Michael Berk

Wi-Fi, 3G, and LTE networks may have been overwhelmed during CES 2012 itself, but news of wireless and wireless standards for audio (and video) was everywhere, with high-end manufacturers and do-it-all mega-corporations alike looking to free their consumers from their plastic-sheathed copper bonds.

In keeping with the overall haziness of CES 2012, the buzz came in the form of a meme with a few almost-maybe-real devices attached rather than as a single wowza product debut. During last Monday's press extravaganza, pretty much every TV titan talked about integrating content across all of the screens in their customer's expanding gadget arsenals, and while there was certainly plenty of excitement around do-it-all wired connections like MHL, making everything converge seamlessly seems to require a wireless approach.

We first got a look at speaker maker PSB's new headphone, the M4U 2, at the 2011 CEDIA show, and Brent Butterworth liked what he heard from an early version.

Where some other Press Day events - namely Samsung's - were big production numbers, Panasonic's was low-key, almost to a fault. Strangely for a consumer show, a big chunk of time was spent by chairman Joseph M. Taylor and CTO Eisuke Tsuyuzaki B2B and industrial products like solar panels, avionics and green initiatives for institutions and industry (Ed Begley, a Vegas-area resident, told the crowd that they could "have a cool beverage and a warm shower, but you can be more efficient").

Through with music games? Gone as far as you can with Guitar Hero? (There's always someone willing to go further - but that's not for you). Time to dust off that axe that's taking up space in the closet, plug it into your computer, and learn to play for real, once and for all.

Plug it into your computer? Yep, you heard me right.