Sandisk, American Producer of Memory and portable multimedia products, was displaying a number of its products at CES. Sandisk has been able to steadily increase its MP3 player marketshare, although still much lower compared to Apple’s, primarily thanks to good price/quality. Although there were various MP3 player models being displayed, the most noteworthy MP3 player was the Sansa Connect. The Sansa Connect features a microSD slot and a 2.2-inch color display. Its centerpiece feature, though, is its WiFi capabilities which allows users to purchase songs from specific music websites along with playing streaming Internet radio.

Sandisk also presented its Extreme III 16GB CompactFlash Card to us. At 16 GB, the card is designed exclusively for high-end professional photographers. Its price, which is around $500, only emphasizes the market segment it is meant at. The product is able to work at extreme conditions (-13 to +185 degrees Fahrenheit) and comes with RescuePRO data recovery software so lost photos can be recovered in case of an accident.

Sandisk has also developed a 32 GB solid state disk, which will directly compete with Samsung’s disk which has the exact same capacity. The SSD will be sold by Sandisk directly to notebook and portable multimedia player manufacturers. Although we hope to see solid state disks enter the mainstream soon, pricing still needs to drop in order to achieve those results. More manufacturers competing with each other should help pricing to be more competitive.

Creative

Creative’s large stand this year at CES was able to accommodate pretty much its whole product line. A lot of their latest products were on display, all in different colors. The Creative Xdock Wireless was one of the more interesting products in their booth. The Xdock supports the iPod along with the Creative Zen.

There are a number of uses for this product. Besides charging batteries, it is able to output video and photos stored on the iPod/Zen to a TV screen via S-Video or composite video connectors. It is based on X-Fi Crystalizer and X-Fi CMSS-3D Technologies. X-Fi Crystalizer analyzes the music’s algorithms and upconverts the quality while CMSS-3D creates virtual surround sound through speakers or headphones.

The most important characteristic of the product is the ability to use up to four Creative X-Fi Wireless Receivers independently for wireless music throughout the house. Each wireless receiver can be controlled using its remote control which comes packaged with the product. Volume can be adjusted independently for each receiver along with enabling Xi-Fi Crystalizer and CMSS-3D.

Creative will also be releasing their Xmod Wireless very soon. It has the same exact functionality as the Xdock, except it uses the audio of PCs and notebooks as the source instead of an iPod. The Xmod Wireless is also able to stream music wirelessly at Xtreme Fidelity.

Announced a little while back, we were able to try out Creative’s Xmod Sound Module (not to be confused with the Xmod Wireless). The Xmod Sound Module takes the audio of PCs and notebooks and applies CMSS-3D along with Xi-Fi Crystalizer to it. It can also be used with other sources including consoles and portable media players.