Hasta La Gadget!

Audiovox this week announced a partnership with Sony that will bring the Japanese electronics manufacturer’s popular PlayStation 2 console to cars everywhere.

Audiovox plans three models, which so far lack an official product name, price, or ship date. It appears that the company will offer these as aftermarket options to car manufacturers, and possibly to retail stores as well.

The flagship model looks a bit like standard in-car DVD player — and it should, because that’s essentially what it is. Inside the unit, however, are the guts of a PlayStation 2 player. It also incorporates a full-color 16:9 10-inch screen, 16-channel FM modulator, two game controllers, headphones, and a DVD remote.

LAS VEGAS — Apple may be about to license a next-generation surround sound format for
iTunes that will deliver immersive audio files to cars, home
theater systems, computers and iPods.

Fraunhofer, the company behind the new MPEG Surround format, suggested that Apple would be one of its newest licensees.

"There is an unsigned contract with a well-known PC player application," said Robert Bleidt, general manager of Fraunhofer’s audio and multimedia division (pictured above), which would give the software the ability to "natively
support MPEG Surround."

Surround sound audio produces a deeply immersive listening experience by delivering 5, 7 or more separate channels of audio — plus an additional channel for the subwoofer — each of which can be delivered to a separate speaker by a compatible audio system. While surround sound is common in high-end home theater systems and is supported by the DVD and Blu-ray formats, it hasn’t been easy to get digital audio files that support surround sound. Now Fraunhofer, the inventor of the MP3 format and co-inventor of the AAC codec already used in the iTunes store, has a new format that encodes surround sound audio data for playback on compatible stereo systems, but is still playable on older, non-surround devices (like iPods).

There are a couple of reasons to think that the application Bleidt is referring to is iTunes.

Fraunhofer said it has already developed an MPEG Surround plug-in for iTunes and Quicktime: the first indication that iTunes is the store he was referring to. And clearly, iTunes, with its domination of the digital music scene, would be Fraunhofer’s first choice. Other than Windows Media Player, iTunes is the only "well-known PC player application" in existence, but the stores listed in Windows Media Player have nowhere near iTunes’ market share, and Fraunhofer’s stated goal is to sell MPEG Surround files online.

In light of all of this — and Fraunhofer’s booth demonstration of an iPod playing the surround-sound-enabled files (pictured below) — I’m more or less convinced that Apple is the company he was referring to.

If Apple signs this contract, its timing could be impeccable. Video upgrades are paving the way for a whole new class of consumers to embrace surround sound in the home, and some new cars already offer it too.

Fraunhofer has a number of factors in its
favor — mainly, that it’s backwards-compatible with anything that can
play an MP3, including the iPod and iPhone. If you play an MPEG Surround file on a plain old stereo MP3 player,
you’ll hear exactly what you would have if the file was a vanilla MP3.

But if you play the song on a device that supports Fraunhofer’s surround sound format, the 10 to 20 percent of the file containing the surround sound information kicks in to turn the stereo signal back into a discrete 5.1-channel signal.

The difference is palpable. Bleidt played songs for me from several genres, in DVD-A, MPEG Surround and stereo, on the stereo in the above-pictured car. The first two sounded nearly identical, meaning that MPEG Surround does a fine job of preserving channels discretely. By comparison, the stereo version sounded flat, canned and boring.

"Stereo music is like listening through a window, and the
performance is in the next room. With surround, you’re in the studio,
you’re in the concert hall — it’s an immersing, enveloping experience," said Bleidt, "a better experience than just two-channel stereo."

The above-mentioned contract would only add support for the format to iTunes but
commerce could be next. Apple was the first company to put together a
comprehensive online store for stereo music. It would only be fitting
if it was also first to start selling digital surround sound files,
whether with Fraunhofer’s technology or someone else’s. And thanks to the failed DVD-A and SACD high-end audio formats, the labels already have lots of music in surround, just waiting for the next promising format to come along. One major label has already agreed to use MPEG Surround, and Fraunhofer is in talks with the other three.

"MPEG Surround is our vision of the first practical way to get surround sound
music to mainstream consumers," said Bleidt. "Today, they are used to
hearing surround on films or digital TV, but they don’t have access to
surround sound music, even though the music industry has thousands of
hours of surround content mixed and sitting in their vaults, ready to
sell."

With MPEG Surround, record labels would have a nearly painless way to start offering
surround sound, and iTunes would be the natural place for them to sell it. The files would be
preferable to both the CD and the non-surround MP3s already
zinging around the world’s file sharing networks. This, as I’ve mentioned before, could give the labels something to sell to consumers that they don’t already have.

The next step would be to add surround sound simulation to the iPod. "Looking
forward," said Bleidt, "we think that new music players will eventually have binaural
playback mode that lets you experience a realistic simulation of
surround over ordinary earphones."

Photos: Eliot Van Buskirk/Wired.com

The iRiver Wave Home is a wireless gadget with a touchscreen that relies on a constant stream of web widgets that offer up tiny-bits of tasty, digestible media content.

Sound familiar?

It should, because it’s basically the exact same device as the Chumby, which came out last year to wide acclaim (and a healthy amount of hype). The only difference between them is that the Wave Home appears to be less cuddly and more prone to die from a fall in the kitchen. 

Ok, fine, there are more differences. The Wave comes with a separate control that also serves as a wireless phone handset used for VoIP calls, though you can actually use the 7-inch (800 x 480 pixel) touch display as a virtual keypad. Also, the original Chumby (right) did not support certain codecs of video playback (the current versions uses Flash Lite 3 capabilities), but this one is supposed to be play pretty much everything.

Like the Chumby, it’s perforated with the usual SD, Ethernet, and USB ports, but this one comes with a 1.3-megapixel CMOS camera. The picture quality of the cam, however, will probably look dated by the end of the year.

When we reviewed the Chumby, we noted that the best part about it was the quality of the streams from internet radio and when music played from our iPod, and part of that was due to its quality speakers. The iRiver is also touting the Wave Home’s speakers as one its integral parts – if they doesn’t work just as good, expect a lot of disappointed ears in the G-Lab when it comes in for a review.

IRiver is not releasing the price yet, but the rumor is that it will come down to about $400. It will launch next month in Korea and in the U.S. by mid-year.

LAS VEGAS — Dell doesn’t have a booth here at CES, but the company staked out a floor at the trendy Palms casino to make several product announcements — and to try to win a few style points.

The stodgy PC maker from Round Rock, Texas has been known for years for its workhorse PCs and notebooks — functional, economical, generally reliable, and butt-ugly. But in the last year, the company has been working hard to change that perception. For instance, its compact Studio Hybrid PC has a sleek look and can be modded with replaceable outer sleeves, so you can color it (red, black, bamboo) to suit your decor. And its line of Studio laptops, which can be customized with any one of more than 100 different artistic designs, has been selling well.

This week, the company rolled out two new laptops, the Studio XPS 16 (shown above with Dell’s head design guy, Ed Boyd) and the Studio XPS 13, that continue the trend of wrapping computers in cutting-edge cases made out of interesting materials. And the company announced a mysterious "luxury brand" called Adamo, which so far seems to be little more than a slim black notebook (or the chassis of a notebook) in the hands of a supermodel.

The XPS 16 and XPS 13 are notebooks with, respectively, 16-inch and
13-inch screens. Both have distinctive multi-toned exteriors in
differing shades of black, gray, and charcoal gray, and both include
leather trim along the back (hinge) edge of the top lid. While tastes
may differ — and some may find the inclusion of animal skin a bit
abhorrent — these notebooks have a classy, refined look that’s a world
away from Dell’s earlier work.

Both laptops are available now, starting at $1,200.

As for Adamo, very little is known. Dell hired a model to show off
the notebook, but no one was allowed to touch it and Dell
representatives didn’t turn it on. They also did not release any
specifications. So for now, Adamo is little more than a pipe dream.

Read on for more pictures of Dell’s new products.

Dell’s Studio XPS 13 notebook. Photo courtesy of Dell

The 16-inch Studio XPS 16. Photo courtesy of Dell

The Studio XPS 16 has a slim profile and a glowing power connector in the hinge that resembles those on some high-end, slim Sony Vaio notebooks. Photo courtesy of Dell

Dell acknowledged its laptops’ homely past with this display, which showed the stylistic progression of laptops from 2005 to 2008. Photo: Dylan Tweney/Wired.com

Dell’s suite at the Palm casino was bedecked with laptop art available for installation on current laptop models. Some of the artists commissioned to create art for Dell, including graffiti artists Mike Ming and Tristan Eaton, were in the suite, painting giant canvases and printing original designs on T-shirts. Photo: Dylan Tweney/Wired.com

Top photo: Dylan Tweney/Wired.com

You know something? It wouldn’t be an international tech show without Hello Kitty. A whole lotta Hello Kitty, and, for better or worse, there was plenty to choose from at CES 2009.

We spotted alarm clocks, CD players, lava lamp, toaster ovens, karaoke machines, waffle makes, popcorn makers–even gummi multivitamins.

After the jump, check out a video for some of the show’s Hello Kitty highlights.