When my four-year-old daughter was born most camcorders available still used tapes to record video. The tapes were Mini DV, not the massive VHS tapes from my youth, but tapes nonetheless. Today tapes are quickly going the way of the Dodo with most camcorders using hard drivers or flash media for storage.

Creative has announced that its Vado HD camcorder is now shipping at a price of $199. The small camcorder records in 720p HD resolution and video can be output directly to a HDTV in 1080i resolution over an included HDMI cable.

The problem with having your beer tap and your TV seperate is that sooner or later you’re going to have to get up off your ass and get a beer. That means missing like 2 seconds of TV time. Something important might happen during that time. With this awesme innovation, you won’t ever have to miss anything again while getting a beer. It’s the v-POD beer dispenser with LCD screen from the house of MicroMatic.

They are offered in stainless steel and brass double column style Tower with 6 and 4 faucets respectively. The dispensers come with a built-in 10-inch LCD screen, remotely mounted DiGi viewer and stereo speakers. What else do you need? The brass finished v-POD “T” Tower beer dispenser will cost you $3,380. The stainless steel version sells for $3,050.

Today is one of the busiest shopping days of the year with holiday shoppers flocking to stores and malls for good deals. Despite the poor economy, electronics are still expected to sell well this holiday season and Vizio has announced some of the deals on its HDTVs for today.

Vizio is one of the top shippers of TVs in America. Costco will be offering a 19-inch VA19 LCD HDTV for $199.99 with a coupon through 12-7. At Walmart the 32-inch VP322 plasma HDTV, (the set credited with bringing plasma bask by many research firms) will retail for $437.

The nationwide switch from analog to digital broadcasts will be here before you know it. While the switch won’t affect most TV watchers in the U.S., there are some who are still not ready. As a result of old analog TVs not functioning after the switch, many have been upgrading to digital flat panel TVs. This has been one of the major factors pushing growth in the TV market.

DisplaySearch has released its quarterly reports on the number of TVs shipped worldwide for Q3 2008. Despite the poor economy, TV shipments grew by 11% quarter-over-quarter and 6% year-over-year. Over 53 million TVs were shipped worldwide in the quarter. Shipments in North America grew more than expected with a 12% increase compared to last quarter to 10 million units.

Here’s another clone out of China. The HB 778 dual SIM card phone looks a lot like a phone we know. Yep. The Touch Diamond or Touch Pro. It sports a 2.8-inch touch screen and of course, dual slider design that slides up for the numeric keypad and side slide for gaming keys instead of a QWERTY keyboard. You’ll get a TV function, FM radio, 2.8-inch Touch screen, touch keypad with vibrator, 1.0-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, dual SIM slot, and microSD slot. It even comes preloaded with classic games like Super Mario. The very familiar HB 778 will cost you $151.

HP has announced the TouchSmart tx2. The laptop will be able to distinguish between voluntary pinching with two fingers and any accidental input. You can also use the bundled stylus to enter data. The tx2’s 12.1-inch screen is fully multi-touched up, but not in the iPhone/iPod touch way. It uses capacitive touch, which enables more accurate input, also brushes and swipes and two-handed gestures. You can use two hands to crop photos for instance.

Some other features are: integrated digital TV tuner, dual core AMD Turion X2 processor and ATI Radeon 3200 graphics. The screen can be twisted and folded all the way around; converting the standard notebook into a tablet PC. With a digital pen you can make notes and your writing will be converted to editable text. The HP TouchSmart tx2 will be available in January 2009 for about $1,150.

Dell has a computer for every need and more than one type of computer user can see benefit from the new Intel Core i7 CPUs. The benefit to gamers of a fast CPU is obvious so it makes sense to see the i7 CPU in a gaming rig. However, Dell is also putting the processor into computers not aimed at gamers.

Dell announced a new Studio XPS PC that uses the new Core i7 processors with pricing starting at only $949. At that price you can be the CPU used is the low-end Core i7, but it should still offer good performance.

When it comes to affordable, big picture widescreen movies and gaming the route to take is a projector. With a projector, you can get HD images as large as traditional HDTVs for a fraction of the cost. To get a 100-inch image on a plasma or LCD TV would run tens of thousands of dollars where a projector can easily do it for a few thousand dollars.

ViewSonic has introduced a new projector aimed at used looking for widescreen resolution and full 1080p image quality. The projector is called the PJ359w and offers 2000 lumens of brightness and a 1280 x 800 WXGA resolution.

Want to turn your iPod into a TV? How about one of those old TV/VCR combos? I can think of a better choice of TV, but at least this will increase your screen size and give you more volume. This mini TV-set magnifies your iPod’s screen up to 2.8 inches. The iPod Nano 3G TV will be available soon for the retail price of about $23. Your iPod slips into the back as shown. It probably would have been cooler if it slid in the VHS slot.

It wasn’t too long ago that to get a second display often meant adding a second video card. For notebook users adding a second display was often impossible. When DisplayLink technology came to market adding more displays became much easier.

The latest DisplayLink LCD on the market comes from a Koran company called Nanovision. The company has announced a line of 7-inch DisplayLink LCDs that gets power and connectivity from the host PC over a single USB connection.

Looks like Western Digital has entered the world of HD media streaming. The WD TV HD Media Player is said to “turn your USB drive into an HD media player, allowing you to watch your favorite HD movies on your TV.” So, basically it lets you plug in a USB hard drive and play multimedia clips up to 1080p on your HDTV via HDMI/composite outputs. Comes with a remote control and browsing software. The small 1.6- x 4.9- x 3.9-inch box is pretty portable and the $129.99 price doesn’t hurt too much.

No one can deny that Apple’s iTunes store is seriously popular. The store is the single largest music retailer and has one of the largest collections of music available. The App store is wildly popular and the iTunes movie rental, sale, and TV show market is booming. It seems that Apple can’t do wrong with iTunes.

In fact, Apple has announced that it has now sold over 200 million TV show episodes via iTunes. Apple also says that over 1 million of those shows sold have been in HD resolution. Major networks all contribute programs to the iTunes store including FOX, CBS, ABC, and CBS.

Sharp dropped their AQUOS DX series, the first LCD TVs with built-in Blu Ray Disc Recorders. It’s a series of 16 new models ranging in size from 26-Inch to 52-Inch screen sizes in a variety of colors. All are compatible with BD-RE V2.1 (Single / Dual layer), BD-R 1.1 (Single / Dual Layer) recordable disc, and most available playable discs. The HDTVs also feature the Digital W Tuner which allows you to watch TV while recording programs. The Kameyama LCD Panel will provide smooth picture quality. It will cost you from €1200 to €3600.

We had the opportunity to check out the Epson MovieMate 55 all-in-one projector, which offers a high-quality projector, a CD/DVD player and stereo speakers in a portable unit. Epson’s goal with the MovieMate 55 seems to be to offer consumers an affordable, easy and convenient home entertainment console that goes anywhere. Did they succeed? Read on.

Many of us remember when projectors were bulky things the size of a suitcase. Not anymore. Now they are phone sized. NTT Docomo is getting into the act too. They unveiled a prototype cell phone that doubles as a video projector and demonstrated it at CEATEC JAPAN 2008. The projector would give you a 20-inch image from a distance of about 80 centimeters and roughly 100 minutes of viewing time, which is enough to watch TV shows, podcasts and short films, if not 2 hour movies.

Red, green and blue LEDs are used as the light source. Pixel count is 480 × 320 (HVGA), and its luminance is 7.5lm. The power consumption is about 3W. The company plans to have a working version of the device ready for market in about three years. The way the tech in these projector phones is shaping up, I wouldn’t be surprised if it took half that time.