Darren Murph   Year:by , posted Jan 10th 2008 at 12:33PM   Source Site:engadget

Seeking to "change the way people manage their household electronics," Actiontec is getting set to unleash an outpouring of zControl products. Wed briefly heard about the firms standalone unit that connects to the home router a few months back, but here at CES even more details are starting to flow. Apparently, Actiontec will be pushing out an entire series of Z-Wave-based wares "designed to centrally manage household electronics such as lights, security cameras, thermostats, motion detectors, garage door openers, motorized shades and automatic sprinklers through the home network." Furthermore, zControl will give owners the ability to dictate connected items remotely, and while weve no room to mention every piece of the forthcoming lineup, you should know that the zControl Starter Ki...

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Joshua Topolsky   Year:by , posted Jan 9th 2008 at 9:31PM   Source Site:engadget

The Mini Phone. Just like a regular landline phone, but a little bit smaller....

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Thomas Ricker   Year:by , posted Jan 9th 2008 at 9:31PM   Source Site:engadget

Despite the shadow of justifiable hype cast by Panasonics 150-inch TV, Pioneers 9-mm thin and "extreme contrast" prototype plasmas, Samsung still managed to make a respectable (yet quiet) showing at CES 2008. After all, its not every day we see a pair of 31- and 14-inch OLED TVs, a touch-screen RTS-A1100 Media Center beauty, and 82-inch quadHD and 52-inch Ultra Slim LCDs. Theyve even tamed their usual push of "worlds first, fastest, biggest, etc." boasting... a bit. But hey, it wouldnt be Samsung if they didnt crow a little. Gallery: Samsungs CES 2008 booth tour ...

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Barb Dybwad   Year:by , posted Jan 9th 2008 at 9:31PM   Source Site:engadget

Mind you, weve seen no shortage of crazy antics to grab attendee attention out on the show floor (P.T. Barnum would be very, very proud), but this years award for randomest booth gimmick goes to wall mounting solutions company Vantage Point, who (rather successfully) drew their flock via this oxygen bar in their booth. We did overhear them get a lot of product inquiries out of the deal... about where to buy an oxygen bar (but were sure the mental road to wall mounting curiosity is super short)....

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Christopher Grant   Year:by , posted Jan 9th 2008 at 9:31PM   Source Site:engadget

Knock, knock. Whos there? The IntelliCorder 0 Door Camcorder System which replaces your perfectly functional (and affordable!) door peephole with a $150 battery powered camera and 1-1/2-inch screen. ... get the hell away from my house before I call the cops....

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Joshua Topolsky   Year:by , posted Jan 9th 2008 at 9:31PM   Source Site:engadget

Meet the WiBrain B1s bigger, meaner brother -- the Samsung Q1 Ultra. Weve been lovingly gazing at pictures of this behemoth for some time now, but we finally got a chance to toss it around at ye old CES this year. Truth? Its kind of messed up looking, and that keypad isnt any easier to use than it looks. For some reason, Samsung thought the layout should slant downward, but we cant say why. At any rate, the model we had was running Vista -- if a bit slowly -- and had a pretty nice looking display. Hit the gallery and see the goods for yourself. Gallery: Hands-on with Samsungs Q1 Ultra UMPC ...

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Nilay Patel   Year:by , posted Jan 9th 2008 at 9:31PM   Source Site:engadget

Google told us that we wouldnt see any Android devices until the end of the year, but a funny thing happens when you put up the entire SDK and an emulator for a platform -- all them crazy hackers start hacking. Apparently Android was natively booted on a Freescale-based dev board called the Armadillo 500 back in November, but the floodgates were really opened when a Hungarian group called Eu.Edge discovered that basically any device with an ARMv5TE chip could run Googles baby. Armed (heh!) with that information, tinkerers around the world have gotten a variety of Sharp devices running Android: the SL-C760, C3000M, SL-C3000 series, and the SL-6000 have all been confirmed running the OS. Hopefully that means well be seeing a lot more unofficial Android devices soon -- check a couple videos ...

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Richard Lawler   Year:by , posted Jan 9th 2008 at 9:31PM   Source Site:engadget

Samsung can join Hitachi while crying into their sake as its 52-inch "thinnest non-OLED HDTV ever" is around 4x as thick as Pioneers 9mm heroin-chic Kuro. Take heart Sammy, because your 82-inch -- and btw, what is with the 82-inch obsession (2005 & 2006 CES), we need to talk about that -- Quad HD display is like looking out of a window, if we had bigger and cleaner windows. Check out the gallery to see what we mean. Gallery: Samungs worlds largest ultra high definition LCD TV ...

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Steven Kim   Year:by , posted Jan 9th 2008 at 9:31PM   Source Site:engadget

If the idea of a receiver is just too lowbrow for you, check out Denons processor/amplifier separates, the AVP/POA-A1HDCI (AVP for the processor, POA for the amp). Six HDMI 1.3 inputs, two parallel HDMI outputs and Silicon Optix Realta video processing are some processor highlights; the amp packs in 10 channels at 150-watts. While youre at it, why settle for a Blu-ray player when you can get a dedicated transport? That back panel picture of the DVD-2500BTCI is no prototype unit -- all you get is a power cord, HDMI output, and RS-232. Spin those bits off the Blu-ray disc and send them on to the AVP-A1HDCI for decoding. Pricing is securely in the "if you have to ask..." category: $7k for the AVP-A1HDCI, $7k for the POA-A1HDCI and $1200 for the DVD-2500BTCI. Gallery: Hands-on with ...

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Christopher Grant   Year:by , posted Jan 9th 2008 at 9:31PM   Source Site:engadget

Finally, you can throw out that slide carousel youve kept strapped to your wrist for the last two decades and replace it with the absolute latest in cutting edge digital photo frame technology. Introducing the aptly titled Digital Photo Frame Watch, whose packaging promises "Its a real watch." But wait, it gets better. This "real watch" stores 140 pictures in its copious 2MB of internal memory, all for playback on its no doubt gorgeous OLED color display. This is the future, folks. Its here. Weve seen it. And it shows pictures. On your wrist....

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Christopher Grant   Year:by , posted Jan 9th 2008 at 9:31PM   Source Site:engadget

We feel sorry for poor NEC. While everyone at CES is busy buzzing about Alienwares gorgeous curved DLP display (including us), NEC is quietly showing off its CRVD-42DWX+ display thats more or less identical: a 2880x900 (double WXGA+) panel with a contrast ratio of 10000:1. Were assuming theyre both built by the same ODM, Ostendo, so hopefully some healthy competition will help bring one of these two beauties within your meager gaming budget. Unfortunately, like the Alienware model, theres no pricing or shipping information. Ogle some more pics in our gallery below. Gallery: NEC Ostendo CRVD-42DWX+ panoramic monitor ...

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