CES: Like Woodstock for marketing execs

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•  Dell comes back too. Dell's another company that didn't exactly have a stellar 2006. On the gadget front, market share figures also show that Dell has not done as well as smaller companies like Vizio or Westinghouse in digital TV. Michael Dell delivers a keynote on Tuesday, where he will launch an environmental initiative and likely trot out some Dell products. Other Dell execs will be on hand too.

•  Car tech. The automotive pavilion at CES has been growing steadily. Although a lot of car manufacturers are revving up to make their big announcements at the Detroit auto show, which starts Sunday, expect to see a lot of gear for watching DVDs or storing MP3s in cars.

•  Set-top boxes in stores. Remember back in the '90s, when visionaries talked up intelligent set-top boxes that could retrieve information from the Internet, bring movies on demand, and provide other information? The concept fizzled, but it's now making a comeback. By the middle of 2007, cable companies will be required to let consumers buy their own set-tops rather than rent them. Digeo, which years ago bought Moxi, and others will make announcements at the show.

•  Bigger, brighter TVs. Manufacturers will come out with 1080p TVs, which offer the highest level of performance today. But expect to see Pioneer, Westinghouse and others show off TVs that provide even better performance. At Ceatec in Tokyo last October, Sharp showed off a TV that provides four times the resolution of the sharpest TVs today and the company will likely show off some novel technology at its press conference on Sunday and at its booth. Some Japanese companies have even sharper TVs.

Philips, which last year revealed a 3D TV initiative and later showed off its screen, will likely bring some of the sets along. Samsung is expected to dip a 3D toe in the water.

One TV you won't see, however, is Toshiba's SED TV. Legal issues prevent Toshiba from showing it in the states, sources say.

•  Home defense technology. There's always a great collection of night scopes, Taser guns and personal-defense items at CES. I'm not sure why, but this stuff is always great to see.

•  Hard drives vs. flash memory. Before CES formally begins, there will be Storage Visions, where hard-drive makers will tout terabyte drives and hybrid drives, while flash makers show how they plan to get into notebooks. Ideally, the conference would conclude with a pushup contest to decide a winner, but that's another decision that will be left to the marketplace.

•  WiMax. It's coming for notebooks, but expect more later in the quarter when Intel formally introduces its new line of notebook chips.