Gefen announced to the press via an email a few days ago its upcoming CES line up. Amongst the cables, switchers and other line items we noted something of interest: two personal video recorders. No specific release date was given for the items, now available for pre-order, but we did note there’s a hard drive based PVR for around $1,000 and a USB memory device based one for around $650.

Gefen’s HD-PVR, which will also connect to removable USB memory devices for storage, has a built-in 80GB hard drive. With this you connect the PVR to an HDMI enabled display, select the video source and function you want from the source inputs and off you go recording. Recording can be done up to 1080i and there’s an on-screen menu for control options. Through this PVR you can also scan storage devices for other types of media to interact with.

Not all home theater systems, especially older ones, have video upscaling as a feature in either the DVD player or A/V receiver. For those people Gefen has announced its new Home Theater Scaler Plus, priced at around $500.

The Gefen Home Theater Scaler Plus scales video signals to high resolutions ranging from 480i to 1080p, converting analog signals to digital. It comes equipped with with inputs for component video with left/right audio, composite/s-video with left/right audio, and two HDMI inputs each with digital TOSlink and S/PDIF audio. There’s also HDMI output and the video scaler is HDCP compliant.

Gone are the days of having your USB devices tethered within the standard 5 meter limit of a USB cable. The Gefen USB 400FO USB extender kit uses fiber optics with full USB 2.0 standard compatibility to stretch the reach of not just one but four USB connections up to 1,650 feet or 500 meters.

The kit comes with two externally powered boxes, the send unit (USB 400FOS) and the receive unit (USB 400FOR). Your computer connects up to four USB cables to the sender unit which sends the signal as far as 500 meters to the receiver unit where it gets converted back to a USB connection to power your RC Car or Missile Launcher from almost a third of a mile away.

How would you like to be able to use select USB devices a good distance away from your computer? That’s the idea behind the new Gefen Wireless USB Extender, priced at around $400.

The Gefen Wireless USB Extender makes use of a sender/receiver system to wirelessly transmit USB 2.0 signals up to 100 feet away. Gefen says it’s an ideal solution for those in particular who don’t want to run USB cables around the area. It requires no installation of USB drivers and can reportedly deliver data at speeds up to 54 Mbps.