Jonathan Takiff: CE Week chock-full of new tech gadgets

THE GIZMO: The consumer electronics industry turned New York City into a tech wonderland of product showcases and seminars recently. And they called it CE Week.

SPECTRUM GRAB: In his keynote speech, Consumer Electronics Association president/CEO Gary Shapiro called for Americans to sign a "Declaration of Innovation," supporting policies that promote creative and economic growth for U.S. tech concerns.

Tops on the agenda - Senate passage of the Spectrum Act (S-911) to reclaim and then auction-off broadcast TV frequencies to relieve the "spectrum crunch."

Broadcast TV frequencies are "waterfront property" that's being wasted, Shapiro said, as only 8 percent of Americans are watching over-the-air TV. Meanwhile, new high-tech gadgets are fast running out of their allocated spectrum space. Smartphones use 24 times as much signal capacity as traditional cellphones, tablet PCs transmit 122 times as much data as traditional cellphones. Wireless usage will multiply in the U.S. by 40 times in just a few years.

A return of maybe six or seven TV channels (a bunch were already repurposed when we switched from analog to digital TV) will allow today's broadcasters to carry on unimpeded, while filling the expansion needs for smartphones/tablets/etc to 2014, Shapiro hopes.

Uh, but what then?

TABLET STUFF: A staggering 42 million (estimated) tablet computers will be sold in the U.S. this year, up from 17 million in 2010. It's speculated that tablets are even replacing small TVs on shopping lists, given how you can watch (bandwidth-hogging) Netflix and YouTube streams and movie disc downloads on 'em.

Adding fuel to the fire are the dozens of new tablets coming from established makers like HP and Toshiba, and upstarts like Vizio.

Yeah, that price-cutting TV maker (now responsible for 25 percent of LCD TV sales in the U.S.) aims to pull the same stunt with tablets, starting with an eight-inch Android 2.3 model. The Vizio Via has a responsive, high-resolution touchscreen, built-in GPS, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth connectivity and some special touches. Like the ability to function as a universal infrared remote control for 95 percent of the electronics sold in the U.S.

To hit a $349 price, Vizio Via packs just 2GB of user accessible RAM, though its MicroSD card slot supports an additional 32GB of flash memory "that the consumer can buy for much less than Apple would charge you," said Vizio co-founder Ken Lowe.