Just as the annual Consumer Electronics Show kicks off this week, according to a report from the NPD Group: Consumer electronics sales during this past holiday period dropped six percent from last year.

That should be some not-so-welcome news for the vendors at the Las Vegas gadget confab, which is seeking to show off new wares to excite said consumers.

Those offerings had better step it up, from a look at the NPD Weekly Tracking Service, which noted that the decline was coming off another decline from a year ago.

While 2011′s drop was not as bad as 2010′s, it’s not the right direction, although the tally did not include some of the more explosive device categories being prominently featured at CES, such as tablets.

Said NPD: “Total consumer technology sales (excluding cell phones, tablets, e-readers, and video games) fell 5.9 percent to around $9.5 billion for the 5 weeks ending December 24, a slight improvement over the 6.2 percent decline in 2010.”

Sales of personal computers and televisions fell 4 percent, with flat unit volumes.

“2010 was the first year in quite awhile where the real drags on the core CE marketplace were not TVs and PCs,” said Stephen Baker, VP of industry analysis at NPD, in a press release. “Revenue for those two segments outperformed while the rest of the market dropped by more than 7 percent. The accelerated rate of decline in older technology categories such as DVD, GPS and MP3 players put a ceiling on how well the industry could perform during the holiday.”

Consumers did snap up flat-panel TVs, with screen sizes of 50 inches and higher rising by 32 percent in unit sales.

And the rocky 3-D TV business also grew by more than 100 percent, with TVs with “3D capability accounting for more than one in every five dollars spent on TVs during the holiday.”

Also up: Home theater systems (10 percent) and stand-alone streaming devices (65 percent).

But those increases did not stem the overall negative tide.

For other sectors, here’s the damage to holiday revenue in percentage change from 2011 dollars spent:

Blu-ray players: Down 17 percent.

Camcorders: Down 42.5 percent.

Digital picture frames: Down 37.5 percent.

GPS: Down 32.6 percent.

HDD: Down 25.1 percent.

Mice and keyboards: Down 7.1 percent.

MP3 players: Down 20.5 percent.

Multifunction printers: Down 9.9 percent.

Point-and-shoot cameras: Down 20.8 percent.

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The 3DS will be available in the U.S. on March 27 for a competitively priced $249.99. The handheld game player’s big selling point is that it offers 3-D without the need for special glasses. The device will come in Cosmo Black or Aqua Blue. Prices will vary outside the U.S.

At an event today in New York, Nintendo revealed more of the device’s capabilities, and many of them sound like features found on the iPhone and many other smartphones.

Apple’s ability to turn its MP3 players and phones into portable gaming devices has been a competitive threat to Nintendo, which with the 3DS release looks like it is willing to recognize.

For example, the new 3DS has an online store, called the eShop, where users will be able to download games. It also has three cameras and a built-in gyro, so the device can be tilted and turned to affect game play. It will also have location-based features, where users can elect to receive new content from Nintendo or other 3DS users as they travel around. The feature can connect to Wi-Fi hotspots when in sleep mode to collect this content or to function as a pedometer, which counts a user’s steps.

Additionally, users can take pictures with the camera, or listen to music and surf the Web on an Internet browser, which will come soon in a system upgrade. Users will also be able to play with one another by exchanging a simple code. About 30 games are expected to be available by June for the device.

It’s some of these more nuanced features that could make the device more competitive, but it’s the 3-D interactivity that Nintendo is really pushing, and so far consumers have not gravitated to 3-D as a reason to upgrade a TV, so it’s unclear whether it will be a draw for the 3DS.

Nintendo’s enthusiasm for 3-D also suffered a blow when it issued a warning that it is not healthy for kids under the age of 6 to view 3-D images. Nintendo says the impact from that should be minimal because the 3-D effect can be ratcheted up or down, and even turned off completely.

To work on a mysterious cloud-computing project, which has something to do with mobility and entertainment. That’s per TechFlash, which reported on the deal Sunday.

Probably best not to make too much of this one. Given that Real didn’t announce the deal (let alone report it to the Securities and Exchange Commission), it can’t be for much money (note that the last purchase Real bothered to announce was for $4 million). And the Lala deal aside, you can “acqhire” a group of engineers without laying out a lot of cash these days.

But it is a good reminder that RealNetworks (RNWK) wants to make itself a player in the next phase of entertainment–the one where you buy or rent the stuff over the Web and consume it wherever you want.

That’s at least partly why CEO Rob Glaser is still wrangling with Hollywood over his “RealDVD” system, which is supposed to let you rip copies of DVDs you already own. Because once you’ve done that, the next logical step is moving the file to your iPod or your tablet or just to different rooms in your house.

The problem, of course, is that everyone else wants to play there, too. And many already are in some form.

There are the hardware guys like Sony (SNE), who are selling TV sets and game consoles with Web connections, and cable guys like Comcast (CMCSA), who already control the pipe that brings the stuff to your living room. And telcos like Verizon (VZ), which want to do the same thing. And, of course, retailers like Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and Netflix (NFLX), which are already selling digital entertainment. Etc.

During the first Web boom, it seemed Real would be in this list as well, since its back-end technology and its RealPlayer were commonly used to move entertainment around the Internet. Now the company is best known for its Rhapsody music service and its collection of casual games, but it doesn’t have pole position in either sector.

You’ll hear plenty more about this stuff over the next week at the Consumer Electronics Show, which kicks off Wednesday. But Real will probably be mum.

The company doesn’t have any announcements planned and isn’t renting space at the convention’s main show floor. Not a terrible idea to lie low at CES, where lots of people make a lot of noise about stuff that never comes to pass. But at some point, it will be interesting to see how Real plans to compete.

Sources tell The Wall Street Journal that the MID uses an ARM-based chip, runs Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system and has been in development since last year. It does not have cellphone capabilities. The device could arrive at market before the end of the year, distributed via cellular providers, though a person familiar with the company’s plans tells The Journal it might be delayed or even scrapped entirely.

For Dell (DELL), whose track record in adjacent electronics businesses is littered with the corpses of devices like the Ditty and Axim, venturing into the MID market might be a tad risky. To succeed the company would have to overcome its lack of software development experience and wireless technology and develop an appealing device. No easy task for a company whose recent smartphone design was rejected as too dull by wireless network operators.

How these chargers work is very simple. They take sunlight or wind power to charge their internal batteries, thus able to recharge a cellphone, MP3 player or digital camera through a connector. They are a part of a growing market of products that power up mobile devices on the go.

“For the first time we are seeing innovation,” said Shawn DuBravac, economist and director of research at the Consumer Electronics Association. He said the newest power solutions for portables are in the infancy stage.

I chose the Devotec and the HYmini devices because of their futuristic, sleek looks. The Devotec solar charger, with its cover, can easily fit in a pocket or purse.

I left the Devotec near my windowsill the whole afternoon to catch some rays. The device charged my iPhone, albeit not completely. The most frustrating thing with this device is that I don’t know when it’s done charging. The solar indicator light doesn’t turn off. Also, I don’t know how charged–i.e., quarter- or half-full–the battery is.

The manual says that an hour of sunlight should suffice to start charging. But after speaking with the company, I was told that the battery needed 24 hours of sunlight, equating to a couple of days near a windowsill, for the internal battery to be fully charged.

Read the rest of this post

But the same cannot be said for Martine Rothblatt, the entrepreneur who founded Sirius (SIRI) nearly 20 years ago. She feels Sirius’s chances for real success may have died years ago–dealt a mortal blow by the FCC, which delayed its launch, depriving it of the competitive advantage it might have had over MP3 players like the iPod and later free Internet radio services.

“There has been a huge growth in terrestrial alternatives,” Rothblatt told Fortune. “As we move from third-generation to fourth-generation cellular, there’s going to be ever more bandwidth available to distribute content totally via terrestrial cellular infrastructure. And that will leave fewer and fewer unique market attributes to satellite radio. Technologies have their ideal times and places, and in my opinion the better time for satellite radio was 10 years ago.”

So much for that first-mover advantage…

A grim assessment for Sirius, which had just seemed to be getting an edge on its daunting troubles. But Rothblatt has a point. Internet radio is gaining traction and once cellular networks evolve to the point where they can deliver it to cars and other devices, how can satellite compete? Howard Stern’s going to retire sooner or later…

PREVIOUSLY:

• Sirius to Shareholders: Put Down the Mylanta
• Call Me Mel “Save-My-Own-Keister” Karmazin
• Sirius-EchoStar-Liberty: Ménage-à-Blah
• Sirius: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Ergen
• A Bankruptcy Filing, Mel? Surely You Can’t Be Sirius…
• Sirius Rolls Out New 24 Hour Investor Keening Channel
• Sirius Debt Problems? Call EchoStar! No Upfront Fees!
• Sirius XM: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?
• Your Report Card Is Your Stock Price? Guess Sirius Is Making Straight $.13’s…
• Trade You 77 shares of SIRI for 1 Month of “Sirius Everything”

But the same cannot be said for Martine Rothblatt, the entrepreneur who founded Sirius (SIRI) nearly 20 years ago. She feels Sirius’s chances for real success may have died years ago–dealt a mortal blow by the FCC, which delayed its launch, depriving it of the competitive advantage it might have had over MP3 players like the iPod and later free Internet radio services.

“There has been a huge growth in terrestrial alternatives,” Rothblatt told Fortune. “As we move from third-generation to fourth-generation cellular, there’s going to be ever more bandwidth available to distribute content totally via terrestrial cellular infrastructure. And that will leave fewer and fewer unique market attributes to satellite radio. Technologies have their ideal times and places, and in my opinion the better time for satellite radio was 10 years ago.”

So much for that first-mover advantage…

A grim assessment for Sirius, which had just seemed to be getting an edge on its daunting troubles. But Rothblatt has a point. Internet radio is gaining traction and once cellular networks evolve to the point where they can deliver it to cars and other devices, how can satellite compete? Howard Stern’s going to retire sooner or later…

PREVIOUSLY:

• Sirius to Shareholders: Put Down the Mylanta
• Call Me Mel “Save-My-Own-Keister” Karmazin
• Sirius-EchoStar-Liberty: Ménage-à-Blah
• Sirius: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Ergen
• A Bankruptcy Filing, Mel? Surely You Can’t Be Sirius…
• Sirius Rolls Out New 24 Hour Investor Keening Channel
• Sirius Debt Problems? Call EchoStar! No Upfront Fees!
• Sirius XM: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?
• Your Report Card Is Your Stock Price? Guess Sirius Is Making Straight $.13’s…
• Trade You 77 shares of SIRI for 1 Month of “Sirius Everything”

This morning the company announced slotMusic, a compact memory card-based music format that can be played on cellphones, PCs and some MP3 players. It relies on MP3s without digital rights management schemes and is backed by Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Group, all of which apparently believe that more physical media is the best way to reinvent their business model in the era of digital distribution. Though as SanDisk VP Daniel Schreiber notes, they do have their reasons. “There’s a billion phones out there and a lot of them can play music and a lot of them have a microSD slot,” he explained. “We think there’s still a need for a tangible, physical product. People will appreciate walking out of the store playing music on their phones.”

Perhaps. But will they appreciate carrying that music around on a 0.6? x 0.4? medium that’s about the size of a fingernail? Seems easy to lose, doesn’t it (maybe Case Logic is planning a slotMusic binder)? And wouldn’t they rather carry around hundreds of songs, instead of the dozen or so stored on each slotMusic card? And what if the memory card in their phone is already in use, filled up with contacts, applications and other data? What then? And beyond this, haven’t iTunes and Amazon MP3 made consumers more accustomed to purchasing music à la carte? Why purchase a full album at $15, when all you really want are the only two good songs on it?

This week I took a look at some options for people who want to get rid of old electronics, one way or another. The good news is that there are a handful of Web sites that make it easy to do this — and some of them may even pay you for your old products. The bad news is that you’ll likely receive only a fraction of what you originally paid, especially if you waited a while to get rid of it.

Some sites, like Gazelle.com and VenJuvo.com, offer cash for your items and/or will recycle products. Another site, TechForward.com, lets people pay a fee to “lock in” a value for how much the site promises to pay for the product in the future. MyBoneYard.com accepts only laptops, desktop PCs, cellphones and flat-panel monitors, and gives Visa (V) gift cards rather than cash.

I was surprised to receive significantly different value offers from Gazelle and VenJuvo when trying to sell the exact same products on each site. In one instance, VenJuvo offered me $30 more than Gazelle for a digital camera; another time, I got $15 more from Gazelle for an old Apple (AAPL) iPod. It’s worth the extra step to shop around at more than one of these sites before getting rid of something.

Both ask a few questions about the item, including its condition and whether or not it still has the accessories that originally came with it. Gazelle determines a product’s value using retail — think Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) — and wholesale channels; VenJuvo uses similar criteria and also looks at competitors’ prices.

If you worry about someone stealing your digital data, you’ll likely not feel comfortable dropping something in the mail that’s chock full of personal information, especially if it no longer powers on to allow the owner to wipe this information.

Both Gazelle and VenJuvo accept at least some types of digital cameras, laptops, MP3 players, GPS devices, camcorders and gaming consoles. Gazelle also accepts cellphones. But they don’t take everything. Gazelle doesn’t take LCD TVs and VenJuvo doesn’t accept satellite radios and portable hard drives or any smartphones or cellphones other than the iPhone; neither accepts desktop PCs.

I took the closest look at newly released Gazelle, owned by Second Rotation Inc., and walked through the simple start-to-finish process of selling a gadget and receiving money from the site. After pulling up the site, people can find their product and its value by choosing from a list of nine categories or by typing some part of the product’s name into a search box.

I sold Gazelle a first-generation iPod Mini with four gigabytes of memory for which my boss paid $249 in 2004. I answered a few questions about the product: Yes, it still powered on; no, I didn’t have the original AC adapter, manuals or software installation CD, and it was in “excellent” condition, according to my assessment. Gazelle placed its value at $25.

At this step, I opted to add the iPod to my box and check out, but users can also add other items to a box, including electronics for recycling. Gazelle’s policy is that it pays 100% of shipping costs for any box shipped to the company, so long as there’s at least one item in the box worth $1. Eighty percent of transactions qualify for a free box; the rest can be sent with printed-out prepaid shipping labels, but you must find packaging.

Gazelle lets users receive payments via a mailed, paper check or using PayPal; money is received either way within five business days. People can also donate their money to one of 23 causes, including the American Red Cross and World Vision. I opted for PayPal, and the $25 amount was deposited shortly after Gazelle received the iPod.

I sent the old iPod to Gazelle in a brightly colored, empty box that arrives at a customer’s door a few days after he or she sells the device to Gazelle. I secured the old iPod in the box using balled up paper, and sealed it with packing tape. A prepaid shipping label was already stuck to it, and I needed only drop it off at UPS.

If Gazelle receives a product and decides that it isn’t worth what you said it was — either more or less — and you’d rather not sell, the company will ship the product back, free of charge. But while Gazelle’s site guarantees users that they’ll receive their money, and that personal data are safe with the company, no money-back guarantee is offered.

Gazelle hopes to calm nerves by posting detailed instructions on the site about how to wipe a device of all private information. But the company hasn’t yet done this, and numerous users will remain skeptical even with such instructions.

I also poked around on VenJuvo Inc.’s Web site of the same name, www.VenJuvo.com, which is derived from two Greek words meaning “support, assist and delight sellers,” according to the company. This site, too, buys products back from people, though it pays via check, PayPal or Kmart (SHLD) gift card. Users fill out similarly simple questionnaires on each product to help assess value. Unlike Gazelle’s style of mailing boxes to users, VenJuvo gives users only prepaid shipping labels to print out and stick on a box that the customer must supply.

One notable difference between the sites is Gazelle’s broader range of products. In the case of digital cameras, for example, Gazelle accepts 80 brands while VenJuvo takes only Canon (CAJ), Sony (SNE), Olympus and Kodak (EK). Unlike with Gazelle, if you send VenJuvo a product that isn’t worth what you said it was, the company won’t return the product free-of-charge; instead, it will charge you for shipping.

If users choose to receive a gift card, they get a 10% added value. While VenJuvo doesn’t let people donate a product’s value to a cause, it will add this feature next week and will include different causes (like Ronald McDonald House and Big Brothers Big Sisters) than those found on Gazelle.

Unlike Gazelle, VenJuvo will always take items for recycling and will pay for the shipping, regardless of whether you traded something in for a value.

A useful resource for general electronics recycling is the Consumer Electronics Association Web site, www.MyGreenElectronics.org, which locates nearby electronics-recycling centers according to ZIP Code. And almost every computer manufacturer has a recycling program in place; some will even recycle computers that aren’t their own brand.

One way or another, it’s time to clean out the old junk drawer. Just be sure to do some comparison shopping if you want money for your old products.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

“The amount being paid to the music industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content we own and control, is far too small,” Bronfman said during an earnings call today. “There is what I would call a very paltry licensing fee per song. … I think the industry as a whole needs to take a very different look at this business and participate more fully and in a much more partnership way. And if that does not become the case, as far as Warner Music is concerned, we will not license to those games.”

Leaving aside, for a moment, the question of why Warner (WMG) agreed to a royalty scheme it apparently finds unappealing, you’ve got to wonder why the company persists in lambasting these new media that so obviously invigorate the industry and promote its music. And beyond that, you’ve got to wonder why Warner is doing it at a time when games like Guitar Hero and Rock Star are clearly becoming viable distribution outlets.

Of course, we already know the answer. Bronfman himself gave it to us in a speech last year. “We used to fool ourselves,” he said. “We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find, and as a result, of course, consumers won.”

“The amount being paid to the music industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content we own and control, is far too small,” Bronfman said during an earnings call today. “There is what I would call a very paltry licensing fee per song. … I think the industry as a whole needs to take a very different look at this business and participate more fully and in a much more partnership way. And if that does not become the case, as far as Warner Music is concerned, we will not license to those games.”

Leaving aside, for a moment, the question of why Warner (WMG) agreed to a royalty scheme it apparently finds unappealing, you’ve got to wonder why the company persists in lambasting these new media that so obviously invigorate the industry and promote its music. And beyond that, you’ve got to wonder why Warner is doing it at a time when games like Guitar Hero and Rock Star are clearly becoming viable distribution outlets.

Of course, we already know the answer. Bronfman himself gave it to us in a speech last year. “We used to fool ourselves,” he said. “We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find, and as a result, of course, consumers won.”

It’s interesting the iPod has been out for three years and it’s only this past year it’s become a raging success. Well, those things that become fads rage, and then they drop off. When I was growing up there was a product made by Sony called the Sony Walkman–a rage, everyone had to have one. Well, you don’t hear about the Walkman anymore. I believe that one-product wonders come and go. You have to have sustainable business models, sustainable strategy.”

– In 2005, former Dell Chief Executive Kevin Rollins utters the words he would dine on a short while later

A glutton for punishment, Dell. Though its foray into the MP3 player market was about as ill-starred as they come (remember DJ Ditty (mascot at right)? Yeah, didn’t think so.), the company is gearing up for a second attempt. Unfazed by its Ditty disaster, Dell (DELL) has reportedly developed a second, ahem, “iPod killer.” Designed to connect to online music services via a Wi-Fi Internet connection, the device will use software developed at Zing, a company Dell acquired last year, to retrieve and organize digital media. The device will sell for less than $100 when it arrives at market in September.

Dell’s first MP3 player lasted three years before the company scuttled it. That was back in 2006, when Apple’s iPod was somewhat less ubiquitous than it is now. How long will its second player last in a market that’s 71 percent-controlled by Apple (AAPL) and dripping in iPod branding? History would seem to suggest not long at all, though Microsoft’s (MSFT) maligned Zune music player has managed to stick around for a few years. Perhaps Dell can steal a point or two of market share from its sad, little four percent. All aboard the FAIL-boat. …

It’s interesting the iPod has been out for three years and it’s only this past year it’s become a raging success. Well, those things that become fads rage, and then they drop off. When I was growing up there was a product made by Sony called the Sony Walkman–a rage, everyone had to have one. Well, you don’t hear about the Walkman anymore. I believe that one-product wonders come and go. You have to have sustainable business models, sustainable strategy.”

– In 2005, former Dell Chief Executive Kevin Rollins utters the words he would dine on a short while later

A glutton for punishment, Dell. Though its foray into the MP3 player market was about as ill-starred as they come (remember DJ Ditty (mascot at right)? Yeah, didn’t think so.), the company is gearing up for a second attempt. Unfazed by its Ditty disaster, Dell (DELL) has reportedly developed a second, ahem, “iPod killer.” Designed to connect to online music services via a Wi-Fi Internet connection, the device will use software developed at Zing, a company Dell acquired last year, to retrieve and organize digital media. The device will sell for less than $100 when it arrives at market in September.

Dell’s first MP3 player lasted three years before the company scuttled it. That was back in 2006, when Apple’s iPod was somewhat less ubiquitous than it is now. How long will its second player last in a market that’s 71 percent-controlled by Apple (AAPL) and dripping in iPod branding? History would seem to suggest not long at all, though Microsoft’s (MSFT) maligned Zune music player has managed to stick around for a few years. Perhaps Dell can steal a point or two of market share from its sad, little four percent. All aboard the FAIL-boat. …