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Hands flailing wildly with Toshiba's SpursEngine laptop

Toshiba's Cell processor-based SpursEngine B.E. was on full display at CES, with a variety of tech demos to show off its power. From HD video transcoding, facial recognition, or the always popular gesture-control Toshiba's baby went through a series of workouts, trying to be the third teammate, with your CPU & GPU, to speed heavy-duty processing. Featuring only four cores -- half the number found in the PS3 -- it handled all tasks thrown its way, check out the gallery to find out how the power of the Cell could help your PC in the future.

Hands flailing wildly with JVC's Snap and Gesture HDTV

We've now experienced JVC's Snap and Gesture HDTV -- the display that replaces your remote by responding to audio cues like snapping/clapping, or visual ones with hand gestures -- and can confirm we are exactly the type of lazy couch potatoes this is not aimed towards. While leading a nation, signaling for a time out or expressing displeasure with another driver are best done with elaborate hand movements, we're a bit more thumb-oriented. Check out some lazily-snapped photos (auto focused, not manual) in the gallery.

Hands-on with Pioneer's extreme contrast concept plasma


Pioneer put on an evening pre-CES demo for Engadget, showing off two concepts focusing on advanced design (the 9mm-thick Kuro) and extreme contrast. Bringing everyone into a darkened room, Pioneer VP of Marketing and Product Planning Paul Meyhoefer reiterated Pioneer's target audience of the high-end home theater enthusiast, and what better place could there be to demo a home theater display than in a darkened room? Once the lights went down, we were treated to a short film on contrast, and the challenges of producing a wide range of values. As anyone who has watched a display in a dark room knows, you can see the edges of the display from the faint glow of the backlight that always seems to be present, even in the darkest of scenes.

That's when another image appeared literally out of the blackness, with a second plasma display turned on and showing a pitch-black background for the duration of the demo. Pioneer demoed their concept set directly next to the current 8th-generation PDP-5010FD 1080p plasma Kuro plasma, and utterly destroyed even its vaunted performance. The Kuro line dropped idle luminance by over 80% compared to the 7th gen plasmas, and this demo was intended to show just how far the technology can continue to go under Pioneer's guidance. Color us very impressed, and saddened by the realization that this concept could go a generation or more before it becomes fully integrated into the Pioneer plasma lineup.

Hands-on with the Pioneer 9mm-thick Kuro plasma


Engadget had the chance to get up close and personal with the recently-announced 9mm-thick Kuro plasma concept at CES, with Paul Meyhoefer, VP of Marketing and Product Planning, and Tony Ueda, Worldwide Manager of Display Technology, demoing at the Pioneer booth the night before the show floor opens. Pioneer gave the grand tour of two new technology concepts, with "advanced design" and "extreme contrast" displays. Pioneer has always claimed to target the high-end home theater enthusiast, and this 50-inch Kuro concept plasma shows that off in spades, being 9mm (0.35 inches) thick at the glass and only 24mm (0.94 inches) thick at its widest point. As seen in our gallery below, there is not even a hint of input ports or other distractions from its 40 pounds of sexy svelteness. We held up a BlackBerry Curve 8320 next to the plasma's glass, and dwarfed it with a whopping 15.5mm (0.6 inches) of depth.

Live from Toshiba's CES press conference


10:00 - a.m. - We're here, the HD DVD players and TVs under covers are on stage.

10:07 - Ladies and gentlemen please take your seats

Live from LG's CES press conference


We're here at LG's press conference at the Venetian, plenty of HDTVs on stage as we wait for things to start.

7:55 a.m. (pst): "We will begin in 5 minutes"

Hands-on with Sony's VAIO TZ superultraportable notebook


Obviously unaware that we're not exactly the classiest folks around (we were the only ones there wearing shorts and a T-shirt), Sony invited us to a decidedly swanky "product unveiling" at Rockefeller Plaza's 66th floor Top of the Rock observation deck, replete with such pricey fare as caviar, salmon canapes, crab salad, tuna tartare, and grilled shrimp, along with four varieties of champagne (from a 2000 Veuve Clicquot Reserve Rose to a 1996 Bollinger R.D., if you must know) to wash it all down with -- and as if that weren't enough booze, several bottles of well-aged scotch sat prominently atop a fully stocked bar. This whole luxury theme was meant to sway our coverage about reflect the high-end status of the company's 11.1-inch VAIO TZ, whose $2,200 minimum price tag gets you a waif of a Santa Rosa-based ultraportable featuring a carbon fiber exterior, 32GB SSD, WWAN in the form of EV-DO Rev. A, and a MacBook-style keyboard, among other goodies. Sorry to cut this short, but we're off to shower and shave with the pleasant smelling men's products that Sony stuffed in our gift bag (we gave everything else -- cigars, lip balm, four dollar bottled water, book on wine -- away to elevator operators and people on the subway), so this would probably be a good time to check out the gallery below. And, as a special, one-time only bonus, we've also included photos of the recently announced VAIO-branded LF-V30 LocationFree streamer, whose component jacks enable HD place-shifting, and with which the entire VAIO lineup will soon be compatible thanks to pre-loaded software...

Engadget at Digital Experience New York


Digital Experience is a bi-annual press event wherein dozens of your favorite tech companies corral hundreds of your favorite tech journalists, fill them up with free food and booze, and attempt to squeeze a little more coverage out of already-announced products. The theme for this year's New York show -- held last night at the Metropolitan Pavilion -- was British Invasion, and while we certainly appreciated the Beatles cover band, darts competitions, and of course the Bass- and Boddingtons-serving HP Notebook Pub (pictured above, although we still prefer the Sun beer server), the choice to offer traditional English cuisine was, quite frankly, not that well thought out. Nonetheless, we braved numerous flying darts and sketchy-looking meat pies to photograph a few devices we thought you'd enjoy; click on to check out the highlights...

iTunes Plus and EMI's DRM-free music hands-on


It's been a long time coming. So how could we resist giving the new higher quality, DRM free iTunes Plus music service a whirl? After all, we're geeks, and loaded with all kinds of audio devices (not just iPods or Macs and PCs running iTunes) which we'd like to make use of with our purchased media. Certainly you've heard of the Zune, Xbox 360, PS3, Vista Media Center, Walkman W880, Slingbox, PSP, or even the VLC media player right? Ok, then you understand our angst. So off we go, into the land of Fair Use lollipops and DRM-free candy canes. Click-on to see how it all goes down as we upgrade our iTunes music library.

What tech would the Presidents rock in 2007?


Sure, Washington had his dentures, Lincoln his ironclads and Jefferson his swivel chair, but what kind of kit would they be messing around with in 2007? In search of answers based on broad and most likely mis-guided and / or offensive stereotypes, we bring you the following list. Feel free to rip it to shreds in the comments, just make sure to keep it patriotic -- Big Brother is watching. Happy Presidents Day!


Washington
(rebel)
Lincoln
(uniter)
Jefferson
(hipster)
Roosevelt
(fearless)
OS Linux (last night's build)
Mac OS X (with Vista in Parallels and Linux via Boot Camp) Mac OS X Vista (x64)
Computer OQO (has an OLPC XO at home)
MBP
MacBook
Toughbook
Media player Make Daisy Sansa iPod Zune
HD format HD DVD
LG BH100 hybrid player Blu-ray DivX + BitTorrent, dude
Carrier
T-Mobile
AT&T T-Mobile VoIP over neighborFi
Console Gamepark GP2X, SNES
Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 Wii
PS3
Vehicle
Homebrew biodiesel
Prius Tesla Roadster Segway
Phone OpenMoko 8525
Sidekick 3
Greenphone

Mega hands-on: Virgin America's Airbus A320 with Red in-flight entertainment


Not-yet-airborne Virgin America invited us to check out the way-decked Airbus A320 with Red prototype in-flight entertainment system that's parked at SFO right now. (Naw, we didn't get to take it up, the US Dept. of Transportation hasn't yet cleared VA for commercial flights yet, boo.) They definitely weren't kidding when they said it's got it all: movies on demand, pervasive music playlists, in-seat messaging with a QWERTY controller, touchscreen Linux consoles with games, the works. We've got a massive, massive gallery for you to check out (it's really not to be missed); we toured the aft cargo area where the each plane's servers live, the Red in-seat consoles (of course), the cockpit, even WiFi-enabled flight attendant handhelds. We've also got a full rundown of everything you need to know about Virgin America, Red, and the kitted-out Airbus, so check out the gallery below, and click on for more details about the only airline we officially sanction as being geeked enough to transport Engadget.

Hands on with SanDisk's new Zune-bestin' Sansa Connect


SanDisk was quite a bit more accepting of our touching urges when it came to the Sansa Connect, so we got to spend a little bit of quality time with the unit. The screen was plenty bright, sharp and sizeable considering the form factor, and while the design imparts a bit of a pudgy look to the player, there's really not a lot of bulk here. We're fans of the simplistic interface, but since not a lot of the functionality was in "live" mode, it's hard to tell how effective the unit will actually be at managing all of its wireless sharing and syncing functionality. Pr0n galore after the break.

Hands on with the Sansa View


You've already got the lowdown on specs, but here's the new Sansa View up close and personal. Shiny, thin and well-screened? Check, check and check. They wouldn't let us touch 'em, though, which was lame. Whatever, SanDisk, you're not invited to our birthday party -- so there! Keep reading for some more shots.

UPDATE: Alright, birthday plans are back on. We finally got a hold of the View for some actual "hands on" pics, and it really is a looker -- though with all the slim going on here, we're still not sure we could squeeze this thing into a jeans pocket. Also, the software is way early on this thing, so don't figure these funky screen shots will have much to do with how the final interface will look like. With that said, check out our new pics after the break.

Hands-on with Microvision's itty bitty projector


They said it was coming and sho'nuff, we spotted Microvision's tiny projector for mobile devices here on the CES floor. Verdict? There's some potential, future hotness here. Their setup projected a roughly 10-inch image onto the wall just a few feet away. Naturally, we're not talking about a high-res image and color reproduction is definitely lacking, but it's certainly watchable especially if you're only sharing a few minutes of video with friends or colleagues. However, the circuity (at least at this stage) will add some serious bulk to todays ultra-thin handsets. But when you consider the interest expressed in watching digital mobile TV on tiny handsets, well, there's certainly a developing market here ready to be tapped. Especially by 2008, Microvision's target for bringing this technology to market. Hear that venture capitalists, Microvision needs your love.


Caption Contest: HMD of the future?


Toshiba thinks that people will happily sport this device to become totally immersed in their games. What do you think?

Evan: "Janie was unprepared for the relentless mocking her new head-mounted display received, especially from her fellow guild members."
Paul: "Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to bring you the ultimate gaming experience. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cause I don't."
Ryan: "Yes, we're gonna have to go right to...ludicrous speed!"
Cyrus: "I though I could stop wearing headgear when I turned 16."
Richard: "Correction, I need the superior information in your inferior brain to fly this... thing."
Zatz: "Can you hear me now?"

[Thanks, Brian]



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