The Sony Memory Stick Walkman NS-MS7 will go on sale in March at an estimated MSRP of $400.

Sharky Extreme opinion: The price of the NS-MS7 could give even 30-somethings a stroke, but after playing with the MP3 player we're willing to proclaim it to be the best overall portable MP3 music solution at CES.

There were other MP3 audio devices that impressed us as much as the NS-MS7, including a CD-Discman-sized portable from Creative Labs that substitutes a CD drive for an internal 6GB hard drive for massive MP3 storage, but in the class of ultra-light players the NS-MS7 is our top pick.

We'll cover the amazing Creative MP3 Jukebox later in our CES coverage series.

SVR-2000 (TiVo): Many large electronics companies including Sony, Panasonic, Philips, and Sharp were displaying hard drive powered video recorders at CES. This new format really seems to have taken off, and for good reason.

With most models including Sony's SVR-2000 sporting 30GB of hard drive space, up to 30 hours of 250-line VCR/broadcast TV shows can be recorded, or up to 9 hours of 450-line DVD-quality broadcast (from a DirecTV satellite system, or a DVD player) can be recorded.

Sony's SVR-2000 uses the TiVo network system for programming content in terms of user menus and television guides, and the recorder offers similar features to what we've seen from other digital recorders.

Features including live TV "pause" capability, and program behavioral recording options (the recorder actually sees what you're watching and automatically records other programs it believes you'll like) are standard on this class of devices, and the SVR-2000 doesn't disappoint.

These digital recorders are all excellent alternatives to the traditional VCR, and Sony's new SVR-2000 will go on sale in the spring at an MSRP of $400.

Sharky Extreme opinion: Digital recorders are lots of fun and add a degree of interactivity to the normal television watching experience that a traditional VCR cannot match. Add in the viewing guides and assistance provided by TiVo (for $11 a month) and we just might have a revolution on our hands.

The best news of all? Sony reps hinted that in the near future it's possible that they'll combine a DirecTV satellite signal decoder, a DirecTV HDTV satellite signal decoder, a standard digital HDTV decoder for your television, and the digital hard disc recorder hardware itself into just one box, thereby eliminating a host of other unnecessary boxes.

Don't expect to see such a device until 2001, but we're confident after talking to various company reps that not only Sony, but Panasonic, RCA, and Samsung will offer similar all-in-one boxes at that time.