by Daniel P. Dern
The crop of televisions, computers and home theaters on display at CES 2010 are positively eye-boggling. Sharp's new QuadPixel tech adds a fourth color — yellow — to the traditional red/blue/green for even brighter color. 3D TVs and displays do indeed add that extra dimension — as long as you to wear glasses.
And even if you don't have the budget for these types of purchases, there are still a lot of interesting new media-related products for consuming or creating content.
You can easily spend several hundred for a pair of high-end headsets for your computer or MP3 player, but there are plenty of great options in the $40–$150 range. For example, Plantronic's new Audio 476 DSP Voice on the Go headset (MSRP $54.95) is good for music, gaming, phone calls — and it folds up for portability.
Got vinyl records? (They're still making new ones.) Audio Technica was showing USB turntables, whose electrical innards mean you can plug them directly into a computer, either for immediate listening or recording and digitizing for future playback on the computer or on an MP3 player. Audio-Technica's refreshed and redesigned AT-LP60-USB has an MSRP of $229 (the non-USB version is $149), and the new AT-LP-120USB is $429.
For audio-recording fans, Samson's $59 Go Mic portable USB condenser mike can clip to a notebook display top or sit on a table, and switches between omni-directional or cardiod mode. For pocket-sized video recording with high-quality audio, consider Samson's new Zoom Q3 videocam (MSRP $249), which has the same stereo microphones as Samson's popular H4 stereo handheld recorder.
Digital cameras and videocams keep getting more affordable than ever. Vivitar's got mass-market digital cameras starting at $69, and "clamshell" models starting at $29 in the stores, along with videocams starting at $39.99.
Daniel Dern (www.dern.com) is a freelance technology/business writer based in the Boston area.
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