Electronics will show plenty of flashy features

The recession figures to tone down the flashiness of this week's International Consumer Electronics Show, but the lineup of innovative products likely will measure up to past years.

That's because startups haven't yet been hit as hard by this downturn as they were when the Internet boom collapsed in 2000. And bigger companies haven't yet had time to adjust to consumers' belt-tightening.

But most of all, competition in consumer electronics is still fierce, and innovation counts. Name-brand manufacturers need to differentiate themselves by introducing features that keep them ahead of value-price brands.

For instance, Sony, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics will introduce new flat-panel TV sets that provide smoother-looking action scenes, 3-D capabilities and Internet connections that can download movies, weather data and screen savers. With high-definition TVs now in many homes, Ross Rubin, an analyst with NPD Group, also expects to see more high-definition camcorders and new players for high-def Blu-ray discs.

What else to expect:

* Nvidia, a leading maker of graphics chips for computers, will be touting $199 glasses that turn compatible monitors into three-dimensional displays, spicing up games like "Spore" and "Left 4 Dead." The wireless glasses come with an adapter that plugs into a regular USB slot.

* Companies have promised for the better part of the decade to rid us of the cables snaking around the entertainment center. At last year's electronics show, there were a few TV sets that could receive high-definition video signals wirelessly from a transmitter in the same room. There will be more this year, but only in the most expensive sets.

* Stereo maker Blaupunkt will show what it says is "the first Internet car radio." It's a potential competitor to satellite radio, but needs to be connected to an Internet-enabled phone to receive audio streams.

* TV stations will be at the show to present details of their plans to broadcast signals for cell phones, in-car sets and other portable gadgets. Transmissions could start this year, but it's unclear whether there will be any compatible receiving products, particularly since the cellular carriers have their own solutions for mobile TV.

* Intel Corp. will be showing a new version of its Classmate PC, a netbook for kids. It has a touch-sensitive screen that can be folded over the keyboard in a "tablet" configuration.

* Lenovo Group will trot out a large laptop that looks as if it swallowed a netbook: it has a 17-inch main screen, from which a second, 10-inch, netbook-sized screen slides out. Price: about $5,000.

* Palm, the maker of smart phones that have been overshadowed by BlackBerrys and iPhones, is expected to reveal a replacement for the dated software that drives Palm's Centros and most of its Treos.

* Cisco Systems will show off a wireless stereo system, probably something more sophisticated than the simple Web radio player its Linksys division has been selling.