Consumers are on a gifting spree this year. For themselves, for family, for friends. Maxing credit cards to and fro, Christmas and New Years bargains are beckoning.
Indeed, given spot flat panel shortages this winter, forthcoming recycling taxes, energy efficiency taxes, this may bethe last year of plenty for certain consumer electronoics bargins.
Herewith are the finest tech toys of Christmas 2005 that Santa's helpers larghe and small have brough to call. To make navigating choices a little easier, they are clustered into five categories:
Personal Electronics
Home & Away
Family Entertainment Systems
Tech Toys
Digital Media
Personal Electronics
Hasbro's VuGo records from your TV, VCR, DVD, PVR, cable or satellite box . and yes.. $1.99 video downloads (hmm, how'd they come up with THAT price!) File formats supported include Photo: BMP, TIF, JPG, GIF, PNG , Video: WMV, ASF, MPG-1, AVI and Music: MP3, WAV. VuGo also sports a built in timer and is supplied with cables for PC and TV. It uses MS Net (Mac support arrives soon!) and supports up to 2GB SD Cards for more storage. Ships with 128 MB of memeory built in 1 hr video 6 hrs music, 1200 photos. Retail or Vugo.com $99 to $130,
iPod Nano $149-$199 for 2 or 4 GByes) and iPod with Video (30-60 GB at $299 and $399. at retail and apple.com
Creative Zen Micro Photo, . Its advantage over all tiny hard drive music and photo players? The amazing color range and brightness of this lilliputian 8GB drive unit's OLED display - far superior to traditional LCDs. $249 at retail and creative,com
Nokia internet tablet, 802.11 and BlueTooth, not a cellphone. Technology Palm has tried in smaller form factprs and Intel shied away from. Under $400 at compusa.com and nokia.com
Home & Away
SlingBox lets you enjoy your home video sources at home and away. Breeze through the firewall swttings, and anything analog you are viewing at home can be enjoyed almost anywhere in the world (local firewalls permitting). Today: enjoyable on Windows PCs, tomorrow, Macs and handhelds. The SB-100-100 is just $199 this month. slingbox.com
JVC's Enverio Hard Drive Camcorders $700 to $1100. (Almost) never run out of tape again. DVD quality with no disks or tapes to swap and up to 10 hours of recording. Sure, Sony and others will have these in 2006. Own a JVC now and be first in your zip code to go media-less.
The Philips PSS110 Personal Sound System is about the size of two pairs of rolled socks. It is a recharegable alarm clock,, FM stereo radio, line-in amplifier (Titanium cone) speaker system, MP3 and WMA player. The alarm clock runs six months on a single charge fromits multicountry wall supply! About $1-00 to $150. philips.com
RCA Lyra Personal Video player - Discounted to $199 this season, this pioneering player still delivers internal analog video recording capabilities, direct USB 2.0 transfers to PCs and Macs, and accepts a vaiety of digital video formats, in additon to digital music files and JPEG foto slide show support,
Sony LF-PK1 LocationFree Player Pack for PC and PSP is under $350. This amazing gadget can connect to multiple video sources and stream video to your PC, a Sony Play Station Portable or a dedicated Sony wireless Location free device, such as the $700 Sony LF-X5 LocationFree 7" LCD TV. Sony was first with this technology. They have conquered more technical challenges than most of their competition. retail and sonystyle.com
Creative Labs Pocket Zen Vision $399 packs 30 GB of interbnal data and accepts CF cards and other media through adapters. PlaysForSurecomplient, this is effectively a third-generation Windows Media Portable companion.
Sony MDR-NC50 Noise Canceling headphones. Bose, move over. Sony is finally back in stride with a lower cost $199 pair that betters Dr. Bose. sonystyle.com
Something new in Camcorders? Surround sound? Yes, Sony's DVD Camcorder model DCR-DVD403 is the only camcorder to record surround-sound straight onto DVDs. Wait until you hear the difference surround sound makes on playback in your home theater. Voices and natural sounds from behind and to your sides expand the recorded vista in a way no other camcorder now captures. Under $999 at retail and sonystyle.com
Family Entertainment Systems
Apple's new iMac - Front Row remote control technology demonstrates that Apple is the PC maker that is most loikley to set the pace for consumer ease of use and quality media delivery just as they did for portable music, photois and video withthe iPod series. $1200 to $170 at retailers and apple.com
My office iMac serves as my personal HDTV screen. Thanks to the firewire-powered Elgato Systems EyeTV 500 ATSC and Clear QAM tuner. The Titan TV guide makes time-shifting, editing (and storing!) HD and SD TV programs a breeze. $300 to $350 at elgato.com
ATI all in Wonder HD Card. Under this remote control euiped super-sensitive tuner is $150 at some stores and web sites. This PCI card is the inner key to the HP HD Media Center PCs.Now it can deliver HD to any XP or MCE PC. ati.com.
No spare PCI slots available? Crave HD on your PC or notebook? No sweat. USB 2.0 attached HDTV tuners (bus powered) are available for $149 to $249 at copperbox.com
Sony VAIO VGX-XL1 Digital Living System Desktop PC is not your co-workers ordinary Media Center PC. Besides great performance and a wireless, trackpad keyboard, the XLI boasts a wonder 200 disk caousel under fill user remote control. The 200 platter DVD/CD changer can be loaded wither with (most) people's CD collection for easy ripping to hard disk or packed with 200 blank Dual Layer DVDs, giving an online storage capacity of 1.6 Terabytes! It's only shortcoming? It can edit and show HD comntent but laclks an internal HD tuner card (fix that with the USB models just above). Under $2300 at retail, (plus a $200 rebate is currently in effect!) web or sonystyle.com
LG's 50 inch Pplasma with Cable Card and built in 160 GB time-shating & recording capability giives you unprecented, internal recordinga nd time-shifting comntrol regardless of your cable or broadcast provider. Model 50 px40dr for under $3500 at retail and lge.com
With all due respect for Rob Enderle, the world's finest purchasable HD TV set today is either Sony SXRD triple 1080P (Progressive) rear projection HDTVs. Yes, Sony manufactures extra-ordinary performance LCOS chips which Intel could not master or make a business out of. KDS-R50XBR1 $3999.99 $60 inch for $4999.99 at retail or sonystyle.com
The Akimbo AP1200 player (now available for under $50 with subscription) delivers rare and international content (cached on its internal drive) to your TV set. Own a Media Center PC? NOw you can subscribe to Akimbo with the hardware for most, not all, services.
Dish Network 942 and Pockect DishPlayer This under $500 HD satellite recorder suports TWO TV sets and two remote controls, feeding one set with HDTV resolution between 4801 and 1080i. More wonderfully, all of the standard definition content can be transferred to any of three screen size PocketDish players $329 (4-inch display) to $499 (5-inch) to $599 (7-inch wide screen LCD) at up to 6 xnd 10 times nromal speed. That means you can scoop up a cross country flight worth of video in about an hour, a commuter trains' worth in 10-15 minutes. No PC is needed. PocketDish systems can also record from any composite or s-video source .
Looking for the ultimate quality in your DVD transfers? Consider Sony's RDR-HX715 HD PVR-DVD Recorder with comopinet inputs. That's right, the highest quality digital voideo to digital video transfer you can get. That and up to 250 hour PVR capabilities with recording onto single or dual-layer (double capacity/qualuty) media (no monthly Fees, uses TV Guide Plus) about $700 at retailers and sonystyle.com
LG's LRM-519 Media Center HD Recorder and PVR uses Microsoft (subscription) guide services and caches or records HD programming to disk, SD programming to disk or DVD. below $500. lge.com
Whether touring the world or capturing family moments, Sony's HDR-HC1 HD Camcorder produces amazing 1080i materials using triple, massive CMOS imaging chips. Also deliver 3 megapixel stills onto standard DV tapes and makes fantastic DV recordings also. Below $2,000 at sonystyle.com
JVC's DR-MH30S uses multi-pass Variable bit rate encoding to record the optimum DVD quality for any length program. You can also high-speed dub TV programs (or DV camcorder footage) recorded on its internal 160 GB PVR drive to DVD-RAM and -R/RW media. Most impressive features are being able to fit a recording to within five minute sof any length you desire, ensuring the best possible quality on the DVD. Motion Active Progressive Scan and Variable Bit Rate encoidng make THIS machine's recording quality at any speed nearly as good as a faster (lower recording time!) speed on the competion. About $600 at retailers or jvc.com
SONOS - A breathrough, multi-room digital music system this year. From either the snazzy handheld controller, or any nearby PC or Mac, you can share and control music delivery in any or all rooms. Music can also be siphoned off of any Network attached Storage drives. Yes, Envisioneering crafted the white paper extolling its virtues, and weallstill feel this was alabor of love. Even asmorecomplex systems (Escient) and massmarket systems (hilips) try to emulate the ease of use and performance of the SONOS, years from now we beleive SONOS willbe remembered for not only pioneering but also advancing the state of multi-room digital music entertainment. Yes, Virgina, non-protected iTunes songs and Real's Rhapsody subscriptions are avaialble on demand.
Tech Toys
Meade ETX125EC Telescope w/Electronic Controller allows you to actually find the stars, planets and moons you always hear about - or wait for passive NASA photos to enjoy. Explore your own personal heaven for under $1,500. Others from $400 to $2500. Discovery Channel stores and meade.com
Radio Shack Robotics System - the Vex Robotics Starter Kit lets your ideas truly come alive and ambulate. Pretend you are Nolan Bushnell (Androbot) or Sony's Toshi Doi (the father of Aibo). Add motors, actuators, sensors more functions with the ease of an old Erector set. Under $300 at radioshack.com
15 minute battery charger - Radio Shack or Ray-O-Vac. There is no way to be more energy efficnet, environmentlayy friendly or quick-charged than these babies. ONce you've recharged in 15 moinutes, you'll find yourself lookingf or more expendable-battery [powered gadgets - iPod notwithstanding. Under $30.radioshack.com, rayovac.com
UFO-X Helicopter. Four counter-rotating propellers and flashing LEDs make this a tech toy treat indoors or out. Perfect use for the 15 minute rechargeable battereis above. Sears.com under $180
No 007 movie this year? Don't fret for Pierce Brosnan, you can play master spy with the Planon Systems DocuPen scanner. This miniscule wonder is about the size of a long pencil, yet it is a self-contained, 200 dpi roll-on scanner. Plug it into USB for page transfer-recharge and scan away. About $150 at planon.com. PC only now, a Mac and PC version - with color - is coming soon.
Digital Media
Tom Hanks & HBO's From the Earth to the Moon. Remastered on DVD-9 media for full film transfer fidelity. Show off your home theater with an out of this world show. Under 100. hbo.com
A Charlie Brown Christmas. Also remastered to DVD with a companion CD audio album. About $17.
The Complete New Yorker. If you're reading this blog, you're literate. Congratulations! Now treat yourself to decades of the world's finest writing for under $100.
Remember, the absolute best gift you can enjoy all yeaar...is to give. To family, friends, strangers, charity. The very fact that you are reading this column online, demonstrates that you are blessed with an abundance of good fortune and discretionary choice which many others do not enjoy. Make their holiday brighter by giving.
Christmas, Hanukkah,Kwanza, Celtic solstace, whatever holidays you respect, the common binding thread is giving. Giving joy to others with time or trinkets, is the finest gift any of us can ever enjoy.
