An industry show like Sony Dealers' Day is not unlike that show "My Super Sweet 16" on MTV, where the rich kid has a ridiculously expensive birthday party and invites everyone to come over and gawk at ridiculously cool gifts. It's just like that, in fact. "Happy Birthday, Sony. Let me guess, you got a Blu-Ray player?"

Did you forget about Blu-ray? Lackluster sales would seem to indicate as much, but Sony certainly hasn't forgotten. Immediately upon entering Sony Dealers' Day, we were given the unavoidable opportunity to see the glory of Blu-ray's high definition clarity... Why they chose Viva Las Vegas, a 40-year-old movie starring Elvis "what's-a-HD-and-can-I-shoot-it?" Presley, to flout the marvels of HD is a total head-scratcher. I mean, you don't show off the power of the Playstation3 by running a demo of Q-bert, now do you? Anyway, HD content was a central theme throughout the show. Beyond the Blu-ray display, rows of Bravias lined the corners, including some in designer colors.

Speaking of colors: Thank you, Apple! You made electronic devices available in a minimum of five colors terribly cool, even though few of us would consider buying a pink TV, let alone designing a room around one. Nevertheless, color palette whimsy is now a standard across most product lines, including Sony's Vaio Laptops, Cybershot cameras, and Bravia televisions.

If you're not interested in matching your drapes to your television, Sony continues to offer basic black as a color option (sometimes). The LCD based Bravias remain Sony's primary television brand, but now (or soon to be) available at diverse price points; high-end, high priced Bravias will continue to offer a great picture quality while a new entry-level Bravia will offer affordability in place of image quality, but still the cursory creditability of the Bravia name, which, ironically, will surely tarnish if cheap Bravias become the norm. Ahh, Sales & Marketing, such a tangled web you weave.

Sony's new OLED TV won't be suffering such an image crisis, mind you. However, currently measuring just 11 inches, just finding the XEL-1 was the Sony Dealers' Day version of "Where's Waldo." 11 inches is dinky. Sony trainers on hand assured me that a 27" model -- as displayed earlier at this year's CES show in Vegas -- would be available soon. Regardless of the size, the XEL-1 boasts a waahfer-thin thickness of just 3mm -- an anorexic supermodel by consumer electronics standards. All that's for naught, however, because the thing is mounted to a comparatively-large and aesthetically awkward base from which springs the actual high definition video. Sony asserts that the base should soon be replaced with a wireless HDMI router of some kind (that would be cool), which would also apply to other HDTV circumstance, allowing standard HDMI cabling to be replaced with a cord-free HD transmission.

The "HD" theme was consistent with Sony's current marketing mantra as their freshly-minted "1080p Full HD" label was stamped upon just about everything on display -- all the video stuff, anyway -- as if Sony invented 1080p resolution and implying that 720p is somehow "Partial HD," which it is not, but Sony is rather renowned for self-appointing gold standards. The logo sure implies shiny and new mega modernism, anyway.

That said, it was nice to see Sony playing nice with other CE vendors, particularly Secure Digital, by integrating the nearly ubiquitous SD memory card into their new line of Cybershot cameras (which also remain compatible with Sony's proprietary digital storage dead-end known as the Memory Stick Duo). Further, Sony now seems to be making all relevant audio equipment compatible with iPod (and other generic MP3 devices), as if finally breaking the cycle of denial and cashing in on Apple's success instead tilting at windmills with a Walkman.

However, just when it started to look like the electronics giant may have turned a corner by admitting consumers are free to share their loyalty amongst multiple brands, Sony went and showed a new format war in the making, this time in the "eBook" arena.

Competing directly with the Amazon Kindle (in a market I didn't even know existed, I might add), is Sony's Reader Digital Book. Think of those digital note pads from Star Trek, now make it grayscale and throw in a bit of "Etch A Sketch" technology. Seriously, Etch A Sketch. The Reader Digital Book uses a technology called "e-ink" that essentially draws all the characters from a page of a loaded "eBook" and requires no power to continuously display the text afterwards. It's feather light (9 ounces), has a decent screen size (6 inch), features three text-sizing options, and battery life to turn some 7500 continuous pages per charge. Sony's PR people assert the Reader mimics the look of a real book, and they're not far off. However, while I'll give them it is the best digital recreation of text I've ever seen, each time the "page turns" it's as if the screen was shocked into doing the job, like having a mild seizure, complete with momentary black-out; a mild annoyance at best. The Reader Digital Book is also compatible with PDFs, .txt files and Word documents, and can reportedly store about 160 eBooks onboard (thousands if you add more on memory cards), which you can purchase (only) through Sony's digital download service, and which can, of course, only be read on the Reader (a razor and blades thing, except the razor cost 300 bucks; the blades/eBooks, $7 - $19 each). Hence the new format war, this one waged over the literati. Here we go again.

Anyway, after a day of checking out Sony's new and forthcoming product lines and eating their food, there were two undeniable truths: Sony sells a lot of stuff, and Sony knows a good catering company in the GTA. As the electronics world moves forward towards higher-definition, bigger capacity, and lighter weight gadgetalia, Sony is positioning itself at the forefront... as world-leading electronics companies are wont to do.

Now I'm wondering if Sony will ever come up with some sort of Full HD eSandwich.