Kicked off by CES, the New Year always brings with it mucho promises from electronics manufacturers of soon-to-come breakthrough gadgets. Too often, however, cool products get heralded with gala coming-out parties only to be never heard from again. 2006 will be no different. With that in mind, and a few grains of salt in hand, our skeptics pick some recently announced gear that we bet you'll never see — or will come to pass much later than the people behind it are predicting.

 

HD DVD's competitor in the high-def-disc field had plenty of prototypes and demos on hand at CES, but very little in the way of firm, committed release dates. Samsung stepped forward with a pledge to deliver its $1,000 Blu-ray player by April, but that company's product schedule often shows up on fiction bestseller lists. Other manufacturers promised hardware in the spring or shortly after, but industry insiders tell us holdups on the software side may delay Blu-ray's launch until the fall, giving HD DVD — which at CES saw Toshiba swear on a stack of bibles that it would release a player in March — a potentially dominant leg up. blu-ray.com

 

Play along live with Jeopardy, download a movie to your TV, receive digital pictures sent from cellphones using OCAP (OpenCable Application Platform), a two-way cable-TV system that cable providers are due to introduce this October. But cable companies and hardware manufacturers can't agree on standards, delaying the most interesting — and useful — implementations for the foreseeable future. opencable.com

 

Co-developed by Toshiba and Canon, SED (surface-conduction electron-emitter display) has been touted as the ultimate in flat-screen HDTV technology. In fact, it's been touted for a while. It looks unbelievable in demos, but we'll believe it more when we see it in a store. tacp.toshiba.com

 

 

 

This is an easy call, but I wouldn't expect your order for Panasonic's 103-inch (shown at the top of this page) or Samsung's 102-inch plasma TVs to be delivered anytime during the rest of the Bush administration. In the meantime there's Samsung's 80-inch set, which you can pick up today just $150,000, Mr. Gates. panasonic.com samsung.com

 

Gibson Audio (yes, the guitar people) first rolled this baby out at CES 2004! Then again at CES 2005. And again this year. Initially planned for a summer '04 release at $2,000, production delays and corporate changes in leadership have repeatedly put this on the backburner, with pricing inflating closer to $4,000. We still hope it'll see daylight, as it's one of the coolest-looking media servers with a truly kick-ass remote. gibsonaudio.com

 

SimpleWare Auto lets you access all of your digital media (music, photos, movies) from the front seat of your ride via the factory-installed entertainment system in your car by synching up with your home PC. Parent company Universal Electronics slates it for OEM applications on 2007 vehicles, which means you might see it on the road before the end of '06 — but it could also be pushed ahead to 2008 vehicles. Hmm, not so simple after all . . . uei.com

 

These guys have the best 3-D goggle technology we've never seen. Footage shot with special cameras looks great in 2-D, but truly reach-out-and-touch 3-D with the visor. Then again, entrepreneurs have been hawking varying 3-D schemes for, like, a century and TDV is still looking for its first licensee. tdvisionsystems.com

 

Props to Sony for staying on top of the TV game through its SXRD TVs (which are some pretty kick-ass variants of LCoS — liquid crystal on silicon), but one step at a time, guys! We're guessing that making the super-high-def sets slim and wall-mountable — like this 55-inch model here — will take until 2007, at least. sonystyle.com

 

 

 

 

Contributors: Tom Cosbey, Peter Pachal, John Sciacca, Frank Vizard, and Stewart Wolpin