Digital Home Thoughts: Holiday Spectacular NYC

Last night Pepcom hosted a press event here in New York City, Holiday Spectacular. There were a ton of technology vendors, hot girls in tight white velvet dresses, and more useless schwag than you can shake a stick at. Here were the highlights for me:



ReplayTV is back. You might remember them as the guys that lost to TiVo years ago. Honestly, I thought they were dead, and apparently, according to the ReplayTV rep I spoke with, they were. Bankrupt anyway. Well, they're back with a new ReplayTV HD offering, coming out in November. Apparently they took the ReplayTV software and re-configured it to work on a standard Windows PC, coupled with an HD capable USB tuner stick. The whole package (hardware AND software) will run just $99, which is a great price point. We're hoping to be able to give you a hands on look in a month or so.



The Windows Home Server team showed up with HP's WHS. The HP WHS will run $599 with 500GB of storage, and $749 for a terabyte.



They also had WHS running off of a laptop. Very slick interface, and incredibly easy to use. WHS has very low hardware and power requirements, so if you are interested in this product (and you really should be), you can more than likely run it off of an older unused desktop or laptop PC. (You will probably be able to buy an OEM license for WHS from an online vendor like NewEgg.)



Duracell and Energizer showed up, in a head to head fight to be the king of AA battery based portable device chargers. Energizer announced their new Energi to Go for the iPod. It runs off of 2 Energizer e squared lithium AA batteries, and can charge an iPod video 2-3 times. It can also be used with an iPod is playing, extending the total play time up to 46 hours.



Duracell showed off their new Mobile Charger. Plug it into a wall, and you have a 120V AC to USB adapter. Or use the included car charger to charge your USB devices in the car. Failing that, you can also put in 4 AA batteries, and still get enough juice to charge your digital camera, iPod, or anything else that runs off USB.

I can't stand carrying a bag of wall warts and international adapters when I travel, and you can get AA batteries just about anywhere in the world. I'm looking forward to putting one of these products in my travel bag.

Other than that, not much to report. I suspect quite a few people are holding on to the big announcements until next week's DigitalLife Expo, which I'll also be covering.

Jeremy Charette is a Contributing Editor at Digital Media Thoughts, and also works in Procurement for one of the world’s largest banks. He enjoys reading, cooking, and racing in the SpecForza league. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, USA.