Now, sadly, we’re getting to the part of the show where there are simply too many products and too little time. So far, I’ve tried to highlight some of the best things I’ve seen, and give you details on them. I wish there was enough time to do the same for a lot of these other products, but unless I want to be writing into next month, there just isn’t. Check out the 2 photo albums, there are over 50 pictures with captions for each. It’s a great way to get a quick feel for the show. We may revisit some of these products in the future, but for now, let’s roll into the first annual “bye-sized rest of CES”…

-Pioneer was among many companies featuring BD Live- which stands for Blu-ray Disc live. It allows you to tap into the internet for some great content and features. The best example I heard was how a movie’s director can host a Blu-ray viewing party. The director can pause the movie for everyone (cause you’re all watching at the same time, and are connected to the internet) and explain a scene before it plays. Or pause the movie to take questions from the audience. Takes interactivity to a whole other level. It turns a 2 hour movie into a 4 ½ hour interactive experience.

-If you’re old school about getting your TV signal from an over the air antenna, Audiovox has a new line of sleek, stylish HD antennas. They match the flat appeal of the latest TVs. (No more rabbit ears.) They also showed off camcorder batteries that charge in minutes, not hours.

-Panasonic is proposing a Blu-ray 3-D standard and hopes to have full HD 3-D Blu-ray authoring in place by 2010. As long as that means more sports will be available in 3-D, too, bring it on! They are also adding “Tough Display” to their Viera HDTV’s to help protect the screens from accidental bumps, soccer balls or kids running into them.

-A big buzzword throughout the show that we’ve barely touched on was “convergence”- basically connecting everything gadget to the internet. Which is great, because it’s always annoying when you have to watch that episode you missed of your favorite TV show on your 13” laptop, when you’re used to watching on your 42” HDTV. Hulu, YouTube etc coming soon to your TV.

-Who has the #1 market share worldwide for flat panel TVs? Samsung. But they are quickly moving to become a bigger player with cameras & camcorders. They have a tiny new HD camcorder with a 64 GB hard drive (which is huge).

-Many of the TV manufacturers had what they called an “HD Shooting Gallery” set up. It allowed you to see live versions of their HD camcorders. What blew me away was that usually the HD image on the TV looked better than the real life version of what the camera was shooting. Fruit, for example, looked boring to the naked eye, but on the HDTV, it was vibrant, with richer color.

-iGo is helping reduce the clutter as you travel. Check out their lineup of chargers, some of which allow you to charge 2 devices at once with only 1 cord.

-The BlackBerry 8900 (a new version of the Bold for T-Mobile) is even nicer than the Bold you see continually advertised on TV for AT&T. It’s a bit smaller, and even sleeker looking. Sure wish T-Mobile had better coverage in the US cause I’d grab this one in a heartbeat!

-Ego has a Bluetooth hands free system for your car which, they claim, allows you to talk in a convertible (with the top up) at 80mph and the caller you’re speaking with won’t know you’re in the car. I don’t know about that, but I was happy to hear they use the same technology that’s in the Microsoft’s Sync system in my Ford Edge. They also have a clever marketing campaign for it, seen here.

-Panasonic, according to them, is the largest consumer electronics company in the world. Interestingly, they weren’t even showing off their ToughBook laptop line. They had a giant booth, mostly with just TVs. (I say “just TVs”, but they were gorgeous TVs.) Did you know the company was started when their founder, 23 at the time, became frustrated there was only 1 power socket in each room so he created the first multi-plug (known today as a surge protector)? Amazing how these giant companies start from such small places.

-Casio demoed a new high speed anti-shake technology available in their Exilim line of compact cameras. The FS-10 camera will take 30 shots in 1 second, automatically detect which one has the most people smiling in it, and delete the other 29. It looked nice on their demo stage, but I sure wish we could have tried it ourselves.

-Roland has an electronic drum kit for $799 that allows you to learn the drums in your home, without the loud racket that would make your neighbors hate you. Paired with their $99 “Drum Tutor” software that runs on any PC, you get a clean, easy to learn interface that will be very familiar to any Rock Band fans. I'm now one step closer to learning the drums! Nice!

-Kodak unveiled their new HD pocket video camera, very nice. They also were showing off a new phone, in partnership with T-Mobile, that takes amazing pictures. My father has one, so I’m already very familiar with it. It’s no “camera phone” with grainy images. This is a full fledged camera that happens to be inside a phone. Kodak also has an updated line of wifi frames. One feature is that you can put one at your parent’s house 2,000 miles away, and whenever you update your photos on Kodak Gallery, they automatically see the new ones on their frame too. No need to e-mail and hope they can download them and transfer them onto the frame. Great for the not so tech inclined. For anyone that doesn’t have wifi at home, check out the T-Mobile Cameo- same idea, but the pictures are sent over T-Mobile’s network instead of wifi.

-SanDisk- the company you probably know best from the media cards for your digital camera- is increasing their capacity by staggering amounts. First, they unveiled a new microSD card with 16GB capacity. These are the tiny memory cards for your cell phone /BB, and as of a year ago, only had 4GB capacity. You’ll see more from this in a new marketing campaign called “Wake Up Your Phone”- as in, do more with your phone because you now can! And in SSD (solid state, meaning no moving parts) hard drive advances, they’re upto 240GB. That essentially brings SSD on par with traditional laptop hard drives. You can even swap them out yourself in your existing laptop if you want. Prices for their SSD drives range from $149-499 and give you benefit of increased durability (you don’t risk a crash if you drop your laptop) along with longer battery life because there are no moving parts.

-I already mentioned Netgear’s new products, but to finish the story- their USB 3B broadband router comes with a cigarette lighter power cord so you can use it in the car. It’s available now and costs $129. Hot spot in the car, anyone?

-If you don’t want to run wires all over your house to get audio from one source to come out on speakers in another room, check out the i2i system. It allows each receiver to steam audio from 3 sources. Goes for $119.95 and each receiver will last 5-7 hours on a charge. Great if you want to listen to your iTunes library on your main stereo in the living room.

-Roots, which I had previously known only as a Canadian clothing company, has a great line of Blackberry & iPhone covers called “Tuff Skin”. They are rated to protect from a drop onto concrete from 4 feet high. Too bad they are only sold in Canada. But to our friends up north, grab them at Best Buy or Future Shop.

-Which company’s headset was Neil Armstrong wearing when he became the first man to walk on the moon? Plantronics. If it was good enough to bring us the “One small step for man…” audio, it’s good enough for me! I’ve had a few Plantronics products, and they’re always fantastic. Great call quality on both ends. So I was excited to see their new Discovery 925 Bluetooth headset. Not only is it tiny, but it comes with a dual use case. Dual use because it both protects the headest, and also serves as a battery backup. If you charge the headset in the case, you’ll get 5 hours talk time on the headset, but then another 5 from the case itself. A neat backup feature allowing you to be away from the charger longer. It’s available now in a rainbow of colors, and retails for $150. However, in some quick searching, I’ve already seen it for half that- $75 on Amazon.

-Plantronics’ sister company, Altec Lansing, debuted their new Expressionist line of computer speakers. My favorite is the Expressionist BASS- a $129 version that eliminates the subwoofer, but still gives you deep bass. Great sound from speakers that don’t take up a lot of space. For $199 you can step up to the Expressionist ULTRA, but get ready for the neighbors to complain. These things crank!

-Do you watch a lot of TV shows on your laptop? If you’re frustrated from having to search individual websites (like Hulu, NBC, CBS, ABC, MTV, etc) to find your content, do yourself a favor …download the ZViewer from Zee Vee. It takes video from those sources (and more) and organizes them into the easiest navigation setup for web video I’ve come across. And, if you want to get all that great web content on your actual TV screen, grab their ZvBox. It’s a simple looking box that does that fancy job of converting your computer’s video output to HD TV input- oh and uses coax cable from the box to your TV, so you can set it up next to your computer in one room, and run long coax to your TV in the living room without any picture quality loss.

-Brother’s MFC6490CW all in one allows you to print ledger (11x17) size pictures & documents. If you’re always squinting at your Excel spreadsheet printouts, you won’t be if you print them out that size. The picture to the right does a great job showing the difference between a 4x6, 8.5x11 and 11x17 print. Bigger is better.

-Polaroid is back. Months after announcing they were discontinuing film for their old instant cameras, they have a new digital camera that can instantly print 2x3” prints. It looks like a regular digital camera (albeit a large & chunky one), and can print upto 10 of the small prints with each paper tray. There is no ink, and unlike their old instant film, they are instantly visible. No more shaking or waiting for the image to appear. They print onto sticker paper, so you can post them anywhere. Price is $199, and refills of paper cost $4.99.