CES 2015

Polk plans to release a stylish portable Wifi speaker this March, the Omni S2.

Wi-Fi dead spots can be a problem, especially if you have a sizeable home. To get wireless Internet connectivity to a bedroom at the opposite end from where your Wi-Fi router is set up very well might require a range extender—Linksys’ N600 PRO, for instance.

Bang & Olufsen showed a trio of new products including new headphones, a 75-inch 4K TV, and a music player that learns what music you listen to at different times of day. The newest addition to the BeoVision Avant line fits in between the previous 55-inch and 85-inch models. BeoPlay headphones include the H8 top-of-the-line, noise-canceling wireless model and the low-end over-over-the-ear H2. But it was the BeoSound Moment music system that stole the show.

A new Firefox-based streaming dongle called Matchstick takes on Chromecast with new features. But there's a catch: It's not yet available for sale.

Can your desktop speaker do this? Show time, news, deadlines, temperature or any other data you're interested in? Stream music services like Spotify, Pandora and iTunes from your phone or tablet? Smart Atom's LaMetric can. In addition, this speaker is hackable. In all my years as an audio reviewer, I have never before written the words, "this speaker is hackable."

In a hidden room on the show floor, LG was showing two prototype High Dynamic Range (HDR) 4K sets (not shown in the photo here). One was an LCD design with full-array backlighting (full-array will be found in best HDR LCD sets, when they arrive in stores), the other an OLED...