Consumer Electronics Show 2002 Report

An anonymous reader writes "I've noticed that Target PC posted their report on this year's Consumer Eletronics Show in Las Vegas. Looks like 2002 will be the year of wireless networking and recordable DVD. In the same article they cover Samsung's upcoming portable computer based on the StrongARM 206MHz processor that will be available in 2Q." Many wireless products (including 802.11a), huge LCD displays, and more -- I hope people who were at the show can comment on the things missed in this report, or in The Washington Posts's report.

Comments

This is the year of wireless networking?

[tony_gardner]

The last five years have all been the year of wireless networking. How about a surprise?

The year of realising that wireless networking is at best a niche market.

or maybe

The year of realising that most people want their old broadband connection back, more than any low speed network.

Or have these businesses already forgotten the dot com problem of basing your business model on niche markets: there is no room for expansion.

Re:This is the year of wireless networking?

[RazzleFrog]

I think that wireless networking has great potential in the private sector. I know my boss has 3 kids but broadband to only 1 computer (you do the math). He doesn't want to lay Cat 5 everywhere and he doesn't have even a regular phone jack in every room. Wireless would be an excellent option for him even at the premium cost.

Re:This is the year of wireless networking?

[RazzleFrog]

What? Your boss doesn't have kids? I have several layers of bosses and hundreds of coworkers. Lots of them have kids. If by niche you mean everybody who has kids and homes that are larger than one bedroom then yes, yes it is a niche market. I personally would like to sell some product to that niche.

Re:This is the year of wireless networking?

[stripes]

The fact you had to use your bosses kids as an example proves that its a niche market.

I could use my in-laws as an example (only one computer, but not close to a phone line, they decided to buy an 802.11 base station and card).

I could use myself, after using 802.11 with a laptop at work a bit I got hooked on not having to sit at my desk to use the net. I could use, um, at least 3 of my friends as an example there too (all for laptop use I think).

Of corse if everyone were like the people I knew wireless was the technology of the last two years, and has nowhere really to go :-) (at least until we buy more computers)

What does CES stand for again?

[Zocalo]

Only from the coverage, it looks like Samsung have renamed it from the "Consumer Electronics Show" to "Consumer Electronics? Samsung!".

At least someone out there has an impressive marketing budget to spend in this year we're all expecting doom and gloom...

Re:What does CES stand for again?

[Quizme2000]

I was at CES this year and while Samsung was there, they only had sales people there (big suprise) and where right across from the MS (CE .NET) booth. Anyway, CES has thousands of exhibitors from Car Audio and Entertainment to Cell Phone Battery manufactures. The Sharp Booth was showing off the Zarus to a very positive crowd reaction and Royal was showing the Li@ux Device they had to a very mild hmmm. With the exception of the Xplode Demo booth and the Super CDs Sony was noticeably absent this year in the main halls, there was maybe 1 or 2 PS2s I saw being used in TV demos. The Coolest addition this year was the Digital Convergence Fashion Show held in the main hall. Though the models didn't er quite know what they where suppossed to do with these gadgets damn did they look good showing them off. I would say that CES has gotten too big, It was really hard to find specific catagoies of products without just walking around until you're back hurts, even with all the books and magizines it was still difficult. BTW the 20ft by 60ft. Blue Screen of Death shown at the Phillips booth Wednesday for 2 hours was cool.

side note - "for optimal performance..."

[sammy baby]

I found the following quote pretty amusing:

For optimal performance we did not compress the pictures, loading times might be longer for some and click the picture to enlarge.

Translation: we wanted to tell all our friends we'd been Slashdotted, so we made sure to include an assload of moderate-to-high resolution pics right in the page. We did, however, mess with the aspect ratio of some of the pics to make people think they were looking at super-long TVs displaying female dwarf powerlifters.

Apple at the forefront...

[Mac Nazgul]

And how long has Apple had high-end solutions (they work) for both Wireless connectivity and DVD recording capabilities?
The PC side is only just getting around to it in consumer machines...

Re:Apple at the forefront...

[nzhavok]

Yes it's fair to say that apple actually does innovate, the shame is that most people will still stick with PC's because they are too afraid to make the paradigm shift.

Personally OSX has made it a lot easier for me to make the shift, but really I'm now faced with the choice of; should I pay an extra $500 for OSX vs linux?

Probably not until they ship a proper mouse by default at least ;-)

Re:Microsoft jumps into Flatscreen Monitor market.

[benjymous]

Yeah, that article mentions the new MS technologies "Mira" and "Freestyle"

I guess "Hawk" and "Skater" will be following soon...

nice LCD

[f00zbll]

Of all the photos on that review, the LCD's are the most "drool worthy". Wasn't LEP (light emitting polymers) supposed to revolutionize the flat screen industry. I guess everyone will have to wait another 2-5 years for that to pan out and make large cheap screens a reality.

I'll be ready to trade in my 19" when I can get the same size flat screen for 10% more than what a CRT costs today.

Re:802.11a.....

[Holophax]

The Linksys box still plugs into your existing cable modem. You connect your cable modem into the Linksys box and it does the rest from there. Same deal as using a FreeBSD or Linux NAT solution. So it doesn't matter who your ISP is since your still using their equpiment.

Wearables?

[Raleel]

You know, it's funny, but there does not seem to be an expansion of wearables. Lots of personal assistant things, but all that require you to pull it out and look at it and control with a dull plastic implement. DO people feel they need to get even smaller?

Re:LCDs

[FastT]

You mean projectors? Yeah, absolutely. Some friends and I watched a couple movies on an InSync projector at work last night. The picture quality was stunning, far better than any TV I'd seen. It was even better than most movie theatres.

Apparently, at least InFocus is getting on board with marketing to consumers. Check out the InFocus ScreenPlay. Unfortunately, the home models are more expensive than some of the corporate models, but I'm hoping that volume and word of mouth will start to lower prices. At least these companies are finally realizing that they can market to the consumer.

m$'s part

[jeffy124]

at the show, billy gates did a keynote involving something rather cool for MS. (hard to imagine something like that coming form MS, but oh well) they came up with a flat touchscreen monitor that detaches from it's base and can be carried around the house like a tablet, and a wireless link allows you to keep using your computer.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/01/08/microsoft .gates.reut/index.html

Re:Apple at the forefront... DVD-RW v. DVD+RW

[nedron]

Additionally, Apple was smart and is going with the recordable/rewriteable format (DVD-R/DVD-RW) santioned by the DVD Forum. Many of the PC manufacturers are going for the non-endorsed DVD+RW.

Heaven only knows why, since manufacturers won't be required to support the format in order to get the DVD logo licensed (unless and until the DVD Forum is persuaded to adopt an additional write/rewrite standard which is highly unikely). Ie., the discs may play in PC drives, but won't necessarily work in licensed players (particularly set top). If I'm only worried about backups, then DVD+RW has a couple of features that help, but if I'm interested in making standard video DVDs that play on the widest possible range of players, then DVD-R and DVD-RW are the way to go.

DVD-RAM is an even worse proposition, since it is designed for forward compatibility only and concentrates on data storage.

Gadget confusion

[michaeljs]

This may yet be the year of wireless gadgets and DVD burners - but standards are a problem. Until things converge, or someone is boldly declared the winner (DVD-R, DVD+RW or whatever the bloody acronymns are) I'm not sure I'd want to invest in a piece of soon-to-be obsolete equipment. DVD players took ages to take off (years longer than predicted) because of differing DVD disc standards. The same thing could happen with burners.

RE: Wireless. 3G is still ages away and given that GPRS is only a temporary fixup, I'm not sure how great this year will be.

Nevertheless, bring on the gadgets.

http://www.freenetworks.org/

[Moderation abuser]

HTH, HAND etc.

Extreme Tech's Report

[asv108]

You can check out ExtremeTech's report here

Any SACD news?

[abischof]

For those not familiar with it, SACD is similar to (and competes with) DVD-Audio, as it uses much more storage space than an ordinary CD in order to garner higher quality (while still just a single disc).

By all accounts that I've read, SACD sounds significantly better than ordinary CDs, and better than DVD-Audio, even. So, I'm probably going to buy a combination DVD/SACD player within the next few months. Anyhow, has anyone heard any CES announcements on upcoming DVD/SACD players?

Blame marketing

[freeweed]

Why the hell is everything called a "solution" these days?!

Let's face it, the majority of consumer electronics never really take off, and manufacturers know this. In many cases (Commodore Amiga) it's because there IS no market for the product at present. Calling something a 'solution' immediately makes management think that 'well, if there's a solution, there MUST be a problem!'. And the buying spree commences...

Of course, the honest route of 'our goods are useless and can't sell themselves solely on their own merit' went the way of the Dodo several decades ago. LCD monitors are some of the worst offenders here: sure, some people need every available square inch of desk space. But guess what? Most offices do not. That extra space just ends up turning into a mess of unorganized filing space. So what does every 'modern' secretary have on his/her 3x5(ish) desk? A nice new LCD monitor, to save that precious square foot or so of space! All because we've become convinced that monitors are somehow 'space-wasting'. I guess that explains the slow adoption of PC hardware over the past 20 years :)