20070115

Best of CES 2007


You've read the rest, now read the best.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the largest show of its kind in the world, took place last week in Las Vegas, Nevada. I was lucky enough to attend. I will not bore you with repetitions of what has already been said, except to add my perspective and opinions. Here goes:

Themes of CES 2007

Vista

There were a few major themes that came out of this year's show. Vista, Microsoft's new operating system, was everywhere. Perhaps unfortunately for Microsoft, it seemed as though Vista was "old news"; everybody already knew about it. Therefore they were all off looking for new things. Too bad for Microsoft, who is reportedly spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Vista launch activities.

1080p "Full HD"

HD televisions have been around for a while. But this year it seemed not only were they now a reality for consumers, but also the very highest resolution capability, 1080p, is or will be very soon, available at reasonable prices for everyone.

There were so many sets on display it was difficult to take them all in. The largest unit this year went to Sharp, with its 108" LCD set (girl not included).



Phones and wireless

Perennial themes at CES, there were many phones and wireless devices to look at this year as always. LG gets kudos for a great, open booth area showing it's world-wide selection of phones, including the uber-cool Chocolate line. My personal favorite for both style and marketing flair; the picture below does not do it justice.

Honorable mention goes to Samsung, who continues to bang out impressively cool phones, their latest is actually one of the skinniest phones I've ever seen, kicking the RAZR's butt in the thin category by at least a couple of milimeters. Impressive.

Personal servers

Microsoft leads this charge at the home with its Home Server product announcement, showcased at Bill Gate's keynote on Sunday night. Partnering with HP, this product will sit in your home, and be a central place for all your photos, music, movies, and other files that all your computers, media centers, set-top boxes, etc. will need to access. This is just the beginning of a big market.

Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD

Another fruitless battle rages between companies that simply don't understand that something that is bad for consumers will be bad for them. Sure there are techical differences between these two formats. Who cares? Still the battle rages on; a major theme at CES and probably for years to come.

Coolest Tech at the Show

Best of Show - LG Super Multi Blue Player

Kudos to LG for fielding the world's first dual-mode reader, the "Super Multi Blue" player. This baby decodes both HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats! Problem solved! We need much more thinking like this! As far as I'm concerned this wins Best of Show!


Creative Zen V


Creative had a huge booth. Great displays, well staffed with knowledgable, friendly people. The coolest addition to their lineup was the Creative Zen V, a diminutive music player. This little thing is cute and cool. Smaller than a business card, it plays all popular formats, and sounds absolutely great. Amazingly, it also includes a very cool color display that can show videos as well. The videos I saw were not full-motion (several dropped frames), but impressive none-the-less. The most amazing part was the price. All of this for only $99 (for the 1-Gig version)!! More memory will of course cost you more. Note in the picture below, they are also offiering a "boom-box" add-on that allows you to dock your Zen and blast huge tunes for all to enjoy. Nice.




Personal Picture Phone from Oji

A relative newcomer and unknown to me, the Oji personal video phone was shown at CES and demoed live. The demo allowed an attendee to call someone at a remote Oji site and have a conversation with them. The video was fluid, relatively smooth, and synched well with the audio during the demo I witnessed. With a price point of $299, this is an interesting product. Of course you can only engage in a video call with someone else who has the same phone. So you need to buy two (one for you, one for Grandma). As a guilt-reducer for families with kids living far away from the grandparents, this product may have some appeal. It remains to be seen, however, if people really want telephone conversations to be that "intimate". The Oji booth is shown below, with telephone mockup (real phone is a little smaller :) ):



Sony OLED TV

Sony had a very cool demo area showing a bevvy of ultra-thin OLED (Organic LED display) TVs. It's hard to see in the picture below, but believe me when I say these babys were ultra cool! Hardly 1/8" thick, the displays showed some of the brightest, most saturated colors I've seen on any display anywhere. Contrast ratio was huge (Sony claims "millions to one" but that's all specsmanship), and the units did not give off any appreciable heat. Sony was displaying many small (approx 15" diag.) and one large (27" diag) unit. Most of the time they were showing stills, but they did show some limited motion video, making me think they might not have all the persistence bugs worked out yet. OLED has always had great promise as a display technology, and now it appears Sony is in the game big-time.



Skype Phones

Skype, one of the most popular forms of Internet telephony available today, has been hampered from ultimate ubiquity recently by the dearth of cool phones that work easily with the service. Well, no more. There were so many Skype-compatible phones shown at CES, that if only half of them actually are available in 2007 (typical reality-check ratio for a trade-show), there will still be plenty to choose from. Extremely cool and an indication that using the telephone is about to change yet again, and will never be the same. Fine with me. Below is a shot of but one of the coolest Skype phones I saw:


The Personal Tazer


I had to include this one for the "shock factor" :)

Tazer has been struggling for years now, trying to create a market for stun guns for protection. Previously these guns have been both expensive and difficult to operate, creating barriers to adoption. Tazer announced at CES the availability of the "Personal Tazer" which is a simpler to operate, less-expensive version of their original model. It also uses less power, and therefore only stuns the perpetrator for approximately 30 seconds, instead of nearly 20min. Still plenty of time to run like Hell I guess. Available in 3 "designer colors", Tazer hopes to "stimulate" the market with this version of their product. Shocking.