CONVERGENCE

by Michael Antonoff

Mighty Midgets

The trend in TV screen sizes seems to be moving in opposite directions at once. While even Gulliver would have been impressed by some of the HDTV behemoths on display at CES, many of us Lilliputians are well served by screens so small we can easily take them on our commutes.

•LG showed its first Portable Media Center, the PM70 ($549, spring - shown at right), a 30-GB player that syncs with Windows Media Center Edition PCs to hold 50 hours of TV shows, movies, or music videos. Unlike previous Portable Media Centers, the LG player can also record directly from another device through an A/V input. •Thomson introduced the Lyra X3000 ($399, available now), a lightweight (less than half a pound) player that stores video, music, and photos on a hard drive big enough to hold 40 full-length films. But you won't be able to use its most exciting feature until later this year, when a service called DirecTV2Go will let you make high-speed digital transfers with some models of DirecTV DVR/receivers.

Tapeless, and Loving It

JVC might have started a trend with its Everio line of hard disk-based camcorders.

•Sony unveiled the DCR-SR100 (shown left), a 30-GB cam expected in May for about $1,100. Fitted with a 3-megapixel CCD, it can hold up to 7 hours of video at 9 megabits per second (mbps), its highest-quality setting. So why didn't Sony make its first hard-disk camcorder HD-capable, like some of its tape-based models? "Everything will come with time," said a Sony rep. •Toshiba introduced two Gigashot camcorders: the GSC-R30 ($799) with a 30-GB drive and the GSC-R60 ($999) with 60 GB. At its highest-quality setting, the R60 can record 13 hours of video; at its lowest, it stores 55 hours. Both versions, available now, have 1.75-inch drives and 2-megapixel CCD image sensors. •Not to be outdone, Sanyo even eliminated the hard disk. The Xacti HD1 ($800, spring) instead uses a fingernail-size SD memory card (not included). Sanyo was able to pull off this miniature miracle thanks to MPEG-4, a more efficient successor to MPEG-2 video compression, and the availability of multi-gigabyte memory cards. A 2-GB card (about $175) can hold around 40 minutes of high-def video.

Pulp Fiction: Battery Included Between the Sony Reader and Sony's Connect site, the venerable electronics company aims to do for books what Apple's iPod and iTunes Music Store have done for music and video. About the size of a paperback novel but only a half-inch thick, the Reader sports a high-rez monochrome display. Self-illuminated and with enlargeable text, it's easy on the eyes. With a battery life of 7,500 page turns, the Reader should allow you to download The Da Vinci Code from Sony Connect and read it 16 times before recharging. And if you still want your MP3s, there's an audio jack for playing music, too. Expect the Reader to be priced between $299 and $399 when it debuts in April.