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Back at CES this week, iriver had quite a bit of new products to show - some were closer to production than others, but all looked slick.  One of their new products that we got some hands-on time with was the P10 media player/viewer.  The device has a 4.0-inch TFT LCD touch-screen display at 800x480, and pretty much supports anything you can think of: video, music, voice recording, T-DMB, Office viewer, PDF viewer, picture viewer, and an e-Dictionary.  To hold all of this media madness, the P10 boasts 33GB of memory crammed into a 1.3” internal hard drive.  The P10 comes with Flash Lite 2.1 pre-loaded, has a customizable GUI, and is a touch-screen, of course.  Read on for the supported file-formats…

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Check out the gallery: Hands On: iriver's new P10 media player

Not only did we have the chance to stop by Blu-ray’s booth, but we also strolled through the HD DVD booth.  As you can see by the pictures in the photo gallery, the HD DVD booth was nice, but didn’t have that huge feeling that the Blu-ray camp had.  Maybe it’s because Blu-ray just stole another studio away from HD DVD, or maybe they just would rather spend their money on research and development than a booth at CES.  Either way, check out the pics below and let us know what you think…

Check out the gallery: CES 2008 Booth Tour: HD DVD

At CES this year, Blu-ray had a pretty slick setup.  Not only did they tout their recently announced partnership with Warner Bros., but they also had a speaker talking about their superiority while facing the HD DVD booth… which turned out to be very funny.  The Blu-ray booth had such things as a ship from Pirates of the Caribbean, Homer and Marge Simpson, and the 150-inch Panasonic TV.  We’ve got a full gallery of images for you to look at, so check them out below…

Check out the gallery: CES 2008 Booth Tour: Blu-ray

Here is the first shot of the Cadillac Provoq. It the first auto introduction at CES. It uses no petroleum and no emission other than water. It uses 5th generation technology, drives 300 miles on a full tank of hydrogen. It can go 100 mph and 0-60 in 8.5 seconds.

The full GM press release is below.

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Check out the gallery: World premiere of the Cadillac Provoq

Over at the Pioneer Booth this year, we’ve been liking what we’ve seen.  For over a year now, the company has been touting their high-end KURO line of projects.  At this year’s CES, the company has show their latest concept Plasma’s, and hight-end home audio equipment - which takes the branding Pioneer ELITE.  Their big marketing pitch this year is that they’re “ending the conversation about contrast ratio, a debate that has been in existence since television was first introduced, and creating a flat panel display so thin it becomes a canvas for entertainment.” It’s a whole lot of marketing talk, but at the same time, their new Extreme Contrast Concept was quite impressive.  We’ve put together some photos of their CES 2008 booth, so check out the Photo Gallery below…

Check out the gallery: CES 2008 Booth Tour: Pioneer

Earlier today, I had the chance to sit in on Pioneer’s KURO Booth Theater, where they showed their Extreme Contrast Concept extension to the KURO line.  If you’re not familiar with the KURO line, it is a very high rated line of Plasma TVs - which are essentially le creme de la creme in the industry today. 

Pioneer reps sat us in a pitch black room, told us to turn off our cellphones not to take pictures, and turned on 3 of their current line of KURO Plasma TVs.  The big thing they’re hyping this year is “Black is everything” and “Black like never before.” Of course, their current line of KUROs (PDP-5010FD) had a pretty strong light source coming from the panel - which lit up the screen even when nothing was on it.  However when they turned on the new Extreme Contrast Concept, you could barely even see it sitting there since it was such a true-black image, or as Pioneer puts it, absolute black.  The video they were playing was a wide screen format, so there was a bar on top and bottom—which allowed us to compare the black levels in those regions.

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Check out the gallery: Peep Show: Pioneer shows off Extreme Contrast Concept KURO at CES 2008

Yes I know that day one of CES is over but who doesn’t love to reminisce. Here is a glimpse of what the CES floor looked like, less than 24 hours ago.

Check out the gallery: Peep Show: The night before CES 2008

This years Panasonic booth featured the prerequisite giant flat screen and seemingly thousands of others, but the really promising products, were not the ones in the bright spot light.

Take the bluetooth femtocell unit that allows you to put the home base in a spot in your house or apartment and then transfers the calls to the units wireless handset.  At $99, it is a really smart solution to a problem many of us face.  Panasonic will also have a version that combines your landline and your cell phone into one line.  Best of all, the unit relies on bluetooth, so when your phone comes back into range, it Panasonic unit picks it back up.

Or the DVD home theater in a box.  These units all feature a drop down iPod dock, even the $299 model.  The top of the line model showcases a Blu-ray player and a wireless rear speaker.  The wireless speaker can even be added to the lowly $299 version.  Nice.

And speaking of Blu-ray, Panasonic loves it.  Panasonic showed off Blu-ray drives and discs as well as a really interesting potential application that overlays a game on top of a movie.  Imagine watching Aliens and being able to shoot the bad guys.

All the Plasma TVs will have an SD card slot capable of watching images from digital cameras.  Panasonic has worked with Comcast and will release a set top box utilizing “tru2way”.

Their small camcorders feature both waterproofing and shockproofing technology. 

Check the gallery below for more images.

Check out the gallery: CES 2008 Panasonic booth highlights; hot products for 2008

Monster Cable’s press event at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show had a few surprises.  Most notably, Noel Lee, Head Monster of Monster Cable / Power announced a new partnership with Dr. Dre on a set up high-end studio headphones, dubbed Beats by Dr. Dre.  The company was clearly ecstatic to be working with Dre, and mentioned that he wouldn’t allow them to release them until they were absolutely perfect.  According to the PR mumbo-jumbo, the headphones are “crystal clear”, but we’ll just have to see for ourselves.  Dr. Dre walked out on stage with Interscope Chairman Jimmy Iovine for the release of the new branded headphones.  If you’re wondering how Dre feels about the announcement, I think this quote from him sums it up best:

“When I’m making a track I’m trying to capture the sound that makes me go ‘now THAT’s the ####! And I want that reaction from everybody who hears it,” said Dr. Dre. “I spend a lot of time in the studio listening to my music through headphones...with Beats, people are finally going to hear it the way they should: the way I do.”

Check out more photos by heading over to our gallery below…

Check out the gallery: Monster and Dr. Dre team up on new studio headphones, meet 'Beats by Dr. Dre'