LG, the Korean consumer electronics giant, made a big splash early this CES with the unveiling of the Super Multi Blue player, capable of playing both of the warring high-def disc formats, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Teamed with the Chocolate music phone, the #1 CDMA handset in the U.S. and a solid line of HD TVs, LG has quickly become a force to be reckoned with. —John Mahoney

Take a quick tour of the booth below and click the individual images for captions.

After testing the first Blu-ray and HD DVD boxes to hit the market, I´m confident that the future of movie discs is clearly high-def: picture and sound quality from both players was terrific. But each had its own bugs and with studios split over the two formats and combo players at least a year away, smart consumers will hold off on that future a little longer.

Blu-Ray: Samsung BD-P1000
Price: $1,000

Number of announced movies: 132 (but wider studio support)

With nine processors and 234 million transistors, the Cell is the powerhouse of Sony's forthcoming PlayStation 3 console. The four-plus-gigahertz (depending on its application) chip calculates an unmatched 256 billion operations per second, making it 35 times as fast as the PS2's chip. The upshot: Characters react more realistically (like flinching when bullets whiz by). Next year Toshiba will offer an HDTV set that uses the chip to decode high-def signals.