THE FRONT LINE: JANUARY 2009
CES 2009: Where’d Everyone Go?
The first day of CES felt more like the first day of NAB – hardly any crowds, open aisles, and easy travel to and from the convention center. As for the show? “Low key” was the operative phrase.
Figure 1. Ahh, there’s nothing like the smell of Vegas in the morning…
No one quite knew what to expect as our flights arrived at McCarran Airport in the days leading up to what is arguably the world’s largest trade show. But it was obvious early on that there wouldn’t be any waiting in long lines this year — not for cabs, not for the monorail, not even for crossing the street.
The USA and the rest of the world are mired in an economic recession, and any market analyst who assures you we’re going to pull out of it soon should be locked up in a psychiatric institution. Even the Consumer Electronics Association downgraded its attendance forecasts for 2009, looking for about 115,000 visitors and claiming after the show that 110,000 actually showed up.
I leave it to the reader to separate truth from spin. FACT: Last year, 130,000+ CES attendees caused hour-long delays in getting cabs and boarding the monorail at the end of the show each day. FACT: This year, I walked out of the South Hall at 5:00 PM of Day 1, and right onto the monorail with no wait at all. I saw others hop right into cabs and drive away, while friends who rented or drove in their own cars sailed right down Las Vegas Boulevard in minutes from their hotels to the Las Vegas Convention Center.
My guess? I would say attendance was not only down by at least the 22% “official” decline announced by CEA, but it was probably off by 40,000 to 50,000, seeing how easy it was to get around the show floor and Las Vegas in general. That would be about the same size crowd that NAB’s April shows draw.
Lowered attendance may have caused exhibitors some anguish, but the wide-open aisles were a “dream come true” for members of the press. We were able to move quickly from booth to booth and building to building to try and find the next big things in consumer electronics.
Figure 2. CES aisles were just jam-packed with attendees. (NOT!)
NO SURPRISES
For myself, the 2009 CES was a pretty tame event. There was little to see in the way of groundbreaking display technologies, and I had only a pair of offsite meetings scheduled to see any cutting-edge products. (Compare that with ten meetings last year to see the latest in laser, LED, and emissive display technologies.)
As I wandered amongst the booths, I saw plenty of new LCD and plasma TVs with super-thin housings, energy-efficient backlights and operating modes, and Ethernet connections for streaming videos. Gone was the emphasis on bigger screen sizes from past years, in favor of more stylish designs and “green” technologies.
Figure 3. Samsung’s humongous booth was over the top, as usual.
Figure 4. Vivitek’s H6080FD LED home theater projector is in a class by itself — and expensive, too.
With HD DVD a distant memory, the Blu-ray folks had things all to themselves and there were plenty of brand-new BD players to be seen, although many models still weren’t equipped with BD Live functions. But prices were dropping, a key for the blue laser format’s future success.
Rear projection technology, once the mainstay of CES TV manufacturers nearly a decade ago, was nowhere to be seen at the show, save for Mitsubishi’s late-to-market LaserVue DLP product — and that was only spotted at Wednesday evening’s Digital Experience tabletop show.
What about OLED TVs? Aside from Sony demonstrating a flexible OLED substrate suitable for small TVs, only Samsung and LG had much in the way of OLED offerings, and we’d scoped those out at previous CES shows.
Figure 5. Hitachi’s DZ-BD10HA camcorder records to
BD-RE, HDD, and SD HC formats. (And does
it catch fish!)
Figure 6. Apparently RCA opted for a self-service booth this year.
Those budget cutbacks
can be brutal…
Streaming video and direct downloads of TV shows appeared to have captured everyone’s imagination. Not only were there Web-equipped TVs, but LG and Samsung also showed streaming interfaces for their Blu-ray players. TiVo enhanced its search engine and has paired up with Amazon and Netflix for downloads, while Digeo’s Moxi HD DVR with CableCARD took a bow at the show.
Once again, NBC Universal had a large booth in the Central Hall, showcasing its “…incredible range of content and delivery systems.” Most of the activity seemed to occur when NBC celebrities Brian Williams and Maria Bartiromo hosted interviews live from the show on one subject or another.
To draw large crowds, Sony set up a Jeopardy! Game show set in its booth and originated several shows during CES. Sharp brought in a few major league baseball stars to sign autographs, while Samsung had a few former NFL players available for posing with guests.
On the other hand, some CE players were notably absent from the floor. Sanyo opted for a pair of meeting rooms upstairs in the North Hall to show its upcoming line of digital cameras and a couple of new projectors, while Texas Instruments had a small demo of 3D home TV in its upstairs meeting suites. RCA might as well have taken an upstairs meeting room, as their spacious but sparsely-appointed booth was mostly empty during the show.
All in all, CES had the feel of a low-key circus midway — just enough products to keep folks interested and enough distractions and giveaways to recycle traffic through the aisles. Even so, there were still a few gems and curios to be found in the LVCC. Here then, is my “Top 13” list for CES 2009:
(1) Vivitek H6080FD LED HT Projector: This was, for me, the most interesting product at the show, and it was nearly impossible to locate, given Vivitek’s tiny booth w-a-y back at the end of the lower South Hall. Of all people, I wouldn’t have expected Vivitek to be the first to bring out an 800-lumens, 1920x1080p DLP projector. But they did, and it looked pretty darned good – there’s no color wheel, and the red, green, and blue LEDs should last at least 20,000 hours. Be prepared to fork over a few dollars for it, however – the list price (so far) is $19,999 and availability is in June.
(2) Da-Lite JKP Affinity Projection Screen: Admittedly, it’s hard to get worked up about a new projection screen, but this design, developed in conjunction with Joe Kane Productions, works so well that I had a hard time believing it came from Warsaw, Indiana (and not those other guys in southern California). The matte texture of the screen material (.85 gain) is so fine that it clearly showed noise problems in 4K and 2K film scans projected onto its surface from a Samsung 1080p home theater projector. Impressive!
Figure 7. I can’t tell if he’s changing channels or directing traffic.
Figure 8. A locking HDMI connector! What will they think of next?
(3) JVC super-thin 32-inch LCD HDTV: There were plenty of thin TVs out for inspection in Las Vegas, but this one may have been the skinniest. It measures .28 inches thick, and weighs all of 11 pounds. And there was a bigger surprise — a built-in magnet that allows the TV to be stuck to any ferrous surface. Yes, there is an umbilical cord to the driving electronics. But it stayed amazingly cool, considering the lack of grille work on the rear panel for heat ducting.
(4) LG Display 480Hz LCD Monitor: In a world where speed suddenly seems to be paramount in displays (forget brightness and contrast), LG’s demonstration of a 480Hz LCD monitor with a combination of black frame insertion and scanning backlight was impressive. Motion blur is a big problem for LCD TVs and even 120Hz systems don’t clean it up completely. 480Hz (four times faster) does, as demonstrated by fast panning shots of sheet music — blurred at 60Hz, still blurred at 120Hz, but very readable at 480Hz.
(5) Samsung 82-inch Ultra HD LCD Monitor: OK, maybe I do miss the old “mine’s bigger than yours” HDTV competitions that Samsung, Sharp, Panasonic, and LG used to have at CES. While Samsung’s 82-inch LCD monitor isn’t the largest in the world (Sharp’s 103-inch is), it may now be the biggest HD+ product out there, with a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels. Any way you look at it, that’s a lot of picture.
Figure 9. LG Display showed some beautiful 15-inch OLED TVs, ready for commercial production.
Figure 10. Sharp’s getting into the whole “splash of color” thing on its new LCD TVs. This one sports a bronze accent around the frame.
(6) Mitsubishi 65-inch LaserVue DLP rear-projection TV: This oft-delayed product made its “official” debut during a splashy party at the Palm Hotel Casino, one year ago at CES. This year, its only appearance was in a small booth at Digital Experience for members of the press. Given that most analysts predicted rear-projection TV technology would go bye-bye in 2008, one would have to wonder how much longer this $7,000 product can survive — particularly with reports that less than 150 have been shipped so far.
(7) Hitachi DZ-BD10HA Blu-ray Camcorder:So far, this is the only tri-mode HD camcorder I’ve seen. It records to BD-RE optical media (1 hour capacity), to SD HC flash memory cards (4.5 hours capacity with 32GB card), and to a 30 GB internal hard disk drive (also 4.5 hours capacity). Hitachi also claims this is the smallest tri-mode camcorder with Blu-ray recording. At 5.5 inches long and 3.4 inches wide, I’d have to agree.
(8) Toshiba and Hitachi motion-sensitive TV control demos: These aren’t real products yet. But it was cool to watch viewers change channels, raise and lower volume, select inputs, and bring up and navigate menus simply by standing in front of the TV and waving their arms and twisting their hands. Fans of Nintendo’s Wii should be right at home with this “get physical” remote control system.
Figure 11a-b. Ever see a refrigerator magnet this big? And you can watch TV on it, too…
Figure 12. Panasonic’s putting some of their plasma TVs on a diet.
(9) 3D Projection and Direct-View TVs: No doubt about it, 3D is a hot topic and there were plenty of chances to see it at CES. TI showed demos of 3D DLP, LG Display had glass-less 3D LCDs, nVidia announced 3D video graphics card support for several partners, and Fox and Sony joined forces to produce and show a 3D version of the Bowl Championship game between Florida and Oklahoma (Go Gators!). The game didn’t quite live up to expectations, however — there are only so many camera angles and shots that actually work well in 3D without causing viewers to jump out of their chair, or toss their cookies.
(10) Pocket DLP projectors: Dell, Optoma, Toshiba, Samsung, and plenty others had prototypes and shipping models out for inspection, both at Digital Experience and on the show floor. Some are pretty tiny and are combined with PDAs, while others are stand-alone products still small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Expect maybe 10 to 50 lumens at best from any of these cuties.
Figure 13. Want a pocket projector? There are plenty to choose from,
but they’re not all
that bright.
Figure 14. Mitsubishi’s 65-inch LaserVue DLP RPTV will save on your electric bills,
which
is a good thing because it will cost you a pretty penny.
(11) Goodbye CableLabs, hello streaming: LG showed several new plasma and LCD HDTV models for 2009 that are Web-ready to stream content directly from sources like Netflix. This is quite a departure from just a few years ago, when it seemed like every major TV manufacturer at the show was supporting CableCARD and planning a jump to the Tru2Way digital cable platform. Not so fast! I didn’t see one single “ready to ship” Tru2Way set at CES 2009, only a couple of technology demonstrations, while Web video (including YouTube) was playing in almost every booth.
(12) Who needs ISF calibration? Several manufacturers showed built-in, self-guided TV calibration programs, ranging from LG’s self-guided Picture Wizard to THX’s Media Director, demonstrated at ShowStoppers. It uses metadata embedded in a broadcast, cable, or satellite TV program, or in other digital media, including Blu-ray Disc. The Picture Wizard, which resembles a system Philips showed a couple of years back, guides you through a set of test patterns and lets you quickly peak up contrast, brightness, color saturation, tint, and sharpness. THX’s program gets you there even faster and also handles correct aspect ratio settings and color temperature.
(13) Lock up your HDMI plugs! Believe it or not, no one has sold a locking HDMI connector until now. PPC’s patented design uses the existing detents in female HDMI connectors and adds two small tabs to the male plugs without otherwise changing the shape and function of the plug. It works! PPC says it takes 12 pounds of force to pull the connector out (there’s a locking release tab on each plug), as opposed to the three pounds of force that can easily dislodge a hard-to-reach HDMI cable from the back of a wall-mounted HDTV. (Don’t you hate when that happens?)
