CES: Sony’s Walkman meets Aibo

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Sony, the company that gave us the Walkman, spectacular TVs and a revolution in consumer electronics, opened its CES news conference -- amid music blaring and giant video screens -- with a product that it described as a whole new category of entertainment.

It’s called the Rolly.

Don’t get too excited: It’s a dancing music player.

The palm-size device looks like a neon-striped Easter egg that flaps its disc-shaped arms, shoulders and wheels in time to the music. It has built-in stereo speakers and 2 gigabytes of memory to store as many as 520 songs, which can be loaded from a PC or a phone.

Think iDog, without the cute puppy charm.

The Rolly is a descendant of Aibo, Sony’s robotic dog that attracted a rapid crowd of hackers who were fascinated by making it perform unauthorized tricks.

However, we’re betting this product will play dead.

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski and Alex Pham