At CES, big and thin are in

LAS VEGAS -- The massive Consumer Electronics Show doesn't officially start until Tuesday, but the biggest companies on Monday set the tone with their pre-show unveilings of the products that they hope you will put on your must-have list in 2012.

Before we highlight some of the cool products and trends from CES Eve, keep in mind the hottest gadgets from past few shows pretty much went nowhere. Do you have any of these in your home or purse: Palm Pre, Motorola Xoom tablet, 3D TV or the Dick Tracy-inspired LG watch phone? Yeah, didn't think so. But maybe this year will be different and you'll actually buy one of these products before the next CES.

Ultrabooks

Apple unveiled it's svelte MacBook Air in 2008 and the rest of the laptop-making world is finally starting to catch up. According to Intel, whose chips power the Air and most other laptops, there will be 60 ultrabook models introduced this year packing Intel's latest chips. Whether any will challenge the Air in coolness remains to be seen.

An ultra book is basically a notebook that is thin and light (compared with "normal" laptops) with a full-size keyboard and near-instant boot-up times. These aren't the doomed netbooks of yesteryear with crippled processors that you now see on the clearance shelves, but fully powered, back-saving PCs that are ideal for travel.

For example, Samsung is showing off its Series 5 Ultra with a 13- or 14-inch screen that weighs under four pounds and is less than 1-inch thick. These aren't the sleekest ultrabooks from Samsung but starting at $899 they are more affordable than the slightly slimmer and pricier Series 9, which start at $1399. 

For 2012, these sexy machines from several manufacturers will sport dramatically improved battery life, the ability to "read" and authenticate a credit card by simply tapping it against the ultrabook, and the ability to navigate through screens by swiping like on a tablet. With Windows 8, expected in 2012, a person doesn't even need to touch the screen. During one demonstration, an executive showed how to pull back and release a slingshot in a game (guess which one) by gesturing a few inches from the screen.

TVs: 3D, thin and 4K

After two years of pushing 3D on consumers with little to show for it, TV manufacturers are focusing on design and dramatic improvement in picture quality, for both 3D and regular old 2D.

Let's start with 3D. The major complaint about 3D is that glasses are required. Making matters worse, there are two incompatible formats. Active glasses are relatively expensive ($100 or more per pair) while passive glasses (like those handed out at movies theaters) are cheap but offer slightly degraded picture quality. The ideal is 3D without glasses, which some manufacturers have showed off in recent years, but they were largely novelties due to limited viewing angles, high cost and impaired picture quality.

Enter Toshiba, which says it will actually ship a 3D TV to the U.S. market very soon that does not require glasses. Here's how CNET, which broke the news of the new TV, describes the technological trick that allows Toshiba to show 3D video to multiple viewers without glasses:

"3D works by showing separate views to the left and right eyes; the brain reconstructs the 3D world from the two images. Toshiba's TV uses numerous tiny lenses to direct two different views in slightly different directions so each eye sees something different.

That's easier to do with a single viewer at a fixed distance to the screen, but harder with multiple viewers. Toshiba's (technology) divides the overall viewing area into nine separate regions so people can use the 3D over a broad range of angles." The face-tracking software is launched with a press of the button on the TV's remote.

Toshiba did not provide details on price or screen size, but the company does have 55-inch 3D sets that don't require glasses for sale in Germany and Japan at about $10,000.

Meanwhile, LG went the "big" route, saying it will ship an 84-inch LCD TV this year. That would make it 4 inches larger than 80-inch, $4,700 whopper from Sharp that you may have ogled at your local Costco. The size of LG isn't the only story, however. The LG will employ a resolution of 4K (3,840x2,160 pixels), which is about four times the pixels employed by your current 1080p TVs (1,920x1,080). LG calls its technology "ultra-definition," or UD.

While this technology won't help with 2D video because there simply is content produced at that resolution, it could allow LG to sell a a 3D TV that does not have a degraded picture (many current 3D TVs send half the 1080p picture to each, so the higher res LG, with double the vertical lines, could send a 1080p image to each eye.

And what would CES be without new ultra-skinny TVs? Samsung and LG unveiled plans to sell TVs with OLED screens. The only thing you need to know about organic, light emitting diode TVs is that they are impossibly thin. We're talking about one-third of an inch thick. In the case of the LG, the bezel around the screen is also pencil-thin.

There have been OLED-based TVs at CES before, specifically an 11-inch version from Sony a few years ago that had a dazzling image but was costly and never caught on. At 55 inches these will become the standard for neighborhood bragging rights.

Samsung Galaxy Note

Steve Jobs once derided large-screen Android phones as being "Hummers" that consumers would shun in favor of the 3.5-inch screen on the iPhone. At the time he made that derisive comment some of the largest Android phones were topping 4 inches. So what would Jobs say about the 5.3-inch Galaxy Note that Samsung is bringing to the U.S. market this year? The Note sports a 5.3-inch hi-res (1,280x800 pixels) screen that is being described simply beautiful. Around back, it's got an 8-megapixel camera with a 2-megapixel in front camera.

This Android phone will be available in dark blue and white, but no details were given on pricing or availability. Like those old Palm phones, the Note also incorporates a stylus, although your finger will also do.