Motorola

Stopped by for my 2nd visit at Moto and talk with an engineer about their OCAP dev environment.  I'm interested because it sounds like it's a much cheaper and easier dev environment than others I have looked at.  Made contacts and established ground for visits to each others facilities since they a relatively close in Lowell, MA.

Phillips WOWvx

While the 3D was decent without glasses, it think the glasses experience I've seen before is better.

Sanyo

Sany had some imopressive short throw projectors.  The table was was especially interesting.  Some possible OTS or other effects might be possible, especially in cramped studio sets.  The brightness would need improvement, but the keystoning of these is impressive.

Tech and Emerging Countries

Interesting stuff being shown at this display.

Voltaic Systems - The Converter solar bag w/ water bladder.  A solar backpack that can charge a phopne, GPS or other handheld devices.

The famous OLPC XO Laptop - Much smaller in real life than I thought it was.

Meraki Networks - Mesh network components designed to allow networking for the OLPC XO laptop

Freeplay Weza Foot Powered Generator - Provides 12v power by just a foot crank.  

North Hall

Mark F and I ripped through most of the North Hall in a few minutes.  Mostly car audio stuff.  Sirius didn't have anything new of notes as they announced all their new stuff in October.
 

CES Day 4

It was MUCH easier getting here this morning than yesterday.  I guess that's probably because there were around 40000 less people today.

I did meet some of the guys from Engadget yesterday, had a little conversation and exchanged business cards.  I'm hoping to talk to them a bit more in the future.

HP

I didn't really find much at the HP booth worth noting except for the HP iPAQ 300 Series Travel Companion.  Nice travel device.  3d GPS, videos, MP3.  $449 retail

IO-Gear

IO -Gear had a nice digital pen called the Digital Scribe.  The is a wired or wireless(why bother getting wired??) attachment that goes at the top of the paper notepad.  The pen itself isn't much bigger than a normal pen, which has typically been the big complaint with these types of devices.

Wireless version will retail for $130.

magicJack

Yes, I laughed too when I first heard the name of the product, but it really sounds cool.  Basically, you plug the device, which is about the size of a pack of gum, into a USB port on your computer.  You plug a regular analog phone intop the other end of the device and you get assigned a US(maybe Canada too) phone number.  Use it top make unlimited calls.  The device cost $39.99 online and after the first year, the cost is $20/yr.

I liked it so much I ordered one myself.

D-Box Motion Code

The D-Box Motion FX technology brings the entertainment park experience of moving furniture down to a more accessible level.  The enhancement to the display movie was very good and really gave the user more of an immersive experience.  There were also dedicated gaming chairs and even recliners.

http://livetheaction.com

Panasonic

150" Plasma HDTV.  Wow!  Just ridiculous.

Tru2way - one of the more impressive OCAP/Tru2way display.  They had a STB, Television, and portable TV/DVR device all running the same OCAP program guide.

Sharp

Sharp was showing off a number opf new TVs, but the interesting part was the Aquos NET platform built into them all.  It requres an ethernet connection, but puts web gadget on the side of the screen. 

I got the developer network contact info.

Microsoft Booth Tour

We tagged along on the Disney tour for the Microsoft booth.  Overall, it was disappointing.

They showed off their MediaRoom platform, which is not a consumer device, but rather their IPTV platform.

New Zunes... Wireless autosync is interesting, but overall....snooze.

MSN Direct(formerly SPOT) is a data subscription service... Good for GPS devices for traffic, weather, and sports.

One of the best things on display was the ESPN Remote control, which had WiFi, it's own screen with own program guide data, SMS, I'm.  Not released yet, but the company hopes to have it out by the end of April.

The most compelling thing they had was the Surface table.  They had the wine lounge application, which is quite compelling and useful.

Sony Booth Tour

Met with with the Disney folks for the Sony tour.

First stop was the OLED TVs.  These TVs are ultra-thin and ultra bright, making them look gorgeous.  The Sony rep did mention an estimated 30K hour life.  They also had a 27" prototype on display, but nop estimated price or street date yet.

BD-LIVE - Some new features to their Blu-Ray players and PS3 was watching a movie together from different locations, maing it more of a social experience, being able to use interactive features together.

Wireless HD - Sony displayed a prototype solution for uncompressed video that could go up to 200' with only a .7ms delay.

DMEX cards for Bravia line - Sony is developing 'add-on' modules to extend their Bravia line of TVs.  New modules include:
*DVD Link
*'extra' input link
*A wireless link
*Internet link
All could be controlled via the single remote and with the Internet link, they have streaming internet video from approximately 30 partners like CBS and Fox Sports.  It looked very similar to the MS MediaCenter interface.

Click to [BD] Disk - This really caught my attention.  You can use the new BD authoring software that copmes with Vaio copmputers to create multi-angle BD disks, all syncronized via timestamp of video or pictures.  Up to 4 sources were supported and it would also allow for cascading fix of timestamps form a particular source.

82" 4K Panel - An 82" 3840x2160 panel was on display that could display a 10megapixel image or 4 1080p sources on the same screen!

Home Entertainment Server - The HES-V1000 could hold 500 BD disks and had a 500gb HD, with HDMI outputs.  Est prices was $3500

Location Free TV HD - They added HD to this years model and changed the crazy licensing to be a free download, but limited to 8 physical devices.

PSP Enhancements - Added Skype capabilities, Internet Radio streams and an add-on GPS module.

E-Book - The latest version was on display.  Not much different from last years, but it does read PDFs.

Fast-Jet - Similar to the Near Filed Communications described yesterday, this technology allows transfers of data between 'touch'(get within 3cm.). No real security which has me concerned, but its transfer rates were VERY quick and it was streaming HD video from a camcorder.

Moxi-TV

I checked out Moxi yesterday and to be honest, I was disappointed.  When Moxi was first announced years ago(99?) it had incredible potential, but this years offerings are not much more than a cablecard Tivo.

Day 3 - Monrail

It took a while to get to it from Mandalay Bay, but so far it's been the least stressfull way to get to the show.  Of course, it's nice to get on at the first stop and be able to actually get a seat.

Trakit - screen track system

The Trakit system allows you to move monitors on a track(straight or custom) and control the movement via Crestron/RS232.  Could be useful in a studio situation such as OTS'.

Mitsubishi PocketProjector

The Mitsubishi PocketProjector PK20 was running.  The size of the unit was about 4x4x1.5.  It was showing a decent 30" picture at about 3.5' away.  Max 1024x768 resolution.  Uses DLP with LED 'lamp'.  In addition to VGA in, it also had composite and S-Video, plus an SD card.  There was an optional battery that attaches to the bottom in the same form factor.  Retail for about $500, with street being around $400.

Automated wall mounts

I've seen a few automated wall mounts for LCD/Plasma monitors.  The CLO motorized system was very nice and could be useful in a control room or an attraction where the TVs 'follow' someone as they walk by.

Pavonine 3D monitors

Pavonine had a nice 32" 3D monitor on display.  Glasses required, but the quality was very good even at a number of different angles.  Propbably better than the Zalmon ones.  They also had a 24", which was less impressive due to less of an angle that it's effective within(8° vs 20° on the 32")

It's available now for around $5K.

Zalmon 3D Displays

Zalmon had 27" prototype 3D displays on display, called Trimon.  They required glasses, which were actually much more stylish than ones I've used before.  The monitors used Stereoscopic Player and the output was very nice.  The larger monitors were just prototypes, but they do have smaller ones available now, which I saw here last year.  No price or availability estimates on the larger monitors.

3M Mobile Projection

The 3M rep showed me a mockup of the portable projection system they have developed.  VGA resolution on a palm sized device.  I saw it up to about 2' on a wall.  It was still not bad in the open harse lights of the show floor.

She could not disclose what partners would be using their chips but did say that they should be to market in 1H of '08.

Think Optics Wavit

I cross between a TV remote, mouse and Wii controller meant for control of Media Center PCs.  Very fuild control and used an IR sensor bar almost exactly like the Wii.

CES day 2

Well, it's not starting off well.  Had to wait for the bus to the LVCC for 40 minutes at Mandalay Bay.

Marc Postings

Marc R is going to be posting his CES stuff on here too now after we finish our overpriced lunch.

Powercast Wireless Power

It just doesn't sound right to me... Wireless power?

This is the second year I saw it running.  Powercast had gutted a griffen FM transmitter and put their chip in and it was working quite nicely to charge an Ipod Nano.  They also had a Mio GPS working.  The engineers claim that power efficiency was 'not much worse' than a wall charger.

Crazy Computer Power Supplies

I thought it was bad last year with the 1K watt power supply, but E-Power has a monster 2K watt power supply.

NFC-Near Field Communications

A hybrid & compliment to Bluetooth and RFID.  'Swipe' your phone at the Kodak picture station, establishes a Bluetooth connection and prints you photo.  Swipe it again on an enabled advertising poster and get opt-in info.

VeriMatrix

Intriguing watermarking technology, which could be useful for footage reporting.  They have an API to write against and they said their encoding is real time with no frame delay, but I won't believe that until I see it.

Golf Launchpad Tour

A very nice golf controller for XBox360, PS3, PC or Mac.

It was running Tiger Woods.  There was a delay of about 3 seconds after the shot while it figured everything out.

Looks fun and a bit more realistic than the Wii controller.

Slingbox Pro-HD

The new Slingbox Pro-HD does pretty much what the old Pro did, but give better resolution. The cable tuner in this box also does QAM, besides ATSC.

Slingbox

The version of the SlingCatcher on display this year was very nice. The device placeshifts your video from one TV source to TV, whereas the normal Slingbox will placeshift your TV source to a computer. It also plays a ton of different format video files from your home network by using the Slingsync software on a PC on your home network.

CES 2008 Blog via Jott

At last year's CES I tried taking notes on my Treo. I did a fairly OK job, but it was a real pain in the butt and I felt I was wasting lots of time thumb typing. It also didn't make for a good trip report.

This past year I stumbled upon Jott. I originally wanted it to help me to record to-do tasks whenever I remembered them by just calling the Jott number and speaking. They came up with a nice feature this past year to allow you to 'Jott' to Blogger directly and that is how I plan on recording my CES 2008 experiences. Let's see how it works out this time.