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World’s largest consumer electronic show
LAS VEGAS is turning into a city of conventions. Most of the important international conventions are being held there. It provides the best of convention facilities, hotel accomodation to suit all pockets, good food for all tastes and world class entertainment after sun-set.
Last week, starting Jan 8, Thursday through Sunday, the world’s largest consumer technology trade show, also dubbed as the tech industry’s biggest gadget debutante ball, attracted over 100,000 manufacturers, business people and technology geeks to see the brightest silicone-embedded strobe in Las Vegas. There was the usual fanfare of keynote speakers and talking heads —from Bill Gates, Michael Powell to Carly Fiorina — introducing their technical innovations.
The show sets the the new trends of 2004 for the world electronic market.
In the last year show, flat-screen displays and wireless networking were the talk of the town. This year integrated home-entertainment networks, the digital car, wearable tech, home-network devices, DVD recorders, and portable DVD players are the items to watch, which will be available in coming months.
The exhibition hall dazzled and befuddled visitors with neon lights and huge TV screens. International giants like Phillips, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Apple, Dell, Microsoft and pigmies whose names one hardly hears were there with their products and PR, exhibiting both upgrades and full-scale launches.
Here’s a preview of some products and innovations, which attracted boggled mind:
Planon Systems Solutions’s DocuPen Scanner: A sci-fi-inspired pen-size scanner that can capture an entire page of text and graphics in four seconds and can store as many as 100 pages in 2 megabytes of flash memory. Like a pocket-size photographic memory, the pen scanner lets capture everything from business cards to classified documents that can’t be copied.
Philips 30-Inch LCD FlatTV: design, and this environmentally conscious TV breaks new ground. For companies trying to cut down on power consumption, the Philips LCD requires 40 percent less energy and weighs significantly less than comparable flat screens. (www.philips.com) Sony Double-Layer DVD: The first of the double-layer DVD drives and discs.
With nearly twice the capacity of standard discs, or about 8.5GB each, double-layer DVDs will no doubt be instantly christened the non plus ultra of digital storage for entertainment-media types. (www.sony.com)
Lightglove: Starship Enterprise-like wireless wrist remote that operates all the electronics in your smart home. (
www.lightglove.com )
HDTV is here
High-definition TV is finally becoming the next big thing in consumer electronics. Several products and technologies tied to HDTV were unveiled at the show.
HDTV has more than twice as many lines of resolution as standard-definition televisions. Analog television contains about 330 lines of resolution. HDTV has either 720 or 1,080 lines of resolution.
Sales of digital TVs in 2003 - particularly thin plasma screens - reached nearly $1.5 billion, up from $515 million in 2002, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, which sponsored the show.
This year, plasma display sales are expected to total $2.2 billion.
With the TV, and not the PC, as the center of home entertainment, companies known for computers are taking steps to move into the digital TV arena:
LCOS: Computer-chip heavyweight Intel announced it will make a microchip-based technology for next-generation HDTVs called liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS.) The move by Intel is expected to improve the quality and lower the price of HDTVs within 18 to 24 months. HDTVs generally start at $1,200 and go up to several thousands dollars for a large plasma display.
Intel also unveiled an Entertainment PC concept product, an all-in-one appliance that includes HDTV, surround-sound home theater, CD and DVD player, video game console, TiVo-type digital video recorder and wireless networking.
The move by Intel could signal the end for today’s projection TVs and put pressure on plasma TV manufacturers. LCOS TVs, while not as thin as plasma, can be as thin as seven inches. Many of today’s projection TVs are more than 20 inches deep.
Linking PC with Tv
Making his sixth consecutive keynote at the annual trade show, Bill Gates along with Yusef Mehdi of MSN and comedian Jay Leno mad.e a presentation during the opening of the Consumer Electronics Show. Microsoft’s vision allows people to access digital content anytime, anywhere.
In his key note address at the opening of the show, Bill Gates introduced technology that allows users to take their Windows Media Center PCs and any digital photos, music and video running on the platform.
Manufacturing partners including Samsung, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Gateway are planning to incorporate the technology, dubbed the Windows Media Center Extender, into set-top boxes for sale later this year. The devices would hook up to a TV and connect to the Media Center PC through a wired or wireless computer network. rm, and display them on TVs or other entertainment devices.
By acting as a bridge between the PC and home entertainment centers, the extender technology marks a potentially powerful tool for the computing industry’s aggressive push into the nation’s living rooms, said Tim Bajarin, industry analyst with Creative Strategies. In fact, Gateway and HP plan to introduce televisions that will be Windows Media Center-ready, automatically launching the entertainment-oriented PC platform once the TV is attached to an extender device.
Microsoft announced a high-definition format, Windows Media Video HD, which will let content on a PC, such as downloaded film, or content on a TV be viewed in high-definition display.
Microsoft also showed several products for home entertainment. The company will sell software to link its Xbox video game console to a Media Center PC via a home network, whether that network is wired or wireless.
An Xbox in a bedroom, for example, would be able to display movies, images or music stored on the Media Center PC in another room in the house, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said in his keynote address.
The company also will market set-top boxes to extend the Media Center network to TVs not connected to an Xbox, Gates said.
Microsoft targets TVs in latest move off desktop. New product links computer with TV. Gates said Microsoft also plans to make an adapter kit with the technology for its Xbox gaming console, turning the gaming device essentially into a receiver for the Media Center.
Gates also showed off portable media players, devices that are paperback book-sized and feature built-in hard drives and 4-inch color screens. Users can transfer music, video, photos, and even recorded television from their PCs to the portable device for playback anywhere.
Gates first demonstrated that technology, formerly known as Media2Go, two years ago, but now companies such as Creative Labs, Samsung and ViewSonic are poised to bring the product to market later this year.
Long-touted “smart watches” that stream Internet based traffic, weather or news reports to watches over the FM radio spectrum are also now available, Gates said.
Welcome the change: Dell and HP have joined the fray, as has computer retailer CompUSA. Intel’s Otellini said he expects manufacturers to have LCOS HDTVs on the market by the end of the year. By next year, the price of a 50-inch LCOS TV could be about $1,800, he said.
New products: Television recording technology company TiVo Inc. unveiled new products and services, including a method for shifting saved programs to a home computer, to help continue growth of its video recording service.
The San Jose-based company, whose service enables users to pause and replay live TV, said new products include DVD recorders manufactured by consumer electronics makers Humax and Toshiba, a high-definition DVRs for satellite TV users, and home networking products.
TiVo also unveiled TiVo-to-Go, which lets users who also subscribe to an additional TiVo home networking service to transfer shows they have recorded on the set-top box to a home computer. The system is kept secure by a unique key-sized memory device that must be plugged into the computer when the recorded content is watched or copied.
Easy-to-use devices
Consumer electronics makers need to ensure that devices such as digital music players and home computer networks are easy to use, even as they become more powerful and complex, or else they risk frightening potential buyers, Gary Shapiro, president and chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), which represents the $100 billion industry said in his address. “While consumers love our products, they are also scared of them,” he said. “They find (them) complex and confusing.”
The pace of technology advances has rapidly gained speed in recent years, with mobile phones — itself a young consumer market — now equipped with cameras and television set-top boxes able to pause live TV and store weeks worth of programs.
As a result, consumers not accustomed to reading thick users manuals or navigating desktop computer operating systems sometimes bypass new technology despite a desire to acquire the tools it provides. For instance, many digital camera owners complain that once they take a picture with the digital cameras, they cannot “get the picture out of the camera.”
Shapiro, in his “State of the Industry” address during CEA’s annual conference said that the trade group was offering companies advice on ways to make the users’ experience less complicated, such as simplifying instruction manuals, and training retailers on how to better sell products.
CEA forecast that the wholesale electronics market will rebound in 2004 from three years of declining growth and reach $100.99 billion, or an annual gain of 5 percent.
CEA, the US trade group representing audio, video and mobile electronics makers projected 2003 sales would total $96.35 billion, a modest 2.3 per cent gain over the downwardly revised sales estimate of $94.17 billion reported in 2002.
The writer
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