coverage

ButtKicker Gamer: Rock your seat

The name might be crude, but the product is pretty clever. Guitammer's ButtKicker Gamer is a vibrating bass module that puts some thump into your gameplay. The surprisingly heavy ButtKicker device clamps onto your chair, and the included amplifier runs between the ButtKicker and your audio input. When you start playing, the ButtKicker starts jumping, making your seat rock and rumble with every shot and explosion.

Rumble seats are hardly new for gaming; bass-rocking gaming chairs from companies such as Pyramat and D-Box can be had by anyone willing to shell out the cash. They're usually bulky chairs … Read more

Samsung pushes plasma TVs' light-fighting filters

Ambient light is the enemy of video fidelity for any display, because external light that hits the screen dilutes the light produced by the display. Plasma HDTVs are more susceptible to the wiles of bright room light because their screens are essentially big, reflective panes of glass, unlike the less-reflective plastic screens of flat-panel LCD TVs and rear-projection HDTVs. Last year, Samsung tried to address that issue with FilterBright, a technology it says helps reduce glare and otherwise improves the image quality in bright light. In my tests last year of models like the HP-S5053, I couldn't detect much … Read more

DLO TransDock car charger/FM transmitter ready for full-screen iPod

If Steve Jobs pulls the trigger today at Macworld on Apple's long-rumored new video iPod, said to feature a color touch screen covering its entire front surface for PMP-like video viewing, DLO will be ready with a new TransDock car FM transmitter/charger cradle combo.

This new TransDock, which jacks into a cigarette lighter, has a cradle that completely exposes the front of the video iPod, on the current or the rumored model. The cradle also swivels 90 degrees horizontally for viewing wide-screen video on this maybe-maybe not iPod. Versions are available in black or white.

Even if Jobs … Read more

HP's Vista-powered entertainment tablet

HP is one of the first vendors to announce a laptop specifically built to run Windows Vista. The HP Pavilion tx1000us is what we call a convertible tablet PC, a standard-looking laptop whose screen swivels 180 degrees and folds down over the keyboard. It has a 12.1-inch screen and falls into the thin-and-light category of laptops.

The tx1000us takes advantage of several of the new tablet features in Windows Vista, including Pen Flicks (quick shortcuts you activate with a swipe of the stylus) and enhanced support for touch-sensitive screens--the kind that work with any pointing device or even your … Read more

Best of CES? Toshiba's press bag

I know it's only the first day, but I'm prepared to call the Best of CES awards. Top prize among the lucky press-badge holders in the crowd goes to (drumroll, please) the free Toshiba press bag.

See, here's what happens. Every year, we come to CES, and we get a giveaway schwag bag. I've written about this before, and in the past, they've been hideously colored rolly bags, Volkswagen-size messenger bags, or otherwise acceptable bags so plastered with giant logos that they render even the hippest attendee a total trade-show dork. But this year, Toshiba'… Read more