Hasta La Gadget!

As the economy sputters back to life, gadget makers are preparing a whole raft of hardware for you to buy in 2010.

Some of it will even be worth purchasing.

Among the highlights: set-top boxes and TVs that will let you kiss off the cable company, 3-D televisions, increasingly powerful device “platforms” enhanced by massive app stores, e-book readers, a new crop of netbooks, and tiny projectors crammed into everything from cameras to netbooks.

Many of these devices will be on display at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, where more than 110,000 members of the electronics industry will gather to show off their wares and give the world a preview of what gadgets are coming out this year. It’ll be the second straight year of declining attendance for CES, where attendance topped 130,000 last year, but it’s still a major event in the gadget world. And Wired’s Gadget Lab team will be there, bringing you the highlights from the show, complete with photos and video.

“CES has been hit by the one-two punch of the general economic travails and the demise of Circuit City, which has led to further retail consolidation,” says Ross Rubin, an executive director at The NPD Group. However, Rubin says, it’s still a big show — and there will be lots there to appeal to gadget lovers.

It’s unlikely that there will be a single standout star of the show, the way the Palm Pre was at last year’s CES.

“It is such a vast show that it is rare that one product ’steals’ it the way we might see at a small technology conference such as Demo.”

And then there will be the tablets. Most industry observers, including Gadget Lab, expect Apple to release a tablet device, possibly called the iSlate or iGuide, sometime in 2010. Other major manufacturers, including HP, Dell, Intel, Nokia and HTC have been rumored to be working on tablet-style devices. Smaller companies including Fusion Garage, Notion Ink and ICD have announced plans for tablets in 2010. And many publishers, including Wired’s parent company, Conde Nast, are already working on the software to display e-magazines and other content on tablet devices.

But don’t expect much news on the tablet front this week. Whether their products aren’t ready yet or they’re just waiting for Apple to make the first move, most companies rumored to be working on tablets haven’t let any details slip yet (and they aren’t expected to say much more in Vegas, no matter how many martinis we ply them with).

Until then, we’ll have to content ourselves with imaginary visions of what an Apple tablet might look like — like the one above?

Read on to find out what we do know about the biggest gadget trends of 2010. – Dylan Tweney

Illustration: Courtesy Gluepet

So Long, Cable Company

Historians may look at 2010 as the year that gadget technology finally destroyed the cable companies. And it’s the rise of internet video that is making this happy day possible.

If you’ve seen an episode of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long then you know that the web is actually a decent place to get high-quality, original content — much of it free. As anyone with a high-speed connection and a faint knowledge of Google will confirm, in addition to the aforementioned Dr. Horrible, you can easily check out snippets of 30 Rock on Hulu, take in full episodes of The Office on ABC.com, or watch the latest episodes of The Daily Show on Comedy Central’s site.

TV manufacturers have noticed this trend, and have rapidly made web-connected TVs de rigeur. We noticed this trend a few months ago, and the latest crop of web-ready TVs that will be announced at CES 2010 will push the trend even further. Expect streamlined user interfaces, thinner LCD displays and lower prices. And most importantly, more models to pick from. Big-name TV makers like Samsung, Panasonic, Sony and Vizio will offer web connectivity over a larger line of their products. We’re calling it: If a TV can’t access the internet directly in 2010, it might as well be sitting next to an exhibit of Neanderthals at the Natural History Museum.

When the free video grows a little tiring, for-fee services, led by Netflix, will save the day. The Xbox 360, the PS3 and a vast smattering of Blu-ray players all have the capability to stream media from Netflix’s catalog directly to a TV. Click a button, watch a movie. It’s that simple. And the majority of Blu-ray players, gaming consoles and media devices released in 2010 will have Netflix streaming capabilities.

The final stone atop cable TV’s pyramid? Video-streaming appliances like the Boxee Box. On it, you’ll be able to watch any piece of non-DRM-restricted media on the internet, share movies or TV shows with your pals, and stream videos cached on your computer’s hard drive. And then there’s the Sony PS3 (read on for our take on that).

For lack of a better word, we’ll call these multifeatured, internet-connected, media-streaming set-top boxes “video boxes.” Expect them to pop up everywhere in 2010.

Unless you like paying exorbitant prices and enjoy terrible service and smarmy service reps, there’s very little reason to keep your cable provider this year. – Daniel Dumas