As CES, the world?s largest consumer electronic show, comes to a close GadgetGuy rounds up the hits and misses of 2007.
By Roulla Yiacoumi
THE HITS
Sony OLED
| Without a doubt, the stars on the display front were the 28 cm (11 inch) spaghetti-thin organic light emitting display (OLED) models from Sony. While the typical contrast ratio on a screen is 100,000:1, Sony has upped this to an unbelievable 1,000,000:1, resulting in pictures so sharp you?d swear they were real. Disappointingly, they?re prototypes only at this stage, but given the non-stop cheering crowd surrounding them, we?d say Sony is onto a winner. |
WowWee Robotics Elvis
| Known for its excellent Robosapien and Roboraptor animated robots, WowWee has taken a step sidewards from its fierce-looking toys to test the waters with life-like humanoids. Elvis Presley is the first bust off the rank. Sanctioned by Graceland, he sings, he talks, he does the Elvis lip thing. Scarily life-like, he?ll fit right into your next party. |
Philips amBX
Imagine sitting in front of a TV playing a game when an explosion goes off and the room lights up in glowing red. The ground beneath you rumbles and you can feel the blowing wind in your hair. Philips has a sure-fire hit on hits hands with its amBX system. Now all it needs is more game developers to build the features in to upcoming releases.
Samsung Ultra Music
The problem with using your mobile phone as an MP3 player is that is can be difficult and cumbersome to access the music controls and the actual music, often requiring you to wade through phone menus first. Samsung has come up with a pretty nifty solution ? a double-sided device. On one side it looks like a sleek MP3 player, but flip it over and it?s a mobile phone, albeit with a fairly small screen.
SanDisk USBTV
| This is for people who have a bunch of movies on their PC but who want to watch them on TV without burning discs or networking devices. Copy movies onto the USB stick, then plug it into the dock which connects to your TV using standard audio-video outputs. An easy way to get content onto your television. |
Lumus
| Last year, visors that could be worn over your head to view movies were a huge hit. A year later, the bulky visor shape has given way to a new format resembling a pair of glasses. Wearing these Lumus visors to watch a movie (fed in from a source such as an iPod) is like viewing a 178 cm (70 inch) display from three metres away. Still in the early stages, the design is expected to be refined before production. |
