It's day two of the 2002 interna-tional Consumer Electronics Show, and I'm wired and exhausted. I've been sharing the Las Vegas Convention Center with 110,000 people from around the world, and it feels like I've bumped into every single one of them. It's the same thing every year, yet I always come back, for this is the only place you can get a peek at the latest stereos, TVs, PDAs, phones, and other devices about to hit the market. The past few CES shows were all about wild prototypes and creative new products that had little chance of actually selling, but this year's event takes on a decidedly different tone. Not sure whether it's the economic downturn or the events of September 11, but there's not much flash on display (unlike the concurrent Detroit Auto Show, where hot concepts seemed to outnumber production vehicles). Instead, the focus is on technology just coming to market and variations of the tried and true. Case in point: The biggest new product category is the media center, an entertainment nerve center capable of distributing movies, music, and Internet anywhere in the home. Moxi Digital has the biggest buzz in this category, but Samsung, Pioneer, and Hewlett-Packard are showing similar boxes. In the same vein, Sampo, Sharp, and Philips have new ways of sharing photos via DVD players, TVs, and CD players.
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