Ten years ago. In “dog years” that’s around 70 … In “tech years”, occasionally it’ll seem longer. Change can come and sneak up on you. After a while you look back and go “whoa!” … it really was like that back then. In human terms, ten years just doesn’t seem that long until you take a look at cutting edge tech of the day.

Samsung just released the HPR8072, a 80″ plasma for the bargain price of … $39,999.
And they released (according to CEDIA) a “monster” 57-inch LCD for $19,999. It’s a wonder anyone
bought any. But thank heavens, someone did, and now these giant flat screens are everywhere
and affordable for anyone with a decent credit limit on their card. And to watch on those giant screens, “Catwoman”, voted the worst movie of the year.

Toshiba was just releasing their new HD-DVD player for $999. Unfortunately, we all know how that worked out.

This was a truly big year for the satellite biz and they dove into the HD pool without their floaties on for the first time. HD DVR’s were easily available, although the technology to stream it in HD to other TV’s in the house wasn’t.

Lots of accessories for the now quaint, if not antique by tech standards, original iPod. Some things never change.

A portable GPS with maps of the whole US stored on a small hard drive (as Cobra pointed out, just like the Apple iPod) for the still shocking price of $1299. Today a demonstrably better unit can be had for around $30.

Panasonic showing it’s newest mp3 player, that could possibly play as many as five of today’s .FLAC high resolution audio files, for $139. But in all fairness, if you’re not too discriminating, 256MB could hold many more low-res songs. Around fifty. Such a deal! Free streaming music was a very, very distant dream. And YouTube didn’t start until February the 15th of that year.

And at the show, Monster Cable had the best official CES party. This year was a private event with Rod Stewart … and no, I wasn’t invited. Just an oversight, I guess.

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