The World’s Greatest Collection of Gadgets

This is a day when thousands of techies are flying home from Las Vegas, coming back from the bacchanal of the Consumer Electronics Show.

As my friend Jonathan Silverstein wrote, "What happens in Vegas, stays in…Well, you know."  I’m not sure the technology world learned very much from the experience.  In the end, the CES is a big convention, with booths and companies hawking their wares, and people drinking a lot on expense accounts.  Jonathan’s summary of best-in-show is HERE. And we’ve summed it up as well with a slide show HERE.  The gadget of the week, of course, wasn’t in Vegas at all, it was shown off the MacWorld show in San Francisco–but enough about the license-plate scanners used by the San Francisco Police.  Our sometime partners at CNET picked a DVD player as their favorite gadget from CES–the LG BH100, which is able to play the two incompatible formats of high-definition DVD.  (It’s in our slide show.)  Price tag: $1,200.  You’ll do almost as well if you buy one machine that plays Sony’s Blu Ray and another that plays Toshiba’s HD DVD.  The consensus is that nothing in this high-stakes standards war was settled.  And you’re stuck in the middle. At least you’re not stuck at an airport, trying to get home. 
(Photo: the LG BH100 "Super Multi Blue" DVD player.  AP Photo.)