Just on the heals of the news that Warner is going Blu-ray exclusive and talks that Universal and Paramount might be moving to Blu-ray, Philips has announced the new, reasonably-priced BDP7200 Blu-ray disc player. The BDP7200 is the successor to the BDP9000 and features full HD 1080p output with the ability to upscale regular DVDs to 1080p at 24 frames per second. It also uses EasyLink HDMI Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) protocols to let you control other compatible devices, picture in picture and Deep Color giving more than a billion colors and removing on-screen color banding. Phillips is offering the BDP7200 Blu-ray player at a price point of $349 and is expecting to have it available in April of this year.

We aren’t sure what shocks us more with this product announcement – the Taser itself or the fact it is outfitted in a leopard print. Either way you look at it Taser drew some attention at CES this week by unveiling this stylish (?) take on a way to zap your attacker. It is the latest addition to the company’s C2 line up of personal protection devices.

Taser also was showing off a holster for your C2 which doubles as a MP3 player with 1GB of memory. That’s right – you can stalk the streets at night, favorite rock song playing in your buds, as you zap bad guys all around town.

Read more about Taser’s new gear after the jump.

Sony used CES this week as a platform to unveil a HD version of one of its computers. This “spherical digital living system” is called the VAIO TP and it will be available later this month in a standard version for around $1,600 and a premium version at around $3,000.

The updated VAIO TP is now HD friendly, according to Sony, and can support playback of premium HD channels when separate CableCARDs are plugged into it. This option though is only available on the premium version. The upside though is both versions come with a Blu-ray Disc optical drive.

Get more details on the new VAIO TP after the jump.

Many PCs were on display, but MTube presented the world’s smallest PC at CES 2008. It is seriously tiny, measuring 3.34 x 3.34 x 0.78 inches and weighs 5.3 ounces only. It’s a full-featured computer that runs the Linux operating system and is a WiFi-enabled UMPC.

Some specs- Processor: VIA C7-M @ 1.0 GHz, 8GB of flash for storage, 2.8″ LCD display with 640 x 480 resolution, a battery life of 4 hours, WiMAX & WiFi.

If you were on Alienware’s newsletter list you might have gotten notice last night that the company has quietly made the new m15x gaming notebooks available for order. The new Area-51′s come have a few configurations in the lineup with the tow higher-end ones available now for $2099 and $2699.

The m15x is a 15.4-inch widescreen notebook with the Intel Core 2 Extreme processor and the NVIDIA GeForce 8800m GTX. You can get up to 4GB of DDR2 memory, dual HDD and high-def video and audio. They also feature Command Center and a Stealth Mode power management. There is also a $1499 model that is listed on the site but not available for order quite yet. As NotebookReview points out, the $2100 model looks to be a pretty decent deal with the Core 2 Duo processor, quality graphics card, fast HDD and 2GB of memory.

Haier America (?!) this week used CES as its platform for getting into the wireless MP3 player market. It unveiled a new line up of flash and hard drive based portable media players which make use of online services like Rhapsody to collect content wirelessly. This players are called the ibiza Rhapsody and it is available now in at least a 30GB hard drive model.

The ibiza Rhapsody players for Haier let you, in summary, have “Wi-Fi enabled access to unlimited digital entertainment possibilities. With the ibiza Rhapsody, consumers can now enjoy the Rhapsody digital music service, AOL Video and other digital content from just about anywhere there’s an available Wi-Fi hotspot.” You can also directly subscribe to a variety of podcasts from the player and enjoy an integrated FM radio.

Get the full details after the jump.

Samsung was showing off at CES this week a new 10-megapixel digital camera with HD video recording capability. It’s a point and shoot model called the NV24 HD and Samsung is pricing it at around $350 with a March release date.

The Samsung NV24 HD is a fully loaded camera. It can record 720p HD video at a maximum frame rate of 30fps. It measures a fairly compact 3.8 x 2.4 x 0.7-inches. It makes uses of a 24mm Schneider lens and 3.6x optical zoom.

Want more details? Check out the full press release after the jump.

The idea behind Nokia’s latest concept phone is the merging of communications and health and environment. One would be able to share environmental data that the sensing device collects and view other users’ shared data, increasing global environmental awareness.

A sensor unit will be worn on a wrist or as a neck strap made from solar cells that power the sensors. NFC (near field communication) technology will relay information by touch from the sensors to the phone, or even to other devices that support NFC technology. Both the phone and the sensor unit will be as compact as possible to minimize materials used, and those materials would be renewable and/or reclaimed. Inside the devices, would be more energy saving technology.

Just before the close of 2007 Warner Music Group joined EMI and Universal by dropping their digital copying restrictions on downloaded songs and offering DRM-free music through Amazon. Today Sony BMG, the last of the big four and the second largest music company in the world, has joined in and removed copying restrictions on their downloaded music and are offering their songs through Amazon as well. This makes Amazon the first online retailer to offer DRM-free song downloads from the world’s four largest music companies.

DRM’s previously had been required by these large music companies in order to prevent songs from being illegally copied which was believed to hurt overall music sales. The DRM would often limit the number of times and devices a song could be copied, such as a limited number of computers or a particular brand of MP3 player. Most consumers and rival media players manufacturers have been generally apposed to the restrictions due to these limitations.

Allegro Rainbow’s Guitar video game has been rocking CES this week. Music Wizard Group’s Guitar Wizard video game is a step forward after their successful Piano Wizard title, but Guitar Wizard is not just another version of Guitar Hero. It’s actually an educational video game that’s designed to help kids of all ages to read and play music.

Guitar Wizard will be available on both PC and MAC platforms, and will come with an actual honest to God guitar from US Music Corp. and an Interface by SoundTech. Plus, the software is compatible with just about any MIDI guitar.

Pyramat, known for making innovative gaming accessories, brought a well stacked line up of products to CES. This items included a full-on chair, a laptop accessory and a few rockers. All of these products should be available now.

Pyramat was specifically showing off the PC Gaming Chair 2.1 (pictured), Laptop Sound Booster, PM450-WR Sound Rocker and S5000 Sound Rocker. Prices on these items range from around $90 to $250.

For more details, check out the full press release after the jump.

Parrot has been showing off some interesting new Bluetooth-related products at CES this week. One which has been catching a lot of attention are the Parrot DS1120 speakers, priced at around $280.

The Parrot DS1120 speakers have an interesting look about them and are capable of playing back through the Bluetooth A2DP profile audio being streamed over from a viable source. For those devices which do not have this profile integrated, Parrot includes a Bluetooth 2.0 USB dongle which can be connected for broadcast. There is also a standard RCA line-in connection for other devices.

So you say you want a computer display which currently exceeds the industry standard for dynamic contrast ratio? ViewSonic has just such a display, showing off at CES the new ViewSonic VLED221wm. This 22-inch display is pricing at around $800.

The ViewSonic VLED221wm has a staggering dynamic contrast ratio of 12000:1. This makes it, according to ViewSonic, “the ultimate monitor for life-like high-definition content.” This display also is capable of “high-quality color reproduction” via a technology which lets it display 118 percent of the color gamut based on the National Television System Committee (NTSC) guidelines. Sounds …

Sony, the proclaimed leader in the high-definition camcorder category, rolled into CES this week with six new HD camcorder models. They offer features like 1920 x 1080 resolution recording and face detection technology. Sony says “the SR12, SR11, SR10, UX20 and UX10 models will all ship in March for about $1,400, $1,200, $1,000, $1,000 and $800, respectively. The HDR-HC9 camcorder will ship in February for about $1,100.”

The consumer electronics giant added that all these new camcorders feature a new high-profile encoding system and, depending upon the model, offer other must haves like high resolution digital still captures and hybrid/hybrid plus movie recording.

You can get the full details of these new Sony HD camcorders after the jump.

[UPDATE: Turns out this phone has actually been out for awhile. Shame to Sanyo for dating the press release for this week!]

Sanyo and Sprint together have announced from CES the availability of an upgraded model of the popular Katana cell phone. The new one is known as the Sanyo Katana DLX and it’s priced at around $130 with mail in rebate and two year contract.

The Sanyo Katana DLX is optimized for broadband related Sprint multimedia content. It is available in several body colors and offers features like phone as a modem, Bluetooth, a 1.3 megapixel digital camera built in and support for microSDHC memory cards.