For those seeking miniaturization rather than gains in resolution, 3M had a half-inch video projector that might be incorporated into next year’s cell phones or laptops.

When it comes to actual changes in TV tech, Sony’s drool-inducing, high-definition OLED TVs (that’s organic LED) wowed attendees with their revolutionary image quality; they’re available for purchase right now, but at $2,500 for a mere 11-inch model, who’s buying? Mitsubishi, on the other hand, debuted TVs that produced images with lasers; the picture stunned attendees, but the company was vague on when it would have products in stores, and how much they’d cost once there.

(As for what people might watch on all those high-def displays, the convention was abuzz with recent news that Warner Bros. is dumping HD-DVD, possibly making Blu-ray the winner of the next-generation DVD format war — so Funai’s announcement of plans to offer the first Blu-ray player under $300 was extremely timely.)

The past decade has seen so many “groundbreaking” new systems for information transfer crash and burn, observers are rightly skeptical. Still, there was plenty of chatter about new or improved ways of speeding up the Internet (Comcast’s “wideband” plans), untethering it from physical wires (WiMAX), or getting it to work better on mobile phones (Yahoo! Go 3.0). Microsoft announced plans for digital delivery of TV content, notably NBC’s upcoming Olympics coverage, while the makers of the much-ballyhooed Slingbox introduced a slew of improvements to their line of media-storage and -transport devices.

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