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.”

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.

NAD Electronics is getting ready for the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show by showcasing products it will be introducing for the coming year. One of these is the NAD IPD-1 iPod dock, priced at around $150.

The NAD IPD-1 is designed to work with other NAD A/V products, though we assume it will work with non-NAD gear as well. With this dock one can output audio and video signals from it to a connected home entertainment system via gold-plated RCA jacks and S-video. It also charges your iPod’s battery.

It’s been a tradition that as millions of families recover from their Thanksgiving turkey dinners they start formulating battle plans for Black Friday shopping deals. But with a slowing economy, a shaky housing market, high gas prices and weakened consumer confidence many sales industry analysts are predicting that this year’s Black Friday won’t be anywhere as crazy as those from recent years. Many stores such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, CompUSA, J.C. Penney, Toys-R-Us and more have already had the prices of their products lowered after Halloween hoping to spark slugging store sales.

“I don’t expect to see the crazy knock-the-door-down crowds as usual,” said Marshall Cohen, the chief economist of the consumer research company NPD Group. “Where you had 500 people at 5 A.M. last year, this year you’ll see 200.”

Consider this next time you are about to click on the buy link to complete your TiVo purchase through Amazon: a larger number of people just like you are doing just the same. This is according to the Consumer Electronics Association, who is out with a report today CE shopping online is on the rise.

The CEA estimates over 14 percent of the close to $160 billion spent on electronics in the last year was spent online. This is up from five percent in 2005, making this product category follow only books and clothing as items purchased most often online. The consumer electronics trade group estimates consumers will spend a staggering $22 billion on electronics this holiday season through outlets like Amazon.

Why can’t we get more of the things that Japanese electronics consumers get? It seems that western phones are never as cool as the ones that come from Asia. Is that because the phone designers have deemed this market as boring? Are we westerners too afraid to take a chance and show our inner child in our purchases?

If that was true then why did so many people suddenly want the phone that Neo used in the first “Matrix” movie? Maybe after seeing this next rad phone design someone out in the west will take notice and loosen their tie a little.

Casio Computer made an announcement yesterday in Berlin at the IFA, a consumer electronics trade show, that pushes the envelope outward as to how fast digital camera speeds can be. The company showed off its latest invention, a camera that can take a burst of 60 frames per second at its most maximum resolution or take VGA quality video at 300 frames per second (that’s faster than the human eye can see) thanks to a high-speed LSI image processing chip inside of it. There is also a feature called Pre-shot Burst Mode which will also record a sequence of images just before your finger presses the button, just in case something happens in the moment before you thought it was going to happen.

Smartparts is not a name which immediately rolls off the tongue when I think of consumer electronics. That name is sounding a little sweeter though with its unveiling of the SP15MW digital picture frame. What’s so cool about that you ask? How about the 15-inch display screen for starters.

That’s right – 15-inches of digital picture display goodness. That beats out many of the other digital photo frames on the market. Smartparts said in a press release the SP15MW also has a 24-bit display capable of showing over 16 million colors and supporting …

It looks like Verizon is getting ready to launch its Wireless V Cast Mobile TV service later this week. According to a hidden away sign-up sheet located on the Verizon website, the service is scheduled to kick off on March 1.

When queried as to the information Verizon neither confirmed or denied that 3/1 is V-Day for the company, nor does the website list exactly where the service will be provided or how much it will cost. At least Verizon hasn’t removed the option from its sales website which is a …

Continuing the battle of DVD replacement formats, Sony is launching a less expensive player for Blu-ray discs bringing some additional pull to the Blu-ray format over HD DVD to replace standard DVD’s.

According to Randy Wayhick, senior vice president of home products for Sony Electronics, this summer the company will begin offering the BDP-S300 Blu-ray player, which has all the same capabilities as the BDP-S1 pictured here excluding the price tag. The BDP-S300 will retail for $400 less than the similar existing player, making its retail price at $599 …

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is a trade show held each January in Las Vegas, Nevada. Sponsored by the Consumer Electronics Association, the show is open to the public. At the show, new electronic equipment is exhibited and demonstrated with many new products being previewed or announced.

Bill Gates showcased OQO’s newest UMPC, the model 02, during his keynote address at CES 2007 in Las Vegas. The model 02 is a fully-featured, pocket-sized PC that is capable of supporting Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system.

Design
The OQO model 02 is housed in a rugged, black magnesium alloy chassis that measures 5.6″(W) x 3.3″(H) x 1.0″(D) and weighs under 1lb with the standard battery (battery life of up to 6 hours). The design features a shock-mounted hard drive and drop-detect technology.

Specifications
The model 02 has a 5″ WVGA LCD with 1000×600 and …

Joost is a new global broadband television service co-founded by Niklas Zennstram and Janus Friis of former Skype fame. Joost combines TV and broadband Internet with the promise that you can watch TV unfettered of the schedules and restrictions that come with traditional television.

Formerly known under the code name “The Venice Project”, Joost fills a critical gap in the online video entertainment market. According to Joost, the video catalog will contain the biggest and best shows from the TV studios, including specialized programs created by professionals and …

AOL and Haier displayed a hard-drive based music and video player to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

The device, wittingly named the “Smartscreens Media Device”, plays music as well as WMV and MPEG4 videos and works with music stores supporting Windows Media, but the real kicker is that this player supports WiFi and Bluetooth connections. The WiFi enables it to directly download music from an open WiFi network through the Linux OS that it runs on, as well as streaming internet …

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Initiative unveiled it’s XO laptop, the initiatives first industrial prototype at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

The laptop is designed to be used with very little power, and can run on less than three watts to browse the internet and only one watt to display an electronic book, compared to the 40 watts necessary to power a typical laptop. The XO Laptop from OLPC has a battery charger built into the machine that runs by pulling a cord to recharge the …