Posted by: Jane Douglas

Because I like to keep my finger on the pulse on all the top-flight gadgetry I won't be able to afford this side of an obscene pay rise, yesterday I headed along to a Sony showcase event.

If I were to build a fantasy home entertainment system, I'd definitely need one of Sony's mammoth 70-inch Bravia LCD TVs, which dwarfed all the puny 46-inchers on show. Either that or, at the other end of the scale, the world's first ever organic-light emitting diode (OLED) televisions, the ultra-thin 11-inch XEL-1.

I'm told Sony is looking to bring the XEL-1 (right) to the UK around the end of this year, with a modified inbuilt speaker system. So far they've only been available in the US and Japan, retailing for about $2,500 (£1,250).

It'll have been worth the wait for British early-adopters of OLED television. The XEL-1 has an eye-popping million-to-one contrast ratio, producing incredibly rich blacks. At the Sony event the XEL-1 was being used to screen standard definition footage - and somehow even that looked sharper than HD.

I could barely tear myself away from the Sountina (left), either, a cylindrical glass speaker topped and tailed with cool blue lights and mounted on a leather-clad subwoofer.

Putting out crystal clear sound in 360 degrees, the Sountina is a speaker to be reckoned with - and is priced to match. One of these will set you back about $10,000 (£5000).

The Sony rep told me that they sell these mostly to high-end hotels and luxury car dealerships...

At the more affordable end of Sony's sound systems was the Rolly (below). Frankly, I'm not sure how we lived this long without MP3 players that doubled as programmable dancing robots.

These gizmos roll, swivel, spin, glow and flap their tiny "wings" in time with the music. Purchase two or more and you can synch them up to line dance together.

They have, unsurprisingly, been a bit of a hit in Japan. No exact date on when they'll be hitting our shelves, but keep an eye out - perhaps closer to Christmas.

A little less flashy but no less impressive were the new Vaio laptops. Across the various ranges, all Sony's laptops now feature a neat little cylinder hinge (left).

The green light is there mostly for cosmetic reasons, unifying the look of Vaio-branded laptops. More significantly, though, this hinge lets the screen sit a little lower - starting closer to the keyboard and allowing for a smaller overall footprint.

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