Connecting Content to You

There was a lot of pessimism in the electronics industry just prior to this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. The abysmal economic news of late 2008 and the poor sales at electronics stores threatened to cast a dark shadow over the bright lights of Las Vegas.

However, as Vegas prides itself as a place where anything can happen, CES proved that technology innovation hasn’t slowed down, and people have good reason to look forward to a 2009 filled with plenty of impressive new products designed to entertain and enhance people’s lives.

Connected Content
The biggest trend of the year was in connectivity. As U.S. broadband penetration rises, people search for more ways to take advantage of that large data pipe to the home. The trend was readily seen in new connected televisions. The biggest new player in this growing space isn’t one TV manufacturer, set-top-box company or even a Hollywood studio. It’s Yahoo. Yahoo, along with partner Intel, launched its Internet@TV service, a platform for running Web-enabled applications on an Internet-connected television.

The applications, called Widgets, can be brought up on screen via the TV remote and range from simple news/weather/stock information to photo sharing applications (Flickr is a Yahoo brand after all) to streaming videos and social networking tools. It uses the Yahoo Widget Engine, currently in use for PC Widgets, and is an open platform for developers.

The selection of Widgets can be customized for each user, and, in addition, different family members can create separate Widget profiles, so you and your kids don’t need to surf through the same list of Widgets. Yahoo Widgets will be available on TVs from Samsung, LG, Toshiba and Vizio.

Toshiba in particular noted that its long-promised Cell processor TVs will be Widget-enabled. Toshiba also said it plans on incorporating
Microsoft’s Media Center Extender technology into televisions, allowing access to content stored on a Media Center PC or Home Server.

Other TV makers, including Sony, Panasonic and Sharp, also showed Web content features on new flat screen TVs. Sony, as expected, showed models with Internet connectivity built in, rather than requiring the additional module that prior lines needed for Internet access.

Sony had some new partner news for its connected TVs, including the Internet music service Slacker and Amazon’s Video-on-Demand service, plus Yahoo Widgets. Panasonic, which in 2008 offered models with YouTube, Picassa, and Bloomberg news and local weather, enhanced that offering to include Amazon’s Video on Demand. LG showed TVs with Netflix movie streaming built directly into the TV, as did Vizio.

Interactive TV applications show up every year at CES. Ten years ago, Microsoft was trying to get people to access dial-up Internet through Web TV. In 2001, RCA launched some DirecTV receivers with widget-like applications, called Wink, for basic news, sports info and on-TV shopping. Web browsers have popped up on televisions and set-top-boxes for years (in 1999 the Sega Dreamcast game console included dial-up Web browsing).

What seems different now is that manufacturers have finally realized that Web on TV isn’t about the Web, it’s about the content, so rather than just offer Internet connections and Web browsers, they offer content that people want, which just happens to come from an Ethernet cable or Wi-Fi signal instead of cable TV. Could this be the beginning of the end for packaged content sales such as DVD and CD? That depends on the pundit you ask.

Thin, Light & Green
The Web was far from the only innovation we saw in TVs this year. While bigger is still generally better, manufacturers weren’t focused on size this year as much as they were on depth. LG boasted the thinnest TV at the show with a 55-inch LHX series LCD less than an inch thick. Hitachi showed some super-thin prototypes including a 1.3-inch deep 50-inch plasma and a 37-inch half-inch deep LCD driven by tricolor LEDs. In addition to being thin, green was prominent.

At every exhibit, you saw TVs hooked up to watt meters demonstrating how little power new models consumed. Primarily, the new power-saving TVs relied on motion and light sensors and LED backlighting as a means of reducing electricity use and at the same time maintaining high brightness and contrast while being viewed.

Sony’s KDL models (in 40- and 46-inch versions) used a new micro-tubular hot cathode flourescent lamp, rather than the traditional cold cathode flourescent lamp to reduce power by about 40 percent.

The best of the LED-based TVs included some form of local dimming technology, which allows the LED lights to be controlled for separate areas of the screen, in some cases individually, allowing much more accurate colors and contrast. We saw LED TVs from Sony, Samsung, LG, Toshiba and Sharp.

Samsung’s 7000 series in particular looked great with the Touch-of-Color affect to the surrounding bezel. It has the unique ability to be hung on a wall with wires, similar to a picture frame. JVC also showed a TV that went on the wall like nothing else we’ve seen—magnets.

I also got a sneak peek at several new products from GDT, which this spring will be launching a line of GE-branded TVs. The models shown included sleek 1080p LCDs with 120Hz. Later this year we expect to see more of the Internet connected TVs, GE told us about in September.  

A couple of companies were showing off 3D televisions, and while the demos were impressive, we don’t expect all the parts to come together for a few more years.

Big Blu CES
This time last year the video world was still arm wrestling over the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD debate. As you know, Blu-ray came out on top, and that was evident by the many new players at the expo. 2008 was a pretty good year for the Blu-ray player. The Blu-ray Disc Association told reporters that 10.7 million players (including Playstation 3 consoles) were sold since 2006. At DVD’s three-year mark, only 5.4 million players had been sold. Hardware sales rose by nearly 300 percent in 2008.

About 30 million discs have been sold so far, 8 million in December 2008 alone (2007 only experienced BD disc sales of about six million—which shows you what a format war can do). BD Live (Profile 2.0) was nearly the ruler in new players. Only a few of the new products will be stuck in the pre-BD Live world. 

New players came from all the expected brands (Samsung, Sony, LG, Pioneer, Panasonic) plus a few others like Vizio, which showed the very-well equipped $199 VBR100, and JVC showed its first player, the VX-BP1. Pioneer, which previously only offered top-market players, came out with the $250 BDP-120. Samsung showed the first wall-mountable player, the BD-P4600, which looks nothing like a disc player at all, and also can connect wirelessly for BD Live access plus some online content streaming.

Several of the new BD players are following LG’s lead by including Netflix Watch Instantly built in. LG added to that by including CinemaNow on new players. Samsung turned it up a notch by including Pandora on that wall-mountable model. Panasonic didn’t offer any additional online features to its players, but it was the only company to show a portable BD player, bringing the format a step closer to being able to replace DVD. No in-car Blu-ray players were shown though. And no home recorders, though several companies offer them overseas.

Blu-ray-based home theater systems were fairly plentiful as well. Most included basic player/receiver combos with 5.1 satellite speaker systems. Samsung showed a Blu-ray player built into a wall-mounted speaker bar that can also be connected to a subwoofer for a virtual surround system.

If cutting down on component clutter sounds appealing, then you’ll like the several TVs with built-in Blu-ray players. Sharp, JVC, Samsung and even Magnavox all will be offering combo TV/BD systems. Unfortunately, most of the combo TVs we saw included only Profile 1.1 players, not BD Live.

Cell phones
The iPhone 3G and Blackberry Storm got most of the attention in 2008, but make way for the Palm Pre. Palm’s reputation had declined in the past couple of years, but the company made up for it in its new smart phone. The Pre includes a full-sized touch screen plus a QWERTY keyboard in a slider design. What makes it stand out most is how it pulls your contacts, calendars and notification from all your contact apps or social networking accounts into an integrated interface, so for instance, you don’t have to open separate applications to read Facebook messages, Twitter notes and regular e-mail. It’s coming out from Sprint.

Motorola unveiled what it’s calling the world’s first carbon neutral phone, the Renew. Aside from being made out of recycled plastic water bottles, it comes in a box made of recycled cardboard, includes an envelope to send it back for recycling when you’re tired of it, and Motorola has purchased carbon offsets to balance the carbon used to make and distribute the phone. It’ll be available from T-Mobile.

Remember that big calculator watch you thought was so cool in junior high school? If you crave that kind of nostalgia, then LG’s watch phone is for you. The LCD display is a capacitive touch screen which appeared in demos to be easy to use. The phone is a music player and has a built-in camera. While you can talk into the phone, we think that’s a little too geeky. Luckily it supports stereo Bluetooth. It operates on a 3G GSM network, but no word on US availability or if it will even come to these shores at all. And yes, it does include a calculator.

Bookworms
Throughout 2008, diminutive netbooks wormed their way into the competitive notebook PC market. The trend began with Asus and its Eee PC, and then caught on with the Acer Aspire One and MSI’s Wind line. These systems, mostly under three pounds and sporting screens under 10 inches tend to be moderately spec’d at best, usually sporting Intel Atom processors, minimal memory (often solid state rather than hard drives) and either XP or a Linux variant operating system, yet their low price ($300 to $500) has made them popular with students while their size and weight makes them attractive to business travelers.

The same brands came to CES with more netbooks. Asus showed a fully operating netbook built into a keyboard, including a 5-inch color screen. The Eee keyboard was certainly eye-catching, but we can’t yet figure out a practical purpose for it. Coby was even looking to get into the netbook game, though the company said the half-dozen or so netbook models at the company’s booth signal only that Coby is considering the products and looking for feedback from buyers before committing.

Cameras and Camcorders
It’s finally happened: we’re living in an age when cameras will, in certain modes, just shoot themselves. 2009 looks to also be a year when things we once thought of as cinematic special effects, like the projection of Obi Wan giving Princess Leia her marching orders or Dick Tracey getting an assignment from his wrist phone, make their way into real-world mobile devices. We’ll also be able to capture decent video of craters on the moon.

Casio is applying its high-speed technology to a new generation of consumer digicams. The company announced two new pocket-sized cameras which will be able to shoot 30 still frames per second in burst mode. Both models, the EX-FC100 and EX-FS10 can capture ultra-high speed action-shots, such as the precise moment a bat hits a ball, by recording dozens of frames in just a few moments. In playback mode, a review of the many shots looks rather like a slow-motion replay, and consumers can choose to save the most exciting frames.

Panasonic stole the camcorder spotlight with its announcement of three new camcorders that have a mind-blowing 70x optical zoom. All three, the SDR-H80, the DSR-H90 and the SDR-S26 will be equipped with “Easy YouTube Upload” mode, allowing users to quickly adjust and upload their clips.
Canon is going after the 2009 camcorder market with a something-for-everyone strategy.

The company introduced 11 new camcorders at CES, with an emphasis on flashed-based models (4 of the 7 flash-camcorders were high-definition video cameras). 48x was the highest zoom on board the new models.

This year Canon is launching a new camcorder creative mode as well. “Video Snapshot Mode” guides users to collect a series of 4-second clips, giving them an easy-to-follow timer (a blue border moves around the LCD in four seconds) for each one. Then the camera pieces together those clips with pre-loaded music, either classical or modern soundtracks, and produces an instant highlight reel. (Users can also import their own music tracks.)

Camera Phones and Pico Projectors: Beam Me Up!
Learn this term now: pico projector. It’s a pocket-sized gadget that allows a user to plug in a cell phone (or any personal mobile device) and project an image, either a photo or a video, out onto any surface, like the back of an airplane seat or the front of a friend’s shirt.

3M was showing its palm-sized Micro Professional Projector, the MPro110, plugged into an iPhone. The hand-held device is battery-operated and will be available through all major retail channels later this year. An even more dramatic pico-prototype was a Samsung phone with a DLP-based pico projector built right in. “The projector phone” will be test-marketed in Korea this year.

All the major phone manufacturers were showing handsets with impressively-megapixelled on-board cameras, 3.2 or even 5 becoming commonplace. (LG has had some success with its dedicated camera-phone, the Dare. Motorola is still promoting its Kodak-partnership phone, the ZN5.) Sony-Ericsson used CES to introduce a new, more affordable Cybershot camera phone, the C510 with a dual LED flash, which has autofocus, face-detection, and shoots video as well.

Mobile
In-car tech options aren’t moving quite as fast as home technology, but there were some notable exceptions. The coolest showing at CES was Audiovox’s FloTV product which pipes MediaFlo’s 25 channels (like ESPN, MTV, Nickelodeon, NBC, Comedy Central, CNN and others) previously only available via cell phones, to screens built into a vehicle. So far this looks like the most innovative way to get changeable TV channels into a car. In the demo vehicle the receiver was a small box mounted out of sight under a seat, and no antenna was visible, unlike current mobile satellite TV options that require an antenna the size of a Viking’s shield.

And what about satellite radio? Since the merger between Sirius and XM, SiriusXM (clever huh?) fans have been wondering when the promised dual service products would emerge. That question was answered with the MiRGE (clever again?)—a plug-n-play device that tunes in both Sirius and XM stations through one antenna. In addition to that trick, it allows you to view the current track info of six stations simultaneously (so you can easily switch back and forth among favorites) and 60-minute memory. It’ll sell for $250. A subscription to both networks will be $20.  

Most mobile electronics makers focused on connectivity—iPhone, Bluetooth—to make your ride a little more enjoyable, and maybe a little more safe. Pioneer showed off the PS51100DVDm, a multimedia hub for music, video and connectivity in the car. The unit features a 7-inch touchscreen; iPod and iPhone integration; and Advanced Sound Retriever (ASR), a technology that restores frequencies to compressed music files.

The advanced iPod and iPhone integration technology includes Alphabetical Speed Search for quick scrolling through music lists, Passenger Control and Link Play, which allows easy viewing of all iPod content by the artist currently playing. There’s a cool slide-touch control for quicker navigation and connectivity to other sources such as optional satellite or HD radio tuners and Bluetooth adapters.

JVC Mobile unveiled its flagship KD-R900, a CD Receiver that features two USB 2.0 ports for connection of an iPod, iPhone, USB flash memory drives, digital audio players and portable HD devices. Two of those devices can be connected simultaneously via the unit’s front and rear USB ports. The unit also features Bluetooth functionality, and is HD- and satellite radio-ready and MP3/WMA-compatible. The receiver was available in February with an MSRP of $219.95. yy