With the growth of Wi-Fi, radio/infrared transmitters and streaming, home theaters have become increasingly less wire-dependent. Until now, the loss of wires has been limited largely to  component and speaker connections. With this new television, Haier is extending the wireless concept to the power cable.

Working on technology developed by MIT spinoff WiTricity, the television cuts the power plug in favor of a magnetic wireless power system that includes an electric coil in the back panel that can receive 100 Watts of power at distances of up to 1 m.

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From the land of flatland skiing and big, fuzzy sweaters comes this high-end home-theater-in-a-box. And unlike most boxed home theater systems, this one looks like it warrants a closer look by all stripes of A/V buyers.

Bucking the audiophile trend of separate components, the Maestro from Electrocompaniet packs a Blu-ray player, AM/FM/HD radio, Internet radio, LAN streamer and a three-channel amplifier into one simple, little box. Owners can cut out a mess of boxes and wires and enjoy a variety of audio and video with one device.

Speaking of cutting out wires, the Maestro’s three-channel amplifier is designed to handle the front three speakers, while a Wi-Fi transmitter syncs up with a separate rear amplifier, eliminating the need for complicated rear-speaker wiring.

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In another hot CES release that we missed last week, Notion Ink displayed a prototype version of its upcoming Adam tablet. The tablet features Pixel Qi’s new dual-mode display, which offers the best of both worlds, allowing users to enjoy the color and beauty of a backlit LCD with capability of switching to low-power electrophoretic reflective mode, which provides an E-ink-like display with superior visibility in the sun. Pixel Qi displayed the new technology at the show.The screen will provide a touch-sensitive interface capable of recognizing six individual points of contact at a time.

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In a world where new phones drop every day, it’s difficult to get especially excited about a phone launch. But the LePhone from Lenovo has a touch of it factor that we can’t help but drool over. Perhaps it’s the polished,rounded edges, more likely the circular, bulls-eye-like keypad, but whatever it is, we like.

Lenovo’s first smartphone features a 3.7-inch touchscreen that can be paired with a keypad/dock to give users a more physical interface. The dock also extends battery life while adding speakers.

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We’re still catching up on all of the hottest releases from CES. One that wowed the crowd was this prototype transparent OLED display from Samsung–the perfect accessory for ogling the chest of the hot brunette across the library while appearing completely innocent and studious.

The 14-inch laptop allows 40 percent of light to pass through when it’s turned off. When it’s on, you can see your desktop and applications, but still see through to what’s behind. The company declared the laptop as the world’s largest transparent OLED display.

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During Intel’s keynote speech last night, Intel CEO Paul Otellini took the stage and showed off the first smartphone to be based on Intel’s Moorestown platform. Moorestown is Intel’s mobile chipset that includes an energy-efficient Atom processor.

The first Moorestown phone is from LG and is called the GW990. The phone features a gangly, elongated 5-inch touchscreen with 1020 x 480 resolution. It’ll will run on Linux Moblin OS and will include multitouch capabilities. Other features include 720p video, 16 GB of flash memory, 512 MB of RAM, and a front and rear camera.

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Getting sick of tablet announcements yet? How about vague tablet allusions that don’t really give any hard details? Yeah, we’re pretty tired of those to.

To compound our irritation, Dell has chosen to tease its own tablet with the very barest of minimums in terms of information. Introduced at its keynote speech this evening, we know that Dell’s tablet is on the compact size, featuring just a 5-inch screen. It’ll be based on Android and will include a slot for SIM card.

So basically, we have about as much information as we did from the rumors a month ago.

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While working with Google to bring the Nexus One to market, one of the most advanced smartphones out there, HTC was also busy crafting a completely different kind of smartphone–an inexpensive, easy-to-use phone designed to spread smartphone technology to less tech-oriented users around the world.

Named simply Smart, the new phone will utilize HTC’s Sense UI and will get Qualcomm’s BREW MP operating system to help the company sell the phone at a lower price point. As can be expected, other specs are also modest including a 300 Mhz processor, 2.8-inch touch-sensitive LCD with QVGA resolution, 256 MB of RAM, 3G HSPA 2100 MHz, Quad-Band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, Bluetooth 2.0,  and a microSD 2.0 compatible card slot.

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While Palm’s CES press conference in 2010 couldn’t rival the atmosphere of the big ’09 Pre unveiling, Palm did have some notable new things to offer for its staple phones.

First up, the new versions of the Pre and the Pixi will bail from Sprint in favor of Verizon, starting later this month.

The new Palm Pre Plus gets a slightly more streamlined look with the loss of the button used for closing out apps. The new-improved Pre will also get an inductive back plate, which will allow it to sync with the Palm Touchstone magnetic charger without needing to swap out the battery cover. Pre memory is upgraded to 16 GB, which is double the 8 GB offered in the original. According to Engadget, the sliding mechanism on the Pre Plus is also smoother than the original.

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