GadgetReview

Praise the gods of ASUS!  Having never wanted to say that, ASUS brings us their new surround sound bar named the Cine5.  Boasting an accurate surround sound experience, the Cine5 speaker is just under 15 inches long and packs 5 speakers with 28 watts of maximum amp’age.

All 5.1 inputs are handled via 3.5mm jacks and the headphone out jack promises surround action after hours.  Looks pretty cool, although there’s no info as of now concerning the price point and release date.  For those of you looking to pimp out your small HDTV or monitor, the Cine5 could be just what the Dr. ASUS ordered.  For the record, I never wanted to say that either.

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Making it easy for kids to get into digital photography, the KidZoom Plus Digital Camera is a great way to get them started.  The internal memory of 256mb’s can be upgraded to 2GB’s through the SD card slot and the camera also shoots movies and has games.

The camera also has TV hookups and a small onboard editing program in addition to a CD-ROM photo editor for adding silly frames, stamps, funny face effects, kaleidoscope and distortion effects.

Buy one now for your budding little voyeur for only $50.

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Cool for kids of all ages as well as a possible Halloween accessory,  Hot Topic brings us the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shell Backpack.  With a positively plush pleather aesthetic you should be able to pack a ton of pizza in this thing.

Four appropriately colored masks are included and the backpack is priced at a fair $4o.  Any guesses on core demographic?  Ravers, teens, or hipsters?

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The onslaught of Star Wars merchandise continues to dominate the blogs and beyond.  Today’s awesomeness comes in the form of the R2-D2 Pepper Mill.  With the twist of his dome piece, R2 effectively sprays ground pepperlings across your grub of choice.  On sale now from ThinkGeek for only $20.

Any guesses on what character would be the matching salt shaker?

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I must have completely missed this thing at CES this year.  What is basically a digital picture frame that runs widgets, news has now reached the blogs that the Sony Dash will now be able to run streaming video from a host of websites including Netflix.

What could be a game changer for this device, pricing is set a $200 and it will start shipping in April.  Get your dash and get your swerve on.

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The iRecord Pro is an all encompassing personal media recorder that literally has all angles covered.  From recording audio and video directly to your PC or Mac to your iPhone or PSP, the iRecord Pro also allows for unattended timed recordings.  The amount of specs on this thing is plain staggering and it should provide everything you need given the scenario.

The iRecord Pro will also charge any connected iPod.  For more information check out the iRecord Pro website and it’s available now for $260.

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News broke yesterday that Netflix would bring 1080p video and 5.1 channel surround sound by year’s end.  Now, after things have developed, Netflix has back peddled and said that 1080p is not on the books this year despite Microsoft’s Silverlight codec boasting support for the resolution.  But 5.1-channel surround sound will arrive and with it closed captioning.

Do you care about 1080p versus the current 720p found on the Xbox 360 and Roku box?  At this point I’d rather the improved sound and then the higher resolution since the bandwidth demands are probably twice that of the current HD resolution.

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Due to release later this month, The Limited Edition Michael Jackson “This Is It” Hard Drive by Samsung is the perfect way to celebrate the legacy of the late great one.  The 500GB hard drive will contain a DRM protected version of the recently released MJ film “This Is It”.  The USB 2.0 hard drive is priced at $123 and is set to ship on February 24th.

Similar to The Beatles USB stick, the S2 Portable HXMU050DA, in which it’s also called, will be received in high regard by any mega fan of the King of Pop.

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Folks, there were a LOT of things to come boiling out of the CES show.  No one person can possibly pass on all the sheer cool that was generated by that convention.  Thus, you’ll likely be getting the total update for days and weeks to come.

Today, a gadget that made the rounds at CES and the Hologram Display Exhibition in Taiwan: namely, Innovision’s HoloAD Holographic Display.

The HoloAD uses a specially designed case in which three different images are projected onto a glass pyramid, generating an “animated full-color hologram”. Even better, the item you’re projecting as a hologram can be placed in a display unit under the projection glass for added effect.

It galls me that the first use of serious holography beyond proof of concept is advertising, but hopefully we’ll get to immersive entertainment and holodecks later.  After all, without the impetus of cash behind it, who’d ever get a gadget off the ground anyway, and nothing screams “cash cow” like appealing to advertisers.

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Cydle had some cool looking PMP’s at their booth by way of one HD radio and Mobile TV players.  Each were priced at a decent subscription free $120 and should see shelf time around March of this year.  The players could be viewed vertically and horizontally and had a host of other features besides its core offering.

Each player, the P29A (Mobile TV), and the P29H (HD Radio) has a high resolution touch screen, gravity sensor, music player, voice recorder, and more.  We like how small and fair priced these units were and looking forward to some more “hands-on” time with them in the future. …Continue reading: CES 2010: Cydle Mobile TV and HD Radio PMP’s