A child model recreates Georges Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte as the 2000W bulb slowly roasts his tender flesh.There is no shortage of high-falutin' gee whiz electronic googaws here at CES, but it seems like and overwhelming amount of floor space is devoted to home entertainment and communication -- televisions, audio components, mobile phones and accessories, etc. That's why yesterday it was so refreshing to stop by Hasbro's booth and see a re-imagining of an old friend. That's right -- Lite Brite is back, and this time it's in high definition. Hasbro's literature says the new model will be full 1080p resolution, or 1920 x 1080 pixels. Though I surmise they are still tweaking the hardware, as the sample model on display appeared to have a 4:3 aspect ratio rather than the 16:9 ratio a 1080p display device would have.


Lite Brite HD pegs shown next to quarter for scale.The new Lite Brite HD isn't all sunshine and lollipops, however. The rumor swirling around the show was that the child model hired to play with the beta unit was rushed to the hospital after he swallowed a handful of the nearly microscopic, needle-like pegs required for high resolution images. In the emergency room, it was also discovered that he had suffered third degree burns from the Lite Brite HD's 2000 watt lamp. You'd think they would have used cooler, more energy efficient LED bulbs. But this is CES, where the illusion of a finished product is crucial to capturing the attention of the press.

More CES 2008 coverage here.

Some of the biggest buzz here at the Consumer Electronics Show centers around an offshoot of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) called One Laptop Per Senior (OLPS). OLPS takes the OLPC concept several steps further, making an even simpler user interface and a vastly streamlined set of hardware features. OLPS spokesperson Tanya Saylette said of the project, "A minuscule donation of $120 can give a senior citizen access to the internet and a closer connection to their family, their friends, and the world. They can watch a game of automated cribbage, click buttons, scroll up and down, and even get plain text email descriptions of YouTube videos that their friends with real computers saw." OLPS is currently taking donations and has already distributed over 127,000 laptops, most of which were returned by confused elderly recipients who thought they had ordered diabetes medication.


More CES 2008 coverage here.

One thing is clear at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas -- thin televisions are so 2007. The running theme of the upcoming crop of high definition televisions is that thin form factor is no longer a high priority for discerning consumers. When asked about this dramatic shift in thinking, Jacob Winford, spokesman for Samsung said, "What is clear from our consumer surveys is that buyers are mostly concerned with diagonal screen size, features, picture quality, and wood grain cabinets for their televisions. Thin televisions are viewed as effeminate and weak, whereas unwieldy, massive televisions are sturdy, powerful symbols of status and quality." Samsung, Mitsubishi, and Toshiba all say they plan to have televisions with cabinets at least three times as deep as the screen size (a 60-inch set would have a cabinet at least 180 inches, or 15 feet, deep) for sale in 2009. Sony, on the the other hand, claims they will have a 72-inch set with a 30-foot deep cabinet available in Q4 of 2008.

More CES 2008 coverage here.