Hitachi is upping the stakes in notebook hard drive storage sizes as CES approaches by unveiling today the world’s highest capacity 2.5-inch mobile hard drive. Expect to see the new 500GB Travelstar 5K500 showing up in laptops sometime in February.

The Hitachi Travelstar 5K500, which will also be available in a slightly smaller 400GB model, is the company’s fourth generation mobile drive to use perpendicular magnetic recording technology. In exact storage terms you can fit on the 500GB drive up to 500 hours of digital video, 178 feature length movies, 250 games or 125,000 four-minute songs. These drives will be available with a 3.0Gb/s Serial ATA (SATA) interface and will include vibration protection technology against bumps which might impact system performance.

Netflix is set to launch their set-top box with the help of LG electronics. The union will allow subscribers to watch movies directly from the Internet to their TV’s. Netflix presently has upwards of 7 million subscribers, many of which have been waiting for this service. They are hoping to launch the set-top box by mid 2008. The price will range between $4.99 to about $16.99 a month, all inclusive of rates. Apparently, LG would embed the receiver into its $799 dual-DVD player, which supports the competing Blu-ray and HD-DVD high-definition DVD formats.

Vudu Inc, which already offers a set-top box for $399 lets consumers buy or rent movies from a selection of about 5,000 titles. Netflix on the other hand has about 90,000 titles available through their online mail order service. Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings sees it as a huge opportunity and said the LG partnership was the first of many such deals for the company.

Brother has a new label-printing product hitting CES this year that packs some impressive features into a small package. This Brother QL-570, designed with the small business in mind, connects to your PC or Mac via USB and has included software to make label printing relatively easy and actually pretty fast.

The software has a few print modes ranging from basically taking a screen shot to highlighting and printing or actually creating high quality labels. It supports up to 300 x 600 dpi resolution and can print out logos or graphics making professional looking labels for your letters, products or anything else you might get label-happy with. The only nice feature about this label printer aside from it’s reasonable $100 price tag is the speed. It can push out simple text-only labels faster than 1 per second at a rate of 68 per minute.

A USB microscope is only one of the cool new science gadgets that Celestron is showcasing at this years CES 2008 conference. The company is also going to be showing off this LCD Digital Microscope (LDM) that’s targeted for everyday science enthusiasts and features a built-in, high-resolution 3.5″ LCD screen to view your various microscopic items.

The LDM has multiple magnification levels including 4x, 10x, and 40x, and a 4x digital zoom giving it the ability to view things up to 1600 times their actual size. With this microscope, squinting through an eyepiece to share with others is just not necessary due to that handy color LCD screen.

At some point you should probably upgrade that ratty old home media room recliner you have to something a little more sleek, modern and comfortable. Salamander Designs is showcasing one such new piece of furniture at CES – the Olivia.

The Olivia, which did not have pricing information available, can be customized in a variety of ways, according to its maker. It sports a seating surface measuring 23.5 inches wide and needs just three inches of clearance behind it to recline. It features both a standard manual recline mechanism, and a powered mechanism controlled by a switch in the arm. A hidden footrest automatically extends as the seat reclines.

Lyngdorf Audio is showcasing at the Consumer Electronics Show two new home theater components for those looking for more edgy gear. This items are the TDA-2300 digital integrated amplifier and D-1 home theater processor.

The Lyngdorf D-1 is a home theater processor which will price at around $17,000. This high end home theater component is a multi-channel unit which is all digital, meaning there are no analog to digital or D/A conversion processes which occur. Its maker says this provides for “an unbroken digital signal path of the very highest quality all the way from the source to the speaker terminals.” It also includes a room correction system to help remove “any room-related distortion and coloration of the sound.”

If playing with your Star Trek putter on the golf course isn’t enough for you, or if you’re tired of waiting for the sweet geek release of death to enjoy your Star Trek coffin, then geek out your vehicle with the Wolo 485 Star Trek Air Horn.

You’ll have 5 air trumpets playing the most recognizable notes of the Star Trek theme at the touch of a button, and with 118 decibels of power. It wires directly to your battery to replace your existing car horn. The set includes a 12 volt compressor and impact-resistant plastic trumpets, tubing, relay, mounting hardware and instructions. It’s powered through your vehicle’s 12 volt cigarette lighter. Your inner geek will be happy, but don’t expect to win over the ladies with this one. You know, unless they are the sort that dress up like Klingons and attend all the conventions. In that case…Score!

Maxian E900T is a new PMP from Korea. Some of the features are a 4.3″ TFT touch screen, interface buttons on both sides, comes in a 30GB and 60GB version. Has the usual memory slot for SD cards, and a Li-Ion battery that has 4000mAh capacity. It has both music and video playback, a DMB receiver, GPS navigation, even a dictionary.

The Windows CE-based system boasts an 800 x 480 4.3-inch touchscreen, support for WMV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DiVX / XviD, H.264, WMA, AAC, MP3, and OGG formats. The E900T is capable of outputting 720p HD video, sports Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound, and Burr-Brown audio circuitry which outputs via S/PDIF. In it’s car mount it turns into a full featured GPS navigator. Basically, this is an all in one PMP that looks pretty promising.

Wiimote craziness knows no bounds. I thought the “Assassination kit” was a bit much. Now I find the “Betty Crocker” of Wiimote accessories. It may help you score some points for the Cooking Mama: Cook Off game, but you will look like a total dork.

The game pits you against other players as you prepare recipes and face off against 10 different nations. I guess they wanted to make the game more realistic, but honestly, this is wiimote accessory insanity. Someone needs to stop these people. How on Earth can you take yourself seriously in any competition while holding this thing? The Wiimote kit is only $20, but you will wonder what happened to your dignity.

We’ve covered our share of Wiimote accessories. Some, like the Shark Gun are downright strange. But nothing beats this latest bundle from Dragon Electronics, which offers no less than eight deadly ways to accessorize your Wiimote and nunchuck.

It includes a pair of daggers, an axe, a curved sword and a pistol to name a few. There must be some Chuck Norris Ninja game that I’m not aware of. What’s next, a screw together Wiimote rifle that comes in a silver briefcase? I bet they would call it the Oswald or “The Book Depository”. Anyway, if you want 8 dangerous weapons for your Wiimote, you can get this bundle for just under $30.

Celestron is bringing a number of cool new viewing products to CES. One grabbing our eye the most is a new USB microscope which is handheld. It’s called the Handheld Digital Microscope and it prices at around $140.

The Celestron Handheld Digital Microscope connects to a host computer through USB and can be used to view and capture images (snapshots or video) at 20 to 400 times magnification power. It weighs around three ounces and is designed with a digital camera and LED illuminator.

Microvision, a light-scanning technology developer, is bringing to CES to showcase an advanced prototype of “the first handheld, battery-powered, plug-and-play projector based on the company’s single micro-mirror laser scanning display technology.” The company is calling this new pico projector for now the Show.

The Microvision Show is powered by the company’s proprietary “ultra-miniature PicoP display engine.” This technology will, according to Microvision, let you project a widescreen, WVGA (848 X 480 pixels), DVD quality image from the projector in a range anywhere from 12 inches (30 cm) to 100 inches (2.5 m) in size depending upon the projection distance.

The beginning of a new year signals the event most consumer electronics geeks have been waiting for: the Consumer Electronics Show. We’re planning on putting a lot of coverage on this exciting event, including the creation of a category from which you can get the latest news on product announcements. We kick off this category with pre-show announcements – the first of which is a new USB flash drive from SanDisk which will offer automatic online backup of its data.

The SanDisk Cruzer Titanium Plus, priced at around $60, will offer an online backup service compatible with Windows and free for six months before having you incur a $30 a year charge. The 4GB USB flash drive will, after having new files copied to it, automatically back them up to an online account created by the user. An Internet connection is required of course and if one is not available the drive will wait until it detects a live connection through its host computer before backing up new files.

This stunningly good looking watch from Seiko Japan uses a series of spinning aluminum discs to display the time. And unlike many of the newer watches coming out of Japan these days, this one makes it very easy to read the time. Three numbered discs continuously rotate to display hours, minutes and seconds.

The Discus is part of Seiko’s Moving Image series, a line of automatic timepieces with great contemporary style. This one is available in two versions: one with a stainless body and white face, and one with a black metal body and a smoked glass face. It’s amazing what they are doing with watches these days. Makes me wish I had 10 arms.

This retro looking radio has a very simple design marrying the old with the new. It’s powered via the USB port on your computer and will give you the current time and weather conditions. It features two round portal like displays on the front. One display shows you the current week on the top, the hour and minute, and the bottom part displays the year, month and date. The other display gives you information about humidity and temperature.

It’s also available in a smaller version with a few features missing. Instead it has a count down function and a birthday reminder. I just like the fact that these remind me of my grandfather’s electronics. They are basic with no bells and whistles. Sometimes it’s nice to have something low-key.