and there was a tarot reader) for several dozen diverse technologies and products, from HDTVs and assorted media players to a handset designed to afford an extra measure of security for an elderly or disabled person.

The latter, DesignTech's Guardian 911 Phone is basically a very small handset (with a single button instead of a keypad and a slot for a lanyard) with a wireless connection to a base station that in turn hooks up via a standard phone cord to a conventional phone jack. If you fall and you can't get up, you simply press the button on the phone and the base station dials 911 for you--but when an operator answers, you can talk over the handset. DesignTech says the handset can communicate with the base station from up to 800 feet away. The $140 device is due in April.

If 800 feet seems puny, DesignTech also has what it bills as the 2 Mile Phone, another tiny handset that can communicate wirelessly--supposedly, as the name implies, from up to two miles away from a base station with a standard phone hookup. The 2 Mile Phone uses FRS (Family Radio Service, also used by walkie-talkies) to connect to its base station. It's slated to ship this spring with a $90 price tag.

An early CES trend also surfaced at the press event: The LCD with a built-in DVD player. Axion, one of several newcomers to the LCD-TV arena, showed several such models ranging in price from $499 for a 15-incher to $699 for a 20-inch model. Note, however, that none of these sets are high-def, and most have the old-fashioned 4:3 aspect ratio as opposed to the newer 16:9 format.

Audiovox took a more innovative approach with its Shuttle System, a modular collection of mix-and-match LCD/DVD players and docking stations intended for use in cars or other space-challenged environments. The tablet-like displays top out at 10.2 inches; they can be used by themselves, or placed in one of several docking stations, including one for a car, a tabletop station with build-in speakers, and a station designed to be mounted under a kitchen cabinet. The products are due in March.

A couple of other cool-looking gadgets:

Boostaroo (great company name, guys!) previewed its best-yet amplifier/signal splitter for portable audio players such as Apple's IPod. The $79 Boostaroo Revolution is due in two months; if you can't wait that long, or want to pay less, you can order the original, less powerful $30 model online at Boostaroo's Web site.

Lexar has new SD-card based MP3 players that are barely bigger than a book of matches. I liked the fire-engine red LDP-200, due at the end of February with prices ranging from $39 if you supply your own SD card to $149 for the player with a 1GB SD card.

Not everything at the event was a commercial product--not yet, anyway. AMD showed a couple of reference designs by First International Computer (a Taiwanese firm) for a personal media player based on AMD's new Alchemy Au1200 embedded processor. And an outfit called Genoa Color Technologies showed off a reference LCD-TV using five colors (the usual red, green, and blue plus yellow and cyan) next to a similar screen that only uses the standard RGB. Not surprisingly, the five-color display popped, making the conventional display looking pale and washed out.

To take a look at some of these products, check out our CES photo gallery.