CES 2009 and the parallel show run from January 8-11th, with a special press day on the 7th (Day Zero, we call it). Click to visit each of UHF's live reports. The report will appear early the next day, if not before.
Day 0 (Jan.7th)
Day 1 (Jan.8th)
Day 2 (Jan.9th)
Day 3 (Jan.10th)
Day 4 (Jan.11th)
Don't expect a lot of high end two-channel audio manufacturers on this day. Those manufacturers tend to find a room at CES to be expensive enough as it is. Not many will want to reserve a boardroom or three for even more expense.
But that doesn't mean this day reserved for the press is a waste of time. A number of products interesting to audiophiles and videophiles come from big companies, with what were, until the economic meltdown, deep pockets.
One of them is Toshiba, which seems still to be smarting from its defeat over HD DVD a year ago, and is still boasting of its "success" with its XDE upconverting player, and its green technology. The initial presenter left us with the impression that Toshiba would do no more than dumb down the technology. How excited should we be with its new line of cheap "non Regza" TVs? Or its statements that there is no real market for TVs above $2500? Or its sets that come with with Microsoft widgets? Or its supposed 240 Hz images which are actually simulated by blinking the LED backlight?But there's promise anyway. Notice the "Resolution+" sign at right. Toshiba plans to push its upscaling resoltion to 3820 x 2160 pixels for really large screens. It also promises a hard disc recorder that can record six HD channels at once. Will it be wthout compression, or are we crazy for asking?
Netgear, the router company, was showing its Internet TV Player, which looks something like the Apple TV only a fifth of the size. In the demo it whizzed through live TV from around the world, local content, and the unavoidable YouTube clips. Interesting. Projected price: $199.For double that price, Netgear will also offer a router for video with nearly unlimited hard disc expansion possibilities. But what about compression, or shouldn't we ask?
The day before press day, we were invited to a press conference by Asus, the computer maker known for popularizing the tiny Netbook, with its Eee line. The inexpensive little laptops are, we thought, ideal for conrolling a media server, and we mean without compression. One of the new models shown has a touch screen and a claimed eight hours of battery life. We hope to write more about this in the next while.
Less promising, but eye-catching, is an Asus keyboard (shown at righ) which is a full computer with a tiny LCD monitor, intended for such applications as media servers.Incidentally, the reporters attending seemed mostly to be packing netbooks, from either Asus and Acer, many of them held in one hand like a portable phone. Looking out of place in all this was a lone reporter with a gigantic 17-inch MacBook Pro.
Over to Samsung and Panasonic, who had their own press conferences.
Both companies drew gigantic crowds, indicating that the journalists (and pretend journalists) are here, even if some exhibitors are not. The new products from Samsung have a design referred to as "a touch of color" (when it comes to TV sets, we preferred black). The company is partnering with Yahoo! for "The Cinematic Internet," to get Web material onto the TV, using "widgets." That sounds like a Microsoft word, but then Microsoft still does have Yahoo! in its sights.
Still, didn't Microsoft itself, years ago, think the Web o TV was a good idea? Anybody remember how that worked out?
Though Samsung seems to believe that the big market is for LCD panels, it also showed a plasma panel that is mere inch thick. It also demonstrated a fairly impressive plasma 3-D panel, but using a video game. Trouble is, games are not in real 3-D. Though characters occupy different planes, they are flat, not rounded. Indeed, in a 3-D image they seem all he flatter. We'd like to see that screen with a real 3-D movie.
By the time Samsung was showing its iPod alternative, people were streaming out to get to the Panasonic press conference.Three-dimension images were also at the forefront over at Panasonic, which had a tiger right at the entrance announcing its plan: 3-D HD. Panasonic is going a step further, proposing a new world standard for not only displaying but also authoring 3-D films. Among its partners are the Blu-ray group, the HDMI group, and director James Cameron, who is busy shooting his newest film, Avatar, in 3-D. We're all for this, let is be said.
Other innovations? Viera Cast will let you view Web content on your TV screen (where have we heard that one before?). A new camcorder will have an 80x optical zoom (is there a numbers race going on here?). And, oh yes, there will be a Panasonic portable Blu-ray player, with its own screen of course.
(If we can just add in our grain of salt, do you find it at all odd that there are hundreds of portable DVD players, and no one has yet thought to add a TV tuner?)
A couple of organizations, such as ShowStoppers, run unofficial off-site parties for journalists, with exhibitors renting tables (we'll be at ShowStopers tomorrow night). CES is none too pleased by what it considers parasitical competition, and so it has its own version, titled CES Unveiled. This used to be a showcase for winners of CEA's Innovation Awards, but the winners are now relegated to a tiny showcase (and only a handful at that), and the real stars now are the paying exhibitors. Oh...and the food. And did we mention the drinks?
The exhibitors include some makers of what have to be called frivolous products, such as remote-controlled flying birds. A UK products display was showing the streaming radio from Sonneteer, which we last saw at the Montreal show.Shure was there, with some of its earphones, including new low-cost ones no doubt meant to match the economic times. It also had a pair of large-diaphragm condenser microphones with digital USB outputs. We asked the Shure rep whether that meant sticking to mono sound, since you can't put two of the microphones into a computer. He didn't get it. "You can only do one thing at a time," he said. Someone else asked him whether either microphone was stereo. He said no, though he still looked for all the world like someone unclear on the concept.
Remember Sharper Image, the gadget store chain that folded this past year? The brand has been purchased, and is now applied to a new series of products to be sold though such outlets as Costco. The ones on display were all iPod docks, like the one at right. The prices look reasonable, and the styling is attractive, but anyone who has ever hung around Wal-Mart knows that this is not a field lacking in competition.By the way, we visited Sharper Image's former competitor, Brookstone, which is still in business, sort of. We're not bullish on its future, because its buyers seem to be stuck back in the 1990's. The Apple Store is a two-minute walk from the Brookstone store we saw, and perhaps some people from the latter should browse a little through the former.
Tomorrow we tour the Venetian, the heart of the CES high end exhibits.
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