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.

CES Preview

Day 0 (Jan.7th)

Day 1 (Jan.8th)

Day 2 (Jan.9th)

Day 3 (Jan.10th)

Day 4 (Jan.11th)

     Most of the exhibits are at the biggest convention centre we've ever seen, the multi-part LVCC. If you want noise and color, this is the place. Kilometers of plush red, green, blue and red carpeting have been rolled out, and will hit the landfill once the show ends (more carpeting will follow for whatever show is next in this busy exhibition town). The junk electronics are all here, but one could spend days here checking out products of considerable interest.
     And as if that weren't enough, the gigantic Hilton is next door, and it's loaded with exhibits too.
     The question everyone was asking was: would the crowds turn out? At the zoo at least, the answer is clearly yes. By noontime on Saturday, it was getting difficult to navigate the alleys.
     If you've read the article in UHF No. 85 on the purchase of our new reference HDTV, you'll recall that on one side of the central speaker is a new parrot mascot. It is actually the mascot of a French company named, appropriately, Parrot. Among its new products this year are what must be the world's most spectacular iPod dock, the Zikumu.
     Zikumu's principal engineer, Jean Etcheparre, is seen standing next to the black twin towers he helped create. Each tower is a biamplified three-way system, with the woofer (active from 500 Hz on down) in the base, and a dual flat NXT panel in the top. They are bipolar, and Etcheparre says they sound best in a real room rather than in the midst of one of the world's largest convention centres. You put your iPod onto the dock atop one of th towers, and it communicates to the other wirelessly via Bluetooth. We may not be talking high end, exactly, but this is a decent system. And yes, there is a remote.
     Of course Parrot makes other things, including three gorgeous electronic photo frames designed by artists. One looks like an expensive mirror until it lights up.
     For the videophile, the almost endless Central Hall was the place to be, as the Japanese and Korean makers of video displays continued to battle it out. The prize for "mine is bigger than yours" is Panasonic, which was showing a 130-inch (330 cm) plasma display Because it was in such a huge space it looked nearly like a reasonable size, but of course even a crane couldn't get one into a normal home (and Heaven forbid the technician should ever tell you that "it has to go into the shop.")
     At the other end of the size scale is Sony, whose very god OLED display has a wide color and tonal scale, but is smaller than the screen of a laptop computer (it's shown at right, displaying a film shot by one of Sony's digital cameras).
     And perhaps quality interests you more than mere quantity.
     New developments in display technology are not as wow-inducing as those of last year. In January 2008 the big development was the 120 Hz image. In NTSC television, 60 images are shown each second, and when there is rapid movement -- especially when the camera pans -- there can be significant blurring. Last year's 120 Hz images, accomplished by a process analogous to upsampling -- were much smoother. But what do we have now? Horsepower races became megapixel races became Hertz races. The newest sets, which will show up on shelves by early Fall, boast 240 Hz, sometimes more.
     But on the basis of close examination of the various new LCD and plasma displays, we conclude that the "improvement" has ceased to be significant, and is a question of mere numbers -- the supposedly higher frame rate is sometimes accomplished by simply making the display blink at high speed! A technician at Pioneer was patiently explaining that upsampling images actually created artifacts that made the image look less natural. For anything beyond last year's 120 Hz, he may well be correct.
     There's another "horsepower" race too, that for blacker blacks.
     The champion there has long been Pioneer and its Kuro plasma displays, with Panasonic's plasmas folowing closely (and ironically Pioneer now buys its plasma panels from Panasonic). LCD displays can't be expected to compete, or can they? Well, Sharp claims that it can, boasting the same 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio as the best plasmas. It's difficult to get a true black from an LCD, because "black" is accomplished by making a liquid crystal opaque, so that the backlight doesn't shine through. That is never perfect. Sharp claims to use "local dimming," but it's a mystery how that can work, since all but small LCD panels use a single large fluorescent backlight (and don't get us started about that!).
     But in Sharp's defense, we should add that the huge contrast ratios boasted by the plasma people are pretty much bogus too. In the case of our own Samsung plasma the huge number depends on the use of a "dynamic" setting that kills shadow detail. Ignore the numbers, and get a look at the picture.
     Speaking of Samsung, a small part of whose CES setup is shown above, it filled its huge space with a breathtaking number of display pairs, the one on the left being "conventional" and the one on the right demonstrating some esoterically-named feature. The differences were not always clear, and all these features are more likely to sow confusion than light. Good luck going through that and knowing which TV you shold buy.
     At this CES, more than ever, 3-D was in the limelight.
     This picture of all the delighted viewers with glasses is from the Panasonic booth. But if Panasonic was leaping into 3-D video in a big way, in fact 3-D was everywhere. Most systems were passive, using non-electronic polarized glasses (some visitors had brought their own custom-fitted glasses, which may be significant). And most, even though their actual 3-D effect was undeniably impressive, were just terrible as video displays. You were, in many cases, gaining depth but losing out on the other two dimensions. The demos using video games rather than film clips were just horrible.
     The prize for the lowest resolution (notwithstanding its strong fun appeal) goes to the Inlife-Handnet device shown at left. Looking like a pair of binoculars, it is actually a 3-D webcam. When you're done, you can view your work through the viewfinder lenses, or on the little popup LCD display, which shows 3-D without glasses. It uses a lenticular screen, like those novelty 3-D postcards of Niagara Falls and Jesus. The company also has a photo frame that displays 3-D images the same way. Resolution and tonal range are stupefying...ly low.
     Indeed, the only quality passive 3-D display we saw was that of Da-Lite, the screen people. On its huge metallized screen, the demo used two projectors and polarized glasses, exactly the technology of the 3-D craze of the early 1950's. But what was th source?
     Best of all was the demo by Panasonic, which used active LCD glasses (the lenses turns opaque or transparent on remote cue so that each eye sees only the image meant for it). The company claims to use double the normal amount of data, so that full 60 Hz 1620-line resolution is maintained. That of course means a new source. Panasonic says it is working with all relevant bodies, such as the Blu-ray camp, to make it happen.
     We saw much less real audio than usual. Some habitual exhibitors who favor the Hilton tower didn't come to the show at all, or else they set up static dislplays in sales meeting rooms. At the Cambridge Audio room, however, we got a look at a new digital-to-analog converter with an old name, the DACMagic (Albert still owns the original). This $399 device is compact, and its full range of inputs includes USB. Cambridge will also have an upscale Blu-ray player in April.
     Ah, but among audio manufacturers we should perhaps include our old friends at Forgings Industrial.
     Their large and overloaded booth includes countless speakers and other components, some of them with such exotic finishes as bird's eye maple, like the ones in this photo, and startlingly low prices: $25 and $30. As last year, you could buy a pair of genuine wood-finished "Philip" speakers for $39.95.
     Tomorrow is another day. We'll be back at the Venetian to hear what we didn't hear the first time around. CES closes down at 4 pm. We expect to get our final report on line by noon Monday...after some badly-needed shuteye.
     

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