Everyone is so tech-savvy these days it’s hard to be way out in front, gadget-wise, of the guy standing next to you.

Unless, that is, you are at the US Open.

At the Open, if you’ve got one of the mobile television devices passed out at the USTA Billie King National Tennis Center for the first time this year by American Express, you have basically, from a tennis perspective, double-bagled the majority of your fellow tennis fans. Hold one of these "Lvis" devices, and -- your correspondent here can speak from an all-to-brief experience -- you feel you have entered the upper-echelons of wi-fi connectedness. A tennis paradise. A US Open Nirvana.

On the device's surprisingly clear 4 3/8th-inch screen (cell phones typically have 2-inch screens), you get up to six courts and the live broadcast from USA Network. You can also see replays if you missed a point, see the action in slow motion and get player bios.

So Ferrer-Nalbandian are battling in the fifth on Armstrong, and Ljubicic-Chela are in the fifth on the Grandstand, while Nadal-Tsonga are in a breaker on Ashe. What do you do? No problem. You can actually sit in the stands watching one live, and simply watch the others on your Lvis.

Or, if you are like tennis fan Kevin Chin of New York City, you go check out the action on Court 11, while you keep your eye on Ashe, Armstrong and the Grandstand.

“I can only be in one place at one time,’’ Chin said, checking his Lvis on his way from the Grandstand to Court 11. “But this enables me to keep track of all the matches at the same time.’’

While Chin was checking his mobile-television device, he was approached by another man.

“How’s Nadal doing?’’

“He won the first set in a breaker,’’ Chin said.

The guy nodded and was off.

OK, there are some drawbacks to knowing just about everything that’s going on at the tennis center. People come up to you randomly and ask questions. They look over your shoulder. You get stares. A lot of stares.

But, hey, that’s the price you pay for being on the cutting edge.

Carol Brown and Sherri Rinehart were in Ashe, so wrapped up watching the five-set thriller on Louis Armstrong between Tommy Haas and Sebestien Grosjean on their Lvis, that when later asked what match they were sitting in front of on Ashe, they couldn’t recall. What they did recall about the experience, however, was that everyone around them wanted regular updates.

“We were the little beacon for everyone,’’ Brown said, who has been coming to the Open with Rinehart since 1987 and was thrilled to be able to catch all the action of Haas-Grosjean at the most exciting moments.

Brown, a die-hard tennis fan, feels the Lvis has broadened her experience here at the Open, allowing her to keep track of matches while she's running from one court to the next and get a flavor of what's going on in matches she couldn't get to.

"From the little radios [American Express] passed out to this,'' she said and then added somewhat ironically for someone attending an event live, "this is cool because nothing beats seeing something on TV.''