We’ve had a couple of days of action at CES already but Tuesday marked the official opening day of the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show. In addition to some very interesting product news, we had our first keynote presentation of the show from Panasonic.

Sony 4K TVs and Movies – Sony looks for the first mover advantage
Sony’s home entertainment strategy seems to be going all-in on 4K. So far at CES, they’ve announced 4K Ultra HD TVs, a prototype 4K OLED TV, a prototype professional 4K video camera, a prototype 4K Handycam, 4K Blu-Ray discs and 4K streaming movies. Yes, it’s all 4K, all the time from Sony. Well, that would be a good strategy if it all isn’t likely to be prohibitively expensive. The only price Sony has announced is a $25,000 price tag on their 84″ 4K LCD TV.

It’s a sound business plan. If Sony expects that 4K Ultra HD is going to be where the consumer market goes next, being the first mover into the market is generally considered a good move. It would probably be better if they backed it up with 4K output compatibility from the upcoming PS4. I figure that the inclusion of Blu-Ray on the PS3 put that in enough homes to push it over the top in the war with HD-DVD. Maybe the PS4 can get 4K in homes too… When the prices come down.

Panasonic 4K Tablet – The highlight of the Panasonic keynote
There wasn’t much interesting to come out of yesterday’s Panasonic keynote presentation. However, there was one new piece of electronic gadgetry that caught my eye. Panasonic, not a company that I thought was in the computer business, unveiled a prototype tablet with 4K resolution. Yes, this kicks the iPad’s “Retina Display” up the arse with 2.6 times the pixels (1.6 times the pixels of the Macbook Pro) and no fancy name for the display. (I don’t care about your pixels per inch counter argument so don’t bother.)

This tablet definitely isn’t portable. It’s a 20″ tablet which means it’s twice as big on the diagonal than the iPad. It also has some powerful sounding internals to get that 4K resolution screen working. It has an i5 processor, 4 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD to run this Windows 8 tablet. Even with the entry to mid-level laptop specs, Gizmodo still reports that it’s a bit laggy. So if you go crazy and try to run your computer in Ultra HD resolution, be sure that you have some high-end parts to power it.

Xi3 Piston – Is this the mythical Steam Box console?
Late Monday night, mini PC developer Xi3 put out a press release that got everyone’s attention. They’re making a Steam-optimized mini PC that they describe as the size of a grapefruit. Most interestingly, Xi3 received an investment from Valve to develop this PC. Details are vague at the moment but the PC, code-named “Piston,” will have a quad-core processor and up to 1 TB of hard drive space.

Does this mean that this is the much-anticipated “Steam Box” console that Valve is promising? Valve’s marketing director Doug Lombardi says that this isn’t the official Steam Box. Valve’s Gabe Newell had previously told Kotaku that there would be Valve-backed third-party hardware geared toward getting Steam into living rooms along with the Steam Box. The Xi3 Piston appears to be a third-party piece of kit and not the hotly anticipated Steam Box that gaming and tech journos are clamouring for.

Razer Edge – A cutting edge gaming tablet with a punny name
I’ll try to keep the bad puns out of this but no guarantees that there won’t a reference to former pro wrestler Scott Hall, AKA Razor Ramon, whose finishing move was once called “The Razor’s Edge.” Anyway, with the gaming market starting to lean more portable thanks to smart phones and iPads, it was only a matter of time before we got something of a dedicated gaming tablet. And that’s where Razer steps in with their Windows 8 gaming tablet called the Edge.

The first thing your likely to notice are the two cylindrical grips on the side. Those are detachable so it’ll look like a normal tablet when you’re not in full game mode. It comes standard on the Edge Pro but is a $250 extra for the baseline Edge. Given that the Pro is only $300 more than the bog standard version, it’s probably worth the upgrade to go from the i5 to i7 processor along with it. Even without the gamepad attachment, the Edge is thicker than the average tablet but is said to feel light for its size.

Anyway, the Edge is called the most powerful tablet in the world for good reason. It’s specs probably trump your computer unless you have a gaming rig. The base Edge comes with NVIDIA’s GT 640M LE graphics card, 4 GB of RAM, a 64 GB SSD and an i5 processor for $999. Stepping up to the Edge Pro gets you the same graphics card but double the RAM and storage space, an upgrade to the i7 processor and the aforementioned controller attachment for $1,299. You can also buy keyboard cases, a docking station, a bigger SSD and an extended battery but going all-in would run you an estimated $1,780. The Pro is clearly the better deal since you’ll want the gamepad attachment. The question is if there’s a market for the gaming tablet yet or if on-the-go gaming will still be a laptop thing.