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Neat Stuff In Sin City: CES 2004
Even for convention-happy Vegas, CES is one of the city's biggest annual events -- approximately 120,000 attendees and more than 2,000 vendors have gathered to sell, buy or window-shop all sorts of electronic and related products, from high-end turntables (for pre-digital music stored on extruded polyvinyl) to message-scrolling LED badges, batteries and chargers, metal detectors, digital cameras, strange-looking MP3 jukeboxes, LED-strewn computer cases, and more.
Repeat: CES is not necessarily about computers -- at least it's not centered around devices with keyboards, rectangular CPUs and monitors. There's plenty of computer industry action here -- Michael Dell is one of the keynote speakers, for instance, and several of the biggest exhibitors are computer manufacturers -- but the "consumer" part of Consumer Electronics Show is an unsubtle hint that anything which beeps, glows, plays recorded music, takes batteries, or has a circuit board buried somewhere within is fair game. (I'll skip details on some of the products that slip past even this catch-all description, among them ceramic figurines and other gimcracks.) There are companies represented who will cast your industrial design in aluminum, and one which will let you do the shaping yourself, but in plastic. There's no way to see everything here; here are some impressions of what I did see, though.
May I interest you in a humongous television?
Plasma and LCD displays are everywhere at CES, in the form of new but current products, prototypes to whet your appetite for next year, and as visual aids selling other products. The ongoing switch in the U.S. to digital broadcasting and the uncertainty attached to early adopter purchases generally make me glad not to be in desperate need of a television right now, but the home-entertainment hardware on display is enough to make my eyes water. LG, both inside the show and on a billboard outside the convetion, proclaims that they have the world's first 76" plasma television (their booth has this on display, and many smaller ones as well), while Samsung's giant blue-themed booth tops that by featuring a crowd-paralyzing 80" model; people stood to watch the demo loop, which was mostly natural imagery rather than the bikini show running on many other companies' sets.
(This display, and LG's 76" model, brings up a point that seems to generalize well to many of the claims made at CES and in less overt marketing circumstances as well: Samsung calls theirs the world's first 80" plasma TV, but they also are showing a 70" model inexplicably labeled "The World's First Plasma TV." These companies are far from the only ones making dubious contradictory claims; the standard of evidence to be a "world's first" at CES seems lower than you might expect.)
TV and monitor overload is easy: Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony, Philips, Sony, Aquos (made by Sharp), Daewoo, Apex, ViewSonic, and other brands more or less familiar to electronics-friendly American householders all had their LCD displays out, both computer-only and TV-friendly devices. So did low-end, badge-stamping names like LennoxSound and Coby; some of the Coby displays had lifelike paper screen mockups rather than actual moving images. (If you're in the market for a flat-screen television, beware that some LCD televisions are really only monitors; if you need a tuner, don't assume one is built it.)
LCD computer monitors are now so mainstream that nothing stands out as spectacular in what I saw of this year's crop, though it's nice to see that bigger models are eroding 20" as a gigantic-LCD standard and pushing it down to merely large: suffice it to say, 20" LCDs may remain in the high end of computer displays for a little while, but far larger ones are now at the high end.
While on the topic of big-screen displays, two products from InFocus stand out: First is their 7"-thick, 61" screen (the model is labeled Screenplay RPTV; this may change before it ships), which is easy to confuse with a plasma model, but it's not -- it's actually a rear-projection system that's had its guts folded into a silvery rectangle taking up about a foot of vertical space beneath the display's screen. This rearrangement means it lacks the spare, picture-frame look of most plasma TVs, but the result still whips old-style console sets. Pricing is not yet set (it's not shipping until later this year), and smiling InFocus representatives deflected the question of price from several people, including me, only hinting that it would be cheaper than similarly-sized plasma models. And only your aesthetics and stud placement can determine whether a near-100-pound television qualifies as "hangable" for you. A 70" version is set to follow.
The second product, happily, does have a price; unhappily, that price is $2700. That much money buys you their LP120 model, introduced earlier this year, which InFocus says is the smallest XGA projector on the market -- it's about the size of a 5-pound block of cheddar cheese, weighs less (a hair less than two pounds) and has to be seen to be believed. It sits strictly in the middle end of the brightness scale (1000 lumens) but on the moderately lit convention floor, the image is actually hard to distinguish from that of a non-projected screen. I'm not sure at what price I would buy this (I would really like to take a projector this size along with me, everywhere), but at almost three grand (and replacement bulbs are the industry-norm 2000/hour life, $300-400 replacement cost) this is for business travelers and jillionaires more than those of us who'd like to watch "L.A. Confidential" in a hotel room.
Black boxes for your humongous television.
The electronics industry would obviously like you to buy a big (expensive) display of some sort, and they're happy to help supply moving images to make it worthwhile. "Convergence boxes," with different logos on the front, but with for the most part similar capabilities and interfaces, are on display from many manufacturers. Convergence is like perfection, though -- the pursuit is worthy, but ongoing. There will always be new file formats, media, and output devices to fold in.
Drawing a composite sketch, this year's standard-issue convergence box runs embedded Linux like TiVo (for instance Daewoo's DX C811N Digital Video Recorder) and in many cases the TiVo name (under license), holds a hard drive from 80-120GB (like Toshiba and Panasonic are offering), features composite and S-Video outputs (nearly every maker), lets you record to DVD-RAM or DVD-RW/+RW, and is still at standard resolution (rather than High Definition). High Definition PVRs will eventually arrive in force; I bet they'll be next year's big trend of the show. Also next year, you'll probably see more all-in-one boxes which can play back WMV files; one Microsoft display area was showing off the first WMV-capable DVD player, the Malata DiVA DVR-489. Confusingly enough, a few feet away Microsoft was giving out sample DVDs with WMV format high-density program examples; these can't be played back (for now) in anything but a PC running Windows; the Malata and similar, soon-to-market players are for standard definition only.
(The Daewoo PVR I mentioned, by the way, is really a different beast altogether, built for things like monitoring multiple security cameras: I lust for the built-in 8-way video multiplexer).
Considering that PVRs are becoming ever more commoditized, I hope that Apex's prototype PVR-9280 (with a DVD burner as well as an internal hard drive) becomes a reality. When I asked about that, Sal Fiore from Apex did what a lot of exhibitors at CES have to do: he hedged, resorting to a smile and calling it "a definite possibility." Though known as at best a medium-grade electronics brand, Apex has followed the path of eMachines by making more impressive products over the last few years. I'd be happy to find the PVR equivalent to today's low-end DVD players.
On the high end, though, Samsung was showing a working and very polished looking Blu-Ray recorder, which they say will be able to store up to two hours of high density programming (and 12 hours of standard) per Blu-Ray disk. (Blu-Ray, mentioned briefly here, is an optical format storing up to 27GB on a CD-sized disk.)
And now for something completely obscure ...
Since I'm in the market for a portable Ogg Vorbis player, I've asked at several of the manufacturer's booths whether they plan to support it, and specifically whether they will sell CD-based units with Vorbis decoders. (I've been encoding my CDs to Vorbis for the last few years; YMMV, but I like it.)
The results are about what I'd expect: a polite "not on our radar screen" is the gist of responses from representatives at Creative, Sony, and nearly all the other Big Names; at the lower-end makers booths (who, after all, make things like $40 MP3 CD players available at mass-market retailers), I never even found anyone who'd heard of Ogg. iRiver is the current standout in this regard, since they're releasing firmware to make their CD-based players Ogg-friendly; I'll be visiting iRiver's product lounge soon to take a look at their current lineup. I also found flash-based players from Samsung and Rio.
This isn't surprising in the crowded world of audio codecs: MP3 has the benefit of years of market saturation; Microsoft has the research and marketing clout to develop and license WMA; and the Apple touch, via ITMS, has make AAC a nearly overnight contender. (Microsoft was showing off in a dedicated booth a few dozen models of portable audio players, like the Rio Nitrus, that will play WMA files in addition to MP3s, including the smallest 20GB hard-drive based model I've yet encountered, the not-yet-in-the-U.S. Toshiba Gigabeat MEG200J. Think of portable audio as sculpted by Minox.)
However, I did find one working CD-based Ogg-playing portable (model MCD-CM600, part of the "Yepp" line) on display in the Samsung area. "On display" is pushing things; several examples of the player were on hand, but behind plexiglas as window dressing rather than as a demonstration product. A company representative did some Won-to-dollars calculation, and said the player is available in Korea for between $130-140 dollars at current exchange rates, but that Samsung had no current plans to sell it in the U.S.
Tomorrow, look for a report collecting some of the wackier (and stupider) stuff at the show -- like a Segway do-alike (sans balancing brains and with more wheels), the electronic home of the future as seen from 1982, interesting swag, and the sad fate of the Wurlitzer name.
According to Intel, this time next year we will be enjoying 55" LCD and plasma screens for under $1,000.
I can't find the link right now, but I read an article saying that Intel had come up with a new semiconductor that would make these displays possible. The best part was that they should be on the shelves in the next 12 months (take that with plenty o' salt).
Did anyone else hear about this or know anymore?
I've been happy with my Apple 22" Cinema Display (LCD), and other manufacturers have improved the technology. I still have two gripes though:
:-\
- Better support for non-native resolutions. I mean come on...if I want to show ~800x600 in a 22" display I should have the benefit of no screwball artifacts.
- Consistent lighting. The Samsung 213T is a really nice monitor. Unfortunately, every one I've seen has a slight flicker to it...like it's running at 60Hz (this despite using a DVI connector).
Please please please....improve the technology! I actually miss my Sony CRT, and I really shouldn't
Then get a Neuros. They have a nice 20GB player that plays OGG and MP3 for $199. It has MyFi which allows you to broadcast the music on your Neuros through any FM radio, an FM tuner to listen to the radio, it allows you to record from the FM tuner or from an line input or the built-in mic. It also has someting called HiSi that lets you record a 30 second MP3 and it can identify that song for you from the Neuros online database. And, it has 10 hours of continuous playback with rechargeable Lithium Ion battery. I liked it because of the price and it supported OGG. It is a very good deal that is hard to beat.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
It's a pretty cool little device... Myself and another coworker were at MacWorld, and my coworker told me that he was talking with a friend of his from Apple... The Apple guy said that he had seen at least a few of these, but his eyes bugged out when he found out it was only $99. heh heh heh....
Check it out... http://www.zvue.com
Hmm. I thought this was a troll on timothy, but I have to admit those articles are significantly better. (I mean, they're not Hemmingway, but you do have a sense that the authors are professional journalists.)
So CmdrTaco is the founder, Cowbody Neal and company are clearly technically savvy. What do timothy and michael bring to the table? I.e., what makes them editors? Not a flame -- an honest, and I think fair, question?
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
I'm stilly pretty happy with the Sun badged SONY GDM's you can buy on ebay at STOOPID cheap prices and while all this LCD/Plasma stuff looks right frikkin groovy and all I do have to wonder about the longevity. Note that I still have the industial Sony monitor (KV1311CR) I got with my Amiga 1000 (serial # 13!) back in 85 and it's still got a great great great picture.
Are these LCD/plasma things gonna work in 10 years? 15? 20?
Need Mercedes parts ?
Good Mr. Finklestein:
While it's nice that you have other sources of information available regarding CES, and believe them to be better than timothy's work, the fact remains that he's a staff member of Slashdot and is generating content for the site.
How can he be expected to improve his skills over time, writing about the important events in technology, without making at least an effort to write more stories?
Slashdot and many sites like it consist mostly of links to other content-generating sites, themselves writing articles and doing the actual on-the-prowl research. One of the ways Slashdot can definitely improve itself is to encourage more and more "home-grown" articles, written by staff members, and then work with the staff from the many, many comments that each story generates. While this "learning curve" probably turns off folks who are expecting a full-on technical publication staffed with the top-flight of writers, the fact is that this site is nontheless popular and might as well make the occasional attempt to tell the story from their own, unique point of view.
I do agree that an opening paragraph in which the writer says "The following (link) (link) (link) write-ups are out for CES, and here's my impressions" would be a small mark better, allowing readers to get comparitive views (something that the publications you mentioned will not do), but I think disparaging his "editor" title was uncalled for.
- Jason Scott
textfiles.com: Your Cure For a Broken Heart
I've heard one reason 15" LCD TVs are more expensive is that they use fairly expensive electronics to drive the scaler and deinterlacer, even in small TVs, and when coupled with the tuner and other electronics it really does add up to more money than a 15" LCD monitor, but that leaves me wondering why Apex hasn't released a bargain basement one coupling low-budget VGA-out type TV tuners to low-budget LCD panels and delivering a TV in the $500 range.
Another quesiton -- why can't I buy a desktop LCD monitor with the same size and native resolution as they make for laptops? My laptop display is maybe 15" but does 1400 x 1050. All the 15" LCDs I can find are only good for 1024 x 768 (there might be an oddball that does 1280, but usually they soak you for the 17" model).
And speaking of laptops, why haven't the laptop industry made its VGA and video-out ports on its laptops *bi-directional*? I can think of plenty of times when it would have been great to just use my laptops display. And while we're doing that, let's just integrate a TV tuner into the display chip (a laptop with an All-In-Wonder type chipset).
Well, I browsed a bit through your weblog (slow server, sir) and I can see that there's enough bad blood between yourself and the Slashdot crew to shut down a Canadian cattle ranch. However, your declarations that various editors have kicked your puppy on several occasions does not entirely scan with the current topic being posted, i.e.,
.sig that michael sucks and link to some pre-made page on your site with your case for your assertion. Otherwise, you just seem like a maniac.
Slashdot: "I went to CES"
You: "So did better people than you"
Which makes at least a bit more sense knowing that you consider yourself personally wronged by michael and possibly others (I didn't go THAT deep into your log, yet.) I assume that you assign guilt on Taco for giving michael a throne, so there's at least two.
The thing is, Slashdot continues to harbor an enormous, mind-blowing amount of readership. Somewhere, at some point along the line, there must at least be a nugget of quality or talent in there, whether in the programming (is the medium the message) or the choice of stories (savantism?) that makes a lot of people want to come to the site, and a lot of people keep coming back.
My biggest complaint is, like I stated before, that Slashdot relies a lot on outside content and does not generate much of its own (relative to the amount it links to outwardly) so I applaud any attempt to increase it. I think most blogs and sites could use such an improvement.
They got the golden ticket and you're standing outside the Wonka factory. I'm sorry. My suggestion is that you put in your
You probably haven't noticed a small device that stands a chance of replacing PVRs. If you're still at CES, look for MVP by Hauppauge and check it out.
;) Hell, you can probably even watch those divx movies you downloaded off the net.
In a few words, it uses an ethernet connection to connect to a computer with the video data, then just forwards it to the TV over RCA or S-video cables.
Who needs a VCR that takes up space if you can record TV directly to your computer and then watch it on the TV in the comfort of your living room (that is, if you have one
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?