CEDIA 2013

At ELK Products’ press conference on Thursday, the company introduced several new additions to its Two-Way Wireless security and control product ecosystem. The ELK-6030P Wireless Pet Immune PIR motion detector is designed to be used with ELK Products’ M1 Cross Platform Control along with the ELK-M1XRFTW Two-Way Wireless Transceiver. Some of the notable features of the ELK-6030P are easy installation with a keypad-initiated walk test mode, two selectable sleep mode duration choices to help extend battery life, and a built-in security/convenience bright-white LED.

Monster now makes headphones for the Skittles crowd, but unlike Skittles, these babies are $170 a pop (MSRP). Although there were none on display at Monster’s press event, Monster also announced their own tablet in matching, candy-licious colors. Little Richard and Teenage girls world-wide rejoice!

Two new products from Cambridge Audio caught my eye. It’s got that certain je nais c’est quoi that says I’d like to find a place to put it! First up is the three piece speaker system, the Minx M5. While the tiny 2” speakers in the cubes probably don’t produce bass frequencies as low as my IQ, the 5-1/4” subwoofer, easily placed at the foot of your desk, will certainly fill things out. With 60 watts of amplification built in, 15 for each of the satellites and 30 for the sub, it should have plenty of headroom to play cleanly to its limits. Best of all, the $299 asking price seems well set!

TiVo, the savvy couch potato’s alternative to a cable company DVR, just rolled out its 5th-gen Roamio platform. Roamio comes in 3 flavors: Core ($200), Plus ($400), and Pro ($600). The difference between the three comes down to storage (the Pro tops things off at 3 Terabytes) and options (the core Roamio has just cable and off-air tuning, while the Plus/Pro add streaming capability). TiVo service will run you $14.99/month.

Kaleidescape Brings Movies to Life With Cinema One Kaleidescape demonstrated their latest product, the Cinema One, which brings the movie and music streaming performance of the company’s regarded Premier line to a far more affordable – sub $4,000 – price point. (Expect a full review of the Cinema One from Darryl Wilkinson.) Kaleidescape also had one of the sweetest booth giveaways at the Expo, drawing a card each day at 4 PM and giving the lucky winner a Cinema One! Also new from the company is the addition of cover art view to their awesome iPad control app. Now users can browse through their movie and music collections using the same cover art view that had previously only been available on the on-screen GUI. Want to shuffle the titles around? Simply give your Pad a shake.

When you think Definitive Technology, you probably think large, monolithic tower speakers or giant cube subwoofers. While the company would be OK with that, they have branched beyond the large home speaker into the portable market. Definitive Technology launched its portable speaker line-up with the terrific sounding Sound Cylinder, and they expanded their offerings this year by introducing The Cube. The Cube is a 7.7-inch black, uh, cube using tri-polar technology to deliver big sound across a large listening area. The cube features five 1-1/4-inch mid-high frequency drivers, one 5-1/4-inch woofer and 80-watts of total power. It can run off AC power, but for hi-fi on-the-go, the built-in Lithium Ion battery can deliver up to 10 hours of listening. Users can connect a 3.5mm stereo mini-jack or beam music to The Cube wirelessly via Bluetooth aptX technology. Also handy is an integrated rubberized handle in the back of The Cube, meaning that you can easily take your music with you when you get assimilated.