We're already in line for today's back-to-back CES 2008 press conference marathon. First up, LG Electronics followed by Pioneer, Toshiba, Panasonic, Sharp and Philips—and that's all before lunch. Stay tuned for liveblog updates throughout the day.

The Gadget: Linksys' slightly fancier Windows Media Center Extender, which streams the Windows Vista/XP Media Center interface over the network so you can watch live or recorded TV and downloaded files on TV in HD.

The Price: $US299

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The new Vudu XL is the higher capacity version of the Vudu download and play video box. This Vudu model can hold 500 standard definition movies for $US999, with 1080p/24 output over HDMI and component with optical and coaxial digital sound. The Vudu XL allows you to rent and download standard- and high-definition movies from "every major US studio and 22 independents." In fact, the are adding new HD movies by the end of January:

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The Pitch: D-Link has announced the DSM-210 — a new high res 10-inch LCD photo frame that features a website and a drag-and-drop desktop widget to help users manage their photos and download RSS feeds. It also includes slots for USB and memory cards and Wi-Fi or Ethernet connectivity. Available Q1 of 2008 for $US249.
The Catch: Might want to wait for a review to find out if the process is really as easy as they make it seem.

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The Pitch: D-Link's PC-On-TV (DPG-1200) player can stream YouTube, Google Video, Veoh and other streaming video sites from your PC to your TV. It can also watch MPEG-4, AVI, or any video content using any video player on your computer to stream over either 802.11g or a 10/100 Ethernet connection. Price: $US199.
The Catch: Supporting all these formats means they're probably capturing an area of your screen (by a VNC-ish proprietary software) and then streaming it to the unit. Not bad, but it requires you to have control of your PC while you're watching stuff.

The Pitch: A website (www.d-life.com) that lets you register all your compatible D-Link equipment online via 2 product ID numbers in order to manage all that stuff in one interface. Just connect the product to your network and you can change settings via the website.
The Catch: This probably won't make it easier for your mother to manage a home network, but will make things slightly more convenient by merging all your equipment management sites. [D-Life]

Match Made in the Heavens: You saw the Celestron SkyScout a while ago, and now here's a scope on which to mount it. See galaxies with the SkyScout Scope's high-power eyepiece, or get your bearings with its included its low-power counterpart. But It'll Cost Ya: To use this with the excellent $450 Celestron SkyScout spotter, you have to buy one of those, too.

The $US299 telescope, now available, works like a champ with the SkyScout piggybacking on top. . If you have your own telescope, get the SkyScout Connect, that aquaints your own scope with this easy-to-use spotter. [Celestron]

The Skinny: No more yelling across the room, ordering the kids to bring you that brewski when you have an RC Cooler from Inter Active Toy. The Catch: It runs on eight C batteries, but they are said to last for six hours of continuous use. We just wish it were rechargeable, with its own little charging garage.

It has a 30-foot range, and can hold a six pack on ice if you're really thirsty. Might be a great drink trolley for the Gizmodian lair. Check this $US49.99 sobriety transformation device scooting around on its four sturdy wheels, ready to do your bidding as you manipulate its handy remote control. Available this spring. [Interactive Toy]

Oh, poor HD DVD. Toshiba pays big bucks to stamp its name and the HD DVD logo on every journo bag they hand out at CES. But Warner's bitchslap has sent them home to cut their wrists and cry in the corner, so they're not even here! Yep, the HD DVD Group has shitcanned their conference. Just how did we get to this sad state of affairs? Let's review.->

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I thought radar detectors were a thing of the 1980s until I spotted Cobra's sexy new Super-Xtreme Range Superheterodyne Maximum Performance 12 Band XRS 9950. Even its name says "I drive a long red car very fast for reasons I won't go into now." Seriously, the 1.5" OLED screen on this baby shows you everything from battery voltage to compass heading to where Smokey lies in wait. With an add-on dongle, you can even get locations of red-light cameras. Forget my Volvo daddy-wagon, this makes me want to invest in Chevrolet's finest.

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This Oregon Scientific weather station records the weather as it happens. It then plugs into your computer and uploads recent weather data. So if you happen to forget that it was hot in July, you can spend a lot of money and go through an elaborate process to remember. I… don't get it.

It sounds obvious, but for the first time, over-the-air HD Radio can carry talk radio with closed-captioned metadata, so that the hearing impaired can enjoy the same talk radio programming that others can.

From what I can tell, the signal will be compatible with many recent HD Radio receivers, so you don't need a special box. The Kenwood in the picture is a proof-of-concept; the actual first-ever closed-captioned broadcast will take place on Wednesday. Leave it to the progressives at NPR to come up with it, teaming with Harris Corporation and Towson University to develop the delivery mechanism and user interface. Of course, if it takes off, deaf right-wingers will finally get their fix of conservative hate talk, too.

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We've done a bit more investigation into this Press vs. Blogger war that CES has started, and it turns out that the Bloggers actually have more privileges than the Press! What the hell is that about?! There's a press room for people to come and write up their stories, as shown above. Both Press and Bloggers are allowed in. It's a big, desolate space with a bunch of round tables with Ethernet cables. Pretty boring, right? Then there's the Bloggers Lounge, which is open only to Bloggers; Press is turned away at the door. Get a load of this shot we snapped inside there.

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The Blu-ray crowd continues to be the cool kids' party. New Line Cinema is not too surprisingly falling in lockstep with sister studio Warner Bros to go Blu-ray only. (Both are owned by Time Warner.) Upshot: Lord of the Rings on Blu-ray. [Variety, Thanks John]

UMPCPortal found this video of Lenovo's unannounced MID, or Mobile Internet Device, that shows off some touch gestures and a bit of its functionality. It has a horizontal PSP Xross Media Bar-like navigation, a wide PSP-like body, and touch gestures (which the PSP doesn't have). Not only can it play back video and audio, it's supposed to have some fancy image drawing or editing and PDF viewing and internet browsing. We're not sure what it fully does, but I think we'll find out in the next few days. [UMPCPortal]

It didn't look like much passing by, but the folks at Quartics have come up with a way to transmit your Windows Mobile phone's screen to a display via a Wi-Fi dongle at 8 frames per second, allowing the world (or at least the room) to see what you see on your tiny display. A WM6 program was first on Quartics' agenda but the guys said they were hard at work on an iPhone version that should be coming out soon. Quartics has a similar product called PC2TV, that delivers 1280x720 continuous screen shots wirelessly at 15 frames per second, with 30fps if you can get your screen res down to 1280x720. [Quartics]

The Beef: I am not a shortwave enthusiast, by any means, but the industrial design, open for a literal interpretation on the industrial. It's got AM, FM, shortwave, longwave, SSB and aircraft band frequencies. There's a scan or manual input by 10-key. And check the analogue gauge and yellow-glow back lighting. Very nice. There's also an aux in for audio input.
The Catch: It's shortwave. And $350.

What's What: With Sonoro's cubo line of do-it-all music/clock boxes, looks are the hook. Black, shiny with soft lights, they kind of remind us of Belkin's N1 Vision router. Well, they're European too. The flagship cubo is the fusion, which has an iPod dock on top, in addition to the CD Player, alarm clock, radio set. The elements is more stripped down—you dock the iPod w/ an optional attachment, though one version has internet internet radio.

We've been waiting for a mainstream GPS maker to go the way of the innovative GPRS-powered Dash Express. Well, Magellan jumped first, embedding its own GPRS connectivity into a navigator and partnering with Google for dynamic local search wherever you have GPRS reception. (Dash is partnered with Yahoo's local search, which is nothing to sneeze at.) There's no Wi-Fi, like the Dash, but the dealbreaker might be the cost: the 5340 is set to ship this month for a whopping $1,500—and that's before the undisclosed monthly fee. (Press release after the jump.)

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The Skinny: Encased in copper, this Eclipse CD7200 mkII audio head end for your car is strictly high-end. The catch: iPod songs and playlists show up on screen, but for that you'll be buying an optional connector.

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Awesome: The Eton FR1000 Voicelink is maybe one of the most pornograpic survival radios I've ever seen, but functionally so. IT has AM/FM/NOAA Weather/2-Way GMRS Radio. And a Flashlight, siren, and Cellphone charger. It runs off of 4AAs, but has a hand crank. The design seems superfluous, but those cutouts actually protect the knobs. There's a large handle on the back. If I were to die stranded in the wilderness, I might be slightly less upset clutching one of these beautiful machines. $US150.
The Catch: No word on water resistance, and the recessed knobs seem hard to turn with gloves on.

WowWee, makers of such fine products as cat-hunting dragonflies, have unveiled a new, fairly badass three-wheeling robot for home use that's not all the different from the specs we've seen in Sony's new rumoured AIBO. A webcam-enabled robot featuring a Northstar GPS system, you can spy on anyone in your house from anywhere in the world.

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This WowWee Tribot is the replacement for last year's Robosapien, a fun-loving, (probably cheesy) joke-telling robofriend to fill the voids of your lonely nights. It plays games that require you to move it around in certain patterns, and its three wheels give it a pretty decent range of movement. It also has a motion-sensing controller, allowing you to move it forwards and backwards by simply tilting it where you want to go. The price for companionship will be $US99.99 when the Tribot goes on sale this summer.

Branching out from their full-featured (read: Expensive) Media Centers, Niveus is introducing a Sierra Edition Media Server, which is also designed for the home-builder market. The Sierra, which is half the size of their normal units, also consumes "low power" and uses an HD DVD drive, 500GB storage, a GeForce "Series 8", and 1080p streaming. It'll be available in Q1 2008 for "volume integrators", which means people who will be installing them in homes or other markets which you probably don't qualify for buying this for yourself.

High drama at CES! Instead of all of us being united under the umbrella of "press," some of us were arbitrarily deemed "bloggers" and others "press." I'm press, but Chen is a blogger. We aren't sure exactly what the difference is, but I assume that the CES admins will force Chen to wait for me to write up stories dryly and then he'll link to them and add some sassy commentary. We refer to his badge as the "white badge of shame." Sorry Chen, you lowly blogger.

This is the new WowWee FlyTech Bladestar, an R/C helicopter-type toy that can also fly around "autonomously," avoiding walls and faces using an IR beam. You still need to pay attention to it, however, as it'll keep flying higher and higher unless you tell it to stay low, otherwise it'll fly too close to the sun and melt its delicate, delicate blades. If you're flying it manually you've gotta be careful or you might take out a waiter or two, as our friend from WowWee managed to do pretty quickly. It'll be on sale next month at Target (and only at Target, for some reason) for $US50.

Our friends at Niveus, whose EDGE media centre extender was already seen back in September, tell us that the unit is finally shipping. It's the first Windows MCE unit to receive the ISF Video Quality Certification, but does what other extenders do—stream live and recorded video, plus pictures, plus music from your Windows Vista or XP computer with Media Center.

We're here at CES Unveiled, the pre-pre-pre CES event that debuts some new products before the actual show starts. We're in line and already being hassled by people to get us to view their goods. The actual Unveiled opens at 4PM PST (7PM EST), and we're going to be posting loads and loads of hands-on with the best stuff here. Check back soon. Frucci may even do another white guy dance for you.