CES Las Vegas (my small take on it)

[mrbass]

First off I left my camera in the trunk because I wasn't sure if I'd get ID'd for having a camera so I didn't want to take a chance. I mean after all when your 'borrowing' someone elses badge don't stick out in the crowd. I took my wife and she basically thought "it's all guys stuff" so I'll leave that at that. Also I'm glancing at some of the daily publications of CES for some tidbits too. Only celebrity I saw was Sinbad. Hilton charges $20 for parking...crap that.

I kinda got, figuritively speaking, sick at everything wanting to be everyting. Your digital camera now has an mp3 player, no wait your PDA is your mp3 player or is it your camera too, no it's your cell phone, no your LCD TV, no your home automation unit or even better it's your refrigerator along with your TV. How about just parking your Hummer in your living room with it's mp3 boom system and crank your music to the living room vaulted ceilings and call it a day. Good thing is that I'm seeing more products offering Ogg de/encoding.

Also about these 3G phones streaming video and Portable Media Players to play video...I just don't see them taking off like in Asia where mass transit has people riding subways, trains for hours upon hours daily. I mean portable dvd players have been around for a few years and they sold for around $1,000 at first and now below $200 but I don't think they ever took off.

I'm not an expert in home tvs but after seeing tons of displays this Plasma vs. LCD vs. DLP I have to say DLP rules with it's brightness. Anyway in 3 or 4 years OLEP or whatever else comes out will most likely trump all existing TV technologies. In U.S. the old 2006 deadline for broadcasters to only broadcast in digital will most likely be pushed back to 2009. July 2006 all 25" TVs and above must include digital TV tuning (ATSC tuners).

Tons of speakers, finally seeing more and more in-wall speakers. I saw one that said "Sound without speakers" or something like that and it was basically sound coming off glass wall..hmmm..didn't stick around for details but that's cool.

Toshiba had it's HD-DVD players playing and it was cool but seriously it's not the huge jump that VHS to DVD was. I'm getting the feeling they're trying to push these out as soon as possible. I remember seeing dvd players in 1995 in Japan and bought my first one for $300 in 1997 and even then I had to return it for the same model that had newer firmware as it wouldn't play all dvds. Good thing this HD-DVD puppy is coming out for around $1,000. Are these gonna fly off the shelfs like SACD has....probably quicker but not that much. Remember I'm talking about the average mass consumer not Joe Millionaire. Wasn't it just two years ago when any dvd player with "progressive scan capability" commanded a whopping $100 premium and now it's a standard feature.

DirectTV should be coming out with their own DVR around May. I asked the rep advantages over it's current DirectTV/TIVO combo (which I have) and it basically came down to "it's faster". Which sometimes can take up to two minutes to add a Season Pass so if true that's cool. Will it have usb wireless adapter capabilities like TIVO 2 services? He said not initially but eventually. Well I wouldn't trust that cuz my current one has two USB adapters but it's still disabled in the firmware so it's been months and months since my TIVO has made a call. Anyway I wasn't too impressed. Dish and DirectTV seem will be using MPEG 4 AVC to broadcast.

Home Wireless Media Stations
Buffalo introduced a LinkTheater dvd player which supports WMV, WMV HD, DivX, Divx HD and XviD. Stream pc movies via 802.11g wireless and has USB 2.0 port to hook up a external hard drive.

Thomson Digital MediaBridge 802.11g, Ethernet, USB...supports MP3, WMA, AAC, MPEG2, MPEG4, XviD, WM9.

Voice over IP....there were many coming out with a slew of VoIP based phones. Providers Vonage, Packet8, and AT&T and bundling their services in wireless routers, multi-funtction office phones. Personally I have Vonage and love saving the taxes that a traditional phone places on you. Great international rates too.

xm2go portable music device (3 different devices by Delphi, Pioneer or Tao) looks pretty dange impressive if you'll willing to pay monthly subscription fee for satelitte radio. Built in 5 hours time-shifting. Who will win the satellite race?
Sirius - Howard Stern, NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA Basketball
XM - NavTraffic, MLB, NASCAR

I found an interesting tidbit consumers return about $15 billion of consumer electronics annually mainly due to the complexity of devices. That should prod engineers in the butt to design and develop more simplified products but I doubt they'll "get it".

Camcorders will mini-dv still be able to top microdrive-based camcorders or DVD camcorders capable of recording in surround sound with microphones.

Brother monochrome laser printer for $99 HL-2040, 8MB, 20ppm, 250-page paper tray. Replacements $59 toner cartridge. Samsung color laser printer $449, 64MB, 6ppm color, 24ppm text. Canon portable printer Pixma iP 90 16ppm black and 12ppm color. CanoScan LiDE 500f which is a 35mm film scanner, USB 2.0 2,440 by 4,800 resolution for $129. This is what slug (owner of pbase.com) uses/used for his photos and everyone asks how the hell do you get such nice photos. Well not this exact model but he uses/used a film scanner.

Epilog Laser Mini http://www.epiloglaser.com/ (engraving and cutting system)...this is one of the coolest things I saw. Yea it's $10,000 but is definitely worth it if you own a small hobby/craft store and want to engrave names, sayings or even art from your pc and etch it on plagues, awards, glass. Just watching it burn wood with a laser is fun to watch.

I wish I could've checked this out in person but didn't get around to it http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,111236,00.asp but the DejaView Camwear seems like a cool idea at around $350. I bought a tiny color wireless camera 1,000 ft supposedly and 0 lux (see at night) for around $200. I really wanted that spy camera helicopter but it was close to $400.

Privacy...wow a carchip that logs all speeding, distance with time/date stamp to spy on teenagers. Now parents can suck data just like law enforcement can with blackboxes pre-installed in newer vehicles mostly unbeknowsnt to the average vehicle consumer.

Home Automation sat through a presentation of Control4 mostly due to the fact my feet were killing me more than any other reason. Nice presentation (lowers and raises blinds...wow I'm not 88 years old yet) and it was only on Jetson's but now it's affordable at $599...yeah right once I read the press release and start seeing $2,499 and $1,500 you quickly realize it'll be between around $8,000 when it's all said an done. Maybe I'll recheck this home automation 5 years later and see if it's "affordable" despite it's "retrofittability".

Stopped by a Nero booth in the DVD-RAM and was impressed with the little demo he showed me. Then stopped by the main Nero booth and talked to a Japanese guy and talked about *#%#%#%*U #%#%%#(can't say) and mentioned they came out on top in doom9 codec shootout and he said he was aware of it. Really seems like Ahead is really after the average joe more than ever like they've always been. Nero MediaHome is now part of Nero 6.6 Ultra Edition and that looked pretty cool. Picked up a flyer on the Avayon DXP-1500 which is the first player in North America to offer Nero Digital compatibility...so in a nutshell it supports DivX, Nero, XviD, MPEG4, WMV9, MP3,etc.

Picture frames that display slideshows whether it be from flash memory, wireless or even over internet or just gimmicks and will die a quick death. Why are these even being developed?

Talked with another Japanese guy from Ulead and this has sparked my interest in finally doing a complete comparison of many of the popular
DVD Slideshows once again. Many finally have Ken Burns effect and matching duration of slideshow to music, etc. A year ago this was painful dealing with the lack of these features amongst others.

Oregon Scientific had the MP120 tiny waterproof mp3 player. They had a large fish tank with about 30 gold fish swimming around. At first I was like what in the hell is this all about...oh..ok waterproof..that's pretty neat.

Also saw InterVideo booth and it seemed to have quite a few people interested...hmmmm. Picked up their brochures but didn't stick around to ask any questions.

Shuttle booth I really wanted to talk to someone cuz I love their XPC product line (have 3 myself) but didn't want to wait 5 minutes or who knows how long to do it. Only thing that said was new from the 2005 System Product guide was the G5 8300mc which is a platform for Windows XP Home Media Center.

I saw Verbatim's booth showing off 16X DVD+R....I have no trouble with 8X DVD+R from Sam's Club so hopefully summer or who knows when we'll see 16X (hopefully they'll skip 12X) DVD+R media generally available for the masses.

PalmOne had about 80 people gathered around so I hadn't a clue what they were talking about but whatever it was either the presenter was good or people were geniunely interested in whatever new product/annoucement.

Cruised by Dolby's booth quickly. Dolby Digital Plus and MLP Lossless both are HD-DVD audio formats. I want to find out more about the Dolby Digital 5.1 Creator for the PC though.

Netgear has MP115 Wireless Digital Media player (Music and Video) 802.11g and protected with WEP (pleaseeeeee). Wireless VoIP routers WGR826V (AT&T) and WGR615V (Vonage).

Notes: didn't really proofread this stuff...don't much care. Not much of a writer. Ok found a small error "etch in on plagues"...sounds funny I'll leave that there and let you figure it out :-).

[bond]

very interesting, thanks a lot for the report

[SeeMoreDigital]

Nice one.... thanks very much for this!


Cheers

[Master Yoda]

Nice info mate.... nothing there about dvd-r dl then .

[TazMan]

Thanx for the report Mr. Bass. Appreciate you taking the time to give a review to the rest of us that couldn't go.

[neuron2]

>I'm not an expert in home tvs but after seeing tons of displays this
>Plasma vs. LCD vs. DLP I have to say DLP rules with it's brightness.

After two days at home, the rainbowing will drive you crazy. Unless they've tripled the color wheel speed since the last time I looked at the DLP sets.

[crahak]

After two days at home, the rainbowing will drive you crazy. Unless they've tripled the color wheel speed since the last time I looked at the DLP sets. [/B]

AFAIK, only a small portion of the population sees the said rainbow effect. I know a lot of people who swear by DLP. Perhaps LCOS or OLED will bring better quality at cheaper... I'm planning on getting a Infocus X1A (enough for me) soon, at 985$ it's getting a lot more affordable than ever. I'd like a projection TV instead, but they cost at least twice that...

HD DVD or Blue-Ray wise, I'm not fortunate enough to have seen the results yet, but I find that 720p is almost as much of a jump than it was from VHS to DVD (very subjective mind you, or perhaps I don't remember how VHS looks anymore?) I think that a lot of people will stick to "old" DVDs though. Quality is "good enough" (especially compared to broadcast TV), and very little people seem to own HDTV sets.

Couldn't agree more about those all-in-one devices (phone/mp3/pda/camera/...) and digital picture frames.

About lasers (having bought one recently), I did a bit of math before buying one of those looks-so-nice new units that seemed cheap. In most cases, they ship with 1000 page starter toners, and the replacements were around 65$, for a page yield of about 2000 pages or so. Instead, I settled on a old refurb and warrantied HP LJ 4+ (with HP brand rollers and all) for around 100$. A 25$ toner gets me 6800 pages and the first toner was the real thing (not a 1000 page one). Replacement parts can be had for dirt cheap too. For about 15$ I can get an extra 64Mb ram for it off eBay. Even worse, the some new printers had a product life rated half of what my old LJ is rated to print per month... If you can put up with having an older printer around - ugly and perhaps a slightly less resolution, it is a lot cheaper.

[manono]

AFAIK, only a small portion of the population sees the said rainbow effect. I know a lot of people who swear by DLP.

I can see them if I want, and don't see them if I don't want. They don't bother me in the least. I'm one of those that swears by DLP. I wouldn't trade mine for anything but perhaps a newer version that has better blacks.

Having said that, I do realize that there are people for whom the rainbows can cause headaches and nausea. But even those people that are bothered in the beginning, most get used to the rainbows very quickly. But there are also those that are so bothered by them that they return the sets.

Good report, Mr. Bass.

[Sergei_Esenin]

I too swear by DLP--at least unless/until OLED, LCoS, or someting better becomes viable. Plasma is beautiful the way BOSE sounds good--pleasing because it artificially pumps up and oversaturates attributes people like, but very inaccurate and not true to the source. LCD is more accurate and dead pixels aren't the problem they used to be, but contrast isn't the best and colors aren't as accurate as they could be. DLP has better contrast, better color accuracy, and won't fade under heavy high-heat use like LCD--its one drawback is an inability to display true black, which only CRTs can do. From a pure visual quality standpoint, only old-fashioned CRT provides all the features--except thin stylish appearance and low weight.

My Infocus X1 DLP projector is the best purchase I've ever made. For a year now I've been using it on a 100" screen for both TV/DVD viewing and as my PC monitor. I never see rainbows, and only one out of dozens of guests has seen them. Some people can see them, but most can't, and relatively few of those are bothered by it. That said, when someone is bothered by the rainbows, it *can* cause headaches or dizziness, so always view a DLP for a while before buying...

[neuron2]

Don't forget that whether you become *conscious* of the rainbows or not, the effect is still there. That means moving edges are broken up into the three color bands. This is a not so subtle *loss of effective resolution*.

[jggimi]

Its a tradeoff, folks. Every HD monitor technology has plusses and minuses. And this is getting way OT.

[Sergei_Esenin]

Originally posted by neuron2
Don't forget that whether you become *conscious* of the rainbows or not, the effect is still there. That means moving edges are broken up into the three color bands. This is a not so subtle *loss of effective resolution*.

Actually this is incorrect. If you can't perceive the rainbows, then the color banding falls below the threshold of your temporal visual acuity and no effective resolotion is lost. It's all quite subjective, and each technology has drawbacks. I still find it amazing that from a pure visual quality standpoint, CRTs are still unbeatable.

[neuron2]

You are conflating consciousness and perception. They are not the same.

Still, let's follow jggimi's advice and consider this discussion off topic.

[Mug Funky]

I saw Verbatim's booth showing off 16X DVD+R....I have no trouble with 8X DVD+R from Sam's Club so hopefully summer or who knows when we'll see 16X (hopefully they'll skip 12X) DVD+R media generally available for the masses.

i'm somewhat confused by that... i've been able to burn 16x +R for months on CMC 8x discs (pioneer 108 comes with overspeeding for some media in it's firmware. afaik, MCC and TY discs will go up to 12x). of course, in reality my computer just can't handle 16x burning. can't even do 12x. sigh.

I found an interesting tidbit consumers return about $15 billion of consumer electronics annually mainly due to the complexity of devices. That should prod engineers in the butt to design and develop more simplified products but I doubt they'll "get it".

very true. i hate bad design. i tell everyone that if they don't know how to use it it's the designer's fault. to all those people afraid of breaking the computer by trying to use it - if that happens it's the designer's fault. equipment should work properly and last, or it's just crap.

i had a Sony car CD player that had it's "att" (sort of like mute, but with a little remaining) button just above the face-place detach button. that's not a good place to put it, considering that when a person is driving they can't keep their hand as steady as the tiny, closely grouped buttons required.

Picture frames that display slideshows whether it be from flash memory, wireless or even over internet or just gimmicks and will die a quick death. Why are these even being developed?

YOU NEED STUFF
YOU MUST BUY STUFF
SPEND SPEND SPEND
CONSUME CONSUME CONSUME
IT IS YOU DUTY

[mrbass]

Originally posted by neuron2
>I'm not an expert in home tvs but after seeing tons of displays this
>Plasma vs. LCD vs. DLP I have to say DLP rules with it's brightness.

After two days at home, the rainbowing will drive you crazy. Unless they've tripled the color wheel speed since the last time I looked at the DLP sets.

Like I said I'm not an expert but I did visit and see tons and tons of them on display. Honestly I think that plasma and lcd may have a higher penetration (maybe that's not true..but that's all I hear and read about) due to the slimness and coolness factor. I was just shocked of how much more vivid and true to color DLP was compared to it's competitors...that's all. At my former company a VP told me he purchase a 56" DLP after doing extensive research on avsforums, etc. and I didn't know why he chose DLP until I went to CES.