**Freebie alert if you read to the end **

Orange County may not be JVC America’s headquarters (that’s Jersey) but the company has a sizable presence in Cypress, home of its West Coast sales office. Terry Shea, the company’s media guy, invited me to stop by during its annual dealer show by to see the new lineup of TVs, stereos, car audio and MP3 players.

Stuff that stuck out:

JVC’s first-ever GPS navigation gadget, the eAVINU (as in electronic audio video integrated navigation unit). It’s small with a 3.5-inch screen and a 20-gigabyte hard drive. Of that, 13 GBs is for maps. The rest of the space is for photos, music and videos. Unlike my car’s GPS, this one runs on battery and can be used as a handheld GPS device. Also very cool: an SD card slot, a mini-USB for easy file transferring and built in speakers. Or route sound to the car’s speaker system using the line input or a wireless FM transmitter. Available in April for $799.

And it’s about time car stereos came with a USB port. With the USB, you can plug in an iPod shuffle or any other USB drive with music on it. The stereo can read MP3s files and play them over the car’s sound system. No AAC files though, sorry iTunes users.

Wood cone speakers came out last year, but there’s a few more desktop models and a limited-edition set for tricked-out vehicles. Why wood? Better sound for small spaces. But there’s a story behind it, of course. A JVC audio engineer in Japan had trouble curving the wood for the speaker. The thin wood would break too easily. While eating dried squid at a restaurant, he learned the squid was soaked in sake to make it chewy and pliable. He then soaked the wood in sake and voila! Wood cone speakers, like this $1,600 set coming out this summer. To see the various steps, click HERE.

Big beautiful TVs, like the 46-inch LCD …

Big beautiful TVs, like the 46-inch LCD …TV for $4,100. It’s available in August with 1080p. JVC could deliver it now but it’s waiting for standardization of the high-definition TV connection, or the HDMI connector. If you can’t wait that long, JVC also has a whole line of rear-projection LCOS TVs. These are physically larger, but probably just a foot and a few inches wider than LCDs and Plasmas. The 70-inch version is $6,000.

Something much simpler, JVC’s colorful line of flash-memory MP3 players. It’s the headphones that should be noted, as modeled by Chris Deutsch, JVC’s product and training manager. The headphones turn into a lanyard to wear around your neck. No more losing headphones!

And for anyone who has read to the end, JVC gave me a cool little flashlight that is magnetized on one end. Or slip the included cap on and hang it from a lanyard or keychain. I’ll give it to the reader who tells about the coolest gadget they’ve seen in recent weeks that I haven’t mentioned in my blog. Of course, this is subjective. I get to decide who “wins.” I’ll also throw in the 64 MB USB key with JVC’s press kit and the zippered portfolio they gave me when I stopped by the Cypress office.

Comments may still not be working so just e-mail me your thoughts. I’ll decide a week from today.

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