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LAS VEGAS -- Where does the PC world end and the universe of consumer electronics begin? At this year's Consumer Electronics Show, it isn't always easy to tell.

With more and more hardware intended for the home acquiring silicon-based smarts and the capability to work with a PC or digital assistant, this show has now overtaken Comdex as the place to introduce exciting--and sometimes ridiculous--new personal digital technology.

PC World's team of editors trod miles of show (and hotel suite) floors to identify the highlights and low points of the 2003 CES. Here goes:

Scene on the Show Floor

Biggest joyride: A CES press event let attendees test-drive Dean Kamen's Segway motorized urban people movers. Zipping along at up to 12 mph in a hotel ballroom was a blast; I'm still not sure I want these things on sidewalks in my own neighborhood, though...(and before the evening ended, one joyrider was injured). --Harry McCracken

Segway segue: My top CES pan: The guy who had the chutzpah to ride his Segway on the show floor. And no, he wasn't just demo'ing it. His riding skills were too perfect and he had a slightly self-conscious look on his face. --Tracey Capen

Whatever happened to sandwich boards? Strutting from one convention hall to another is a rather strange but entertaining robot reminiscent of the Tin Man, only much, much taller at about 9 feet, with flashing lights and metallic colors galore. "Whassup?" the giant roars at innocent bystanders. "My batteries are bigger than you." The wisecracking robot can be hired to wear corporate logos. --Aoife McEvoy

Neatest trend: A profusion of creative products that do interesting things with the broadband and wireless connections that so many folks have in their homes. Examples include a Wi-Fi-enabled car stereo from Rockford Fosgate (you can download tunes from your PC to a garaged car) and D-Link's affordable videophone system. --Harry McCracken

Least tempting invitation to be charitable: Signs touted the CES 5K, a charity run on Saturday morning. By late Thursday afternoon, after tramping around the show for a full day, I suspected I'd be lucky if I had any feeling in my feet come Saturday.... --Harry McCracken

Least coherent brand extension: One booth offers a complete line of video and audio products under the Polaroid name. The company makes swell instant cameras, of course, but does that translate into expertise at producing loudspeakers? Runner-up: One-time typewriter king Smith Corona, promoting its refurbished headsets. --Harry McCracken

Most entertainingly bizarre celebrity sighting: Almost as many celebs as civilians appeared at the show--from Quincy Jones to Deborah "Don't Call Me Debbie" Gibson. Most unexpected: Falcon Crest vixen and Old Navy spokesactress Morgan Fairchild, promoting Swanson TV Dinners at one press event. (Why was Swanson at an electronics show? Something about upgrading their food to match today's fancy home theaters, apparently.) Chatting with her about the show floor and Salisbury steak was fun, if more than a tad surreal. --Harry McCracken

Most entertainingly entertaining celebrity sighting: Guitar legend and Byrds mainstay Roger McGuinn rocked out at the booth of satellite radio company Sirius. He was great, disproving--perhaps for the first time--the common wisdom that all trade show entertainment is inherently awful. --Harry McCracken

Jagged little booth entertainment: Alanis Morissette also showed up at Sirius's soundstage. A cranky, conformity-spurning singer serenading conventioneers in Las Vegas--isn't it ironic? --Harry McCracken

Hugged your PDA today? No showgirls or spokesmodels for Hewlett-Packard: Instead, visitors are greeted by a person-size inflatable PDA, modeled after the recently released IPaq 5450, complete with wireless antenna and biometric fingerprint reader. Love it or hate it, it was certainly eye-catching and put the focus on the product. --Anush Yegyazarian

Butterflies aren't free: Instead, they are confined to the Las Vegas Convention Center all weekend, hawking Microsoft's MSN 8. --Anne B. McDonald

Digitizing the Living Room

Loneliest mascot: Microsoft's booth offers show-goers the opportunity to have their picture taken with MSN's Butterfly mascot. In TV ads, the Butterfly's a geeky guy in a goofy suit; the Las Vegas versions, curiously, are shapely young women in skintight outfits. Even so, they seemed lost in Maytag Repairman-like solitude: Did anyone seize the opportunity to get a photo with them? --Harry McCracken and Eric Dahl

TiVo net: Fans of the digital video recorder and service can soon add Series 2 units to a standard wired or wireless network via a new Home Media Option. You can stream music and photos from PC to TV, share programs among TiVo units, and access program scheduling remotely. The software download seems a tad overpriced at $99 (plus network hardware), but the ultra-slick interface might make this the first truly usable living room media center. TiVo nuts at the show seem to love it. --Tom Mainelli

PC/wide-screen LCD-TV: We've seen a lot of PC-TV hybrid attempts, typically with lots of cables and special software, but here's a different answer: Hy-Tek has wed a 30-inch, fast-response LCD monitor to a 2.5-GHz Pentium 4-based computer running Windows XP Pro. The fully functional 5-inch-thick computer displays TV, cable, satellite, or video from any source; plays DVDs and music or video CDs; and records TV programs with an on-board digital video recorder. It's shipping in January for $6495. --Ramon G. McLeod

Go video indeed: I was impressed with the $250 GoVideo networkable DVD player from Sonicblue. The company says this good-looking set-top box simplifies streaming audio and video media files from any PC to the GoVideo box. Fast setup, a great interface, and included networking hardware should let you easily move fun from the PC into the living room. --Anne B. McDonald

A box full of boxes: With VCRs, CD players, DVD players, cable boxes, and digital video recorders, many home entertainment hutches are rapidly starting to look like electronics warehouses. Products like Digeo's Moxi Media Center and the DCP501 from Motorola seek to tame that clutter, putting many functions in one box. The Moxi has a cable receiver, 80GB hard drive for video recording, and a built-in Wi-Fi network adapter; the DCP501 has a cable receiver, DVD player, and five channels with 100 watts of power for home theater. --Ed Albro

Recorded video to go: Lots of folks are showing products for recording TV video to a hard-disk-based living room box. CenDyne's Active Video Disk takes a different approach: This recording device contains a removable hard drive (40GB, 60GB, or 80GB), which lets you easily offload recordings to your PC. It's expected to ship by midyear for $299. --Melissa Perenson

Affordable home stereo digital music player/recorder: TDK's DA-9000 has a 20GB hard drive, LCD screen, and a 6X CD-RW drive for writing to music CDs. Earlier stereo audio components with a hard disk drive, such as those from HP and Sonicblue, cost a small fortune at $1000 or more; when it ships in April, the DA-9000 will cost just $379. --Melissa Perenson

Satellite radio on a boom box: XMSatellite Radio is bringing its 101 digital radio channels to home and portable stereos. The Delphi SKYFi audio system is built around a $130 receiver that can attach directly to a home stereo equipped with a $70 adapter kit antenna or integrated into Delphi's $100 portable boom box. You can use the receiver in a car by purchasing a $70 cassette deck adapter--or for a more professional-looking setup, you can add an FM Modulator ($50). XM's service costs $10 monthly. --Ramon G. McLeod

Rock on: Telex Electro-Voice, best known for doing sound for bands like the Rolling Stones, launched a $400 set of 5.1 PC speakers that were made to play loud. Larger than typical PC speakers, they feature modified horn tweeters and 4-inch midrange speakers in the satellites; the center channel has two 3-inch woofers and a subwoofer with a 125-watt amplifier and a 6-inch-long throw speaker. The sound? Major league. Plus, Telex marketing communications manager Tim Klabunde has some of the coolest tattoos. --Ramon G. McLeod

You paid what for that universal remote? Philips says its $1700 iPronto TSi6400 does much more than control all your audio, video, and home theater devices. It uses a high-resolution 6.4-inch touch-screen LCD and also wirelessly controls lighting, security cameras, home networks, climate control, and other IR/RF/ethernet home applications. You can look up TV programs on its electronic program guide, access the Internet and send e-mail over a Wi-Fi wireless network, listen to MP3s, and play media recorded on MMC/SD cards. Still, $1700? --Ramon G. McLeod

Wear gloves when you handle that! All these shiny silver boxes--from MP3 players to media centers--are lovely, but are such fingerprint-prone surfaces really best for such devices? And the mirrored surface presents another odd circumstance: Do you really enjoy seeing a (perhaps smudged) reflection of yourself in your DVD player? --Melissa Perenson

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