New toys on the horizon

Now, I'm no where what one would call a "techie". Sure I like new gadgets and whatnot. However, I'm also realistic enough to know I shouldn't buy something I'd hardly ever use. Or to save up to buy something for high dollar when I know if I wait a few months the price will come down. Most of the new tech I read about and admire is like window shopping only. Hell, I still have a few cassettes laying around here.

First up I see, is this LG dual format HD/Blu-Ray player. I dislike the battle between HD DVD and Blu-Ray. In the end the consumer suffers more. I planned on holding off on jumping on one bandwagon or the other. I know some people in the same boat. With this however, you get them both. Still not sure if the parts inside are even worth the metal its made of. I'm sure once its out there will be a better review out there somewhere. Right now, I think its more of the fact that cool that someone actually made a dual format player. I'm sure people saw it coming at some point, no one knew exactly when though.

Most of your MP3 players coming soon are going wireless. Seems to be the big thing everyone is pushing for. Everyone hears that the next generation of IPOD is going to be wifi enabled. Announced at CES SanDisk is coming out with a wifi enabled player as well. Its only a matter of time before MP3 players everywhere can connect to the net via hotspots. From what I understand, you'll also be able to share songs with someone else and their MP3 player via wifi. (Microsoft Zune already does this, but that's the limit of its connectivity.) Of course they will limit your sharing to either a certain amount of plays or days that you can have that shared song. Now, I've been places and heard a song that I would love to hear again, but not bad enough that I'd want to pull out a device to hook up to a hotspot and download it right there and NOW.

One thing I have seen from several companies for both MP3 and MP3/Portable Video playback that I love. Is the fact that many of them are adding a removable media slot. Many players, out now and soon to be hitting the store shelves, have expandable media slots. Typically a SD card up to 4GB. This adds a whole new level of functionality to on the go listening. While yes it is easy to plug in your MP3 player to your computer and go from there. Just something even more simple about the drag and drop ease of use. Just slap a SD card into a card reader (most laptops have these built in these days) throw it on the card and eject. Then again, maybe I'm excited about this because I have a slight aversion to IPODS. I digress, that's another topic for another time.

Check out CNET for their whole write up about the best of CES. Even if you aren't heavy into technology, I'm sure you'll find something there at CES to get excited about.