January 12, 2007
Sony develops super-thin OLED TVs
Sony has a number of OLED TVs on its stand at CES, showing the future of ultra thin flat screen tellys.
Those on display are only 11in in size, but it also had a 27in and all were only a few millimetres thick.
OLEDs (Organic light-emitting diode) are brighter than LCDs, use less energy and once available as a mass market product, should also be cheaper.
January 11, 2007
Indepth look at Windows Home Server (video)
If you own two or more computers and a home network, you've probably wondered if there could be a better way to share and backup your data between those computers. Microsoft estimates that there actually are about 40m to 45m of these homes - enough to warrant the Windows Home Server.
Bill Gates officially unveiled the Windows Home Server last Sunday but his presentation left us with plenty of questions. So we convinced Microsoft to demonstrate the the device, and in the process got a brief peek at some of the reference designs from AMD, Intel, Inventec and Quanta.
You can see it all in the video past the jump.
January 11, 2007
Blu-ray camcorder likely this year
Hitachi will add to its dual storage HDD (hard disk drive) and DVD camcorder next month with a 30GB version, capable of holding around 22 hours of footage.
The Ultravision DZHS500A can also record straight to DVD-R, -RW, -Ram, +RW and SD card. The company already has an 8GB version of the camcorder, and said it hopes people will use the hard discs to store a recording before transferring it to a PC or DVD and then recording over the hard disk. It is not designed to be permanent storage, a spokesman said.
Initially, I think people will record to DVD until they become comfortable with filming straight to the hard disk. Hitachi’s spokesman believed many consumers are already comfortable with filming to HDD and will prefer that medium to DVD.
It will cost $799 in the US and around £400 in the UK once out a little later, in April.
Also on Hitachi’s stand were three concept designs for high definition camcorders. It included a Blu-ray camcorder (front right in the picture), which is likely to come out this year, most probably before Hitachi ships its Blu-ray player.
January 10, 2007
Sharp pictures the world in a 108 inch LCD
Having highlighted the LG 10in LCD HDTV earlier, where you could clearly see the join between the two panels it had used to make the TV, Sharp is showing how it should be done at its stand.
It has a 108in full 1080p high definition TV on show, and said the monster would be available for sale from August. The company wouldn't say how much the Aquos will cost, but my guess is at least $60,000.
You'll not need just deep pockets though - you'll also need some serious wall space to house this TV.
January 10, 2007
LG's 100in LCD HDTV - a telly of two halves
LG has this eye-catching 100in LCD HDTV on its stand. Last year at CES there were two plasma TVs just over 100inches in size, but an LCD at this size is a much more impressive feat.
The TV is not a production model yet, but it, or a version of it, is clearly only around the corner. This one is 1920x1080p and has a contrast ratio of 3000:1.
It is put together using two panels, and there’s obviously some issues still to overcome though, because if you look at the photo, you can clearly see the join in the panels. It meant that when displaying images there was a marked difference in colour saturation and contrast between the two halves of the telly.
January 10, 2007
Dell solves Dr Evil's data migration headache (video)
Dr. Evil might be a mastermind of deception, he's facing the same data migration challenge that we all meet when we purchase a new computer. The difference is however that Dr. Evil (or some lookalike) was allowed to interrupt Dell chairman Michael Dell's keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show this morning to solve his problem.
Below you can watch a video where Dell shows a preview of the Data Safe service that is slated for release later this year.
January 10, 2007
Cisco's Chambers paints a picture of networked heaven (video)
To those among you who dream of a seamless world in which data travels between devices without any effort, Cisco chairman John Chambers had good news today: it is possible... but at the same time is facing some harsh challenges.
Chambers (pictured left) even has a name for this network Nirvana: the human network. It's one where webcams are effortlessly hooked up to a new network and shared with authorized users. One where users transfer a song that they were listening to in the car to their home stereo, or turn it into a video clip on their internet connected television.
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has it all wrong when he is talking about the "digital decade", Chambers blasted.
"People say, well this is the decade of digital technology. Respectfully, I think that was the last decade," quipped Chambers. Instead it's all about new experiences on the network.
In the video after the jump you can watch a demonstration in which Chambers explains what his human network is all about
January 9, 2007
Cisco demands resolution for Apple's iPhone (video)
Cisco today at CES sent a subtle warning to Apple about the iPhone that Apple unveiled at MacWorld.
Cisco's chief development officer and president for Linksys Charlie Giancarlo (pictured right) said that he expects a signed statement by the end of today. The two companies have been in talks for several years, Giancarlo disclosed, and Cisco has sent its latest draft agreement as recently as last night.
The ball clearly is in Apple's court now. By launching the phone without having licensing agreement in place, it has opened the door for Cisco to assert its trademark claims.
After the jump, you can watch a video with Giancarlo's statement.
January 9, 2007
The Force is Strong in R2-D2....
For the big kid in us all (well the male population for sure), or just fathers who know their kids must have a robot projector, there’s Nikko Home Electronics’ R2-D2 DVD Projector.
It comes complete with a Millennium Falcon remote control (of course) and will project an image up to 80in big. It has just about everything you’ll need – an iPod dock, LCos projector, DVD player, memory card slots and 20watt speakers. If you want to hook it up to other entertainment devices, it also has a terminal panel.
It’ll set you back $2,500, so if money’s tight and you must have an R2-D2 robot, there’s always the R2-D2 Wireless Webcam instead. That’s a more sedate $350 and hey, it comes with a Lightsabre Skype phone/controller.
The Webcam can wander around your home – it has sensors to stop it from bumping into tables or falling down any stairs – beaming back images of your rooms (or whomever you are spying on!) to your PC.
Both will be out later this year.
We hope to get a video of it working later today.
January 9, 2007
Toshiba R400 with Wireless Port Replicator
Toshiba’s latest tablet PC will be able to use a wireless port replicator, once the ultra wideband has been ratified in Europe.
The sub 2kg Tablet was launched to much fanfare, with Toshiba pushing its stylish looks combined with technologies to help business people do their jobs.
The Portege R400 includes inbuilt technologies such as 3G and HSDPA to aide communications, and has a low battery drain Oled display on the edge of the base of the unit that will display information such as latest emails or calendar appointments. It also includes push pull technology so that the laptop does not have to be booted up to get emails.
The other attraction for the device though is its Wireless Port Replicator, which gets rid of wires between the Tablet and other devices, such as a monitor. Apart from taking a DVI cable, a mouse, keyboard, USB hubs and Ethernet cables can all plugged into the port replicator, which then talks wirelessly to the R400.
The replicator has a one metre range. If the R400 moves out of range then communications to the device are lost, but will be instantly re-established once the device is back in range.
The R400 comes out in late March and will cost about €3,000, although Toshiba would not give a firm price. But its wireless replicator capabilities will not be available in Europe until the UWB standard is ratified.
January 8, 2007
Bill Gates envisions a server in your home (video)
Bill Gates on Sunday unveiled its Windows Home Server. As expected, the device offers to back up data on the computers and laptops in your home, and acts as a media server, streaming content to devices. In the video below you can watch a video where Gates discusses the appliance.
January 8, 2007
Microsoft unveils even more Vista goodies (video)
If you thought that every feature of Vista was out in the open by now, you were wrong. In a presentation during Bill Gates' opening keynote, the company showed off several features that it hadn't mentioned before. You can see it all in the video below.
January 8, 2007
An Asus Sideshow without Windows
Asus is bringing out some smart looking notebooks over the coming months. Among those on show at CES is the W5Fe, which has a fully operational 2.8in QVGA LCD screen built into its lid.
The display uses Sideshow, an operating system that can be switched on without booting up Vista. Owners can decide which data to save to Sideshow, such as music, pictures, text or video, which is then stored on flash memory. It can synchronise with Outlook, so that you can see email, contacts or your calendar.
Coming out in February, specs include a 1.3 megapixel web cam, 512MB DDR2 memory, a 160GB sata hard disk drive and a 12.1in WXGA screen. It runs an Intel Core 2 Duo processor.
January 8, 2007
Bill Gates shows off his home of the future (video)
Eventhough Bill Gates' keynote at CES was largely about entertainment products that will become available in the coming months, he did squeeze in his vision for the future.
Below you watch a video from the keynote where Gates demonstrates a possible scenario describing how we might live with technology in a couple of years.
Bil
January 8, 2007
Bill Gates: one more year at CES
Bill Gates minutes ago officially opened CES 2007 with his traditional keynote. In case you were wondering what will happen after Gates retires: the Microsoft chairman said that he will deliver one more opening keynote next year.
After the, he quipped, it's up to the show's organizer to decide if they want to ask him back, as he will be talking a lot more about deceases and his charitable work that he will be focusing on.
January 8, 2007
Panasonic loves plasma to death
Panasonic today spent about half of its press conference talking up plasma technology for flat panel TVs.
The company not only tried to dispel some of the evil lies that the competition is spreading about plasma (allegedly plasma doesn't have issues with images burning into the inside of a display since the first generation technology; its 60,000 hour life is considered sufficient for event the most extreme TV junkie and it has enough of a future road map.
Plasma furthermore is more environmentally friendly and is less stressing on the eyes, said some professor from Japan.
"Bottom line is that the plasma solution is the better [one] for everyone," hyped Atsuya Makita, general manager for business planning for Panasonic AVC Networks Company.
Plasma might have several things going for it, but in the end of the day it will never be able to catch up to the production volume that LCD is achieving with the help of the notebook and monitor business. The fact that the company is now starting to defend its technology just proves plasma is in deep trouble.
Makita takes a shot at defending his fortress
Pictured above: Yoshi Yamada, CEO Panasonic North America
January 7, 2007
Philips bringing out Wireless HDMI device - high def without cables
Philips is bringing out a range of Blu-ray products and a device that will transfer high definition video wirelessly.
Its BDP9000 Blu-ray Disc player can handle 1080p resolution and component video output, supports multi¬channel audio decoding and digital audio optical outputs and is backwards compatible with DVDs, which it will upscale to 1080p.
The unit costs $999.
It also has 25GB, single-layer recordable (BD-R) and single-layer recordable and erasable (BD-RE) Blu-ray Discs, with a 50GB disc coming soon. Unfortunately for anyone outside of the country, these are currently only available in the US.
The Wireless HDMI comes out in May; the company claims it is the only device of its type on the market, transferring uncompressed high definition signals through the air. It is designed to replace HDMI cabling and has a 25foot range.
Philips said the lossless 1080p signals won’t suffer from other electronic devices in the home, such as wifi or mobile phones because it operates in the ultra wideband frequency.
Wireless HDMI costs $300.
January 7, 2007
Meet LG's dual mode DVD player
LG this morning officially unveiled its Super Multi DVD player that supports both the HD DVD and Blu-ray high definition DVD standards. At $1,200, the device costs about 20 per cent more than a Blu-ray only device, and it won't support all the interactive features in the HD DVD standard, but it does buy consumers peace of mind: whoever wins the standard wars, you won't be left in the cold.
The first Super Multi hybrid DVD players are expected to hit the market by February and a special model for PCs is expected to follow within one month.
More pics after the jump
Built into a PC...
Laptop model...
January 7, 2007
SanDisk V-Mate pals up to DVDs
SanDisk’s V-Mate has been around since just before Christmas, and looks an interesting product. It copies video – be it from a DVD or your PVR – onto a flash drive so that you can play it on portable devices such as a mobile phone.
The device is hooked into your DVD player, PC or PVR such as Sky+, and then copies a programme real time to a flash card. SanDisk said it holds one hour per GB at 640x480 VGA resolution and up to 3.5 hours at lower settings.
It will copy Hollywood DVDs – and with the big studios blessing, said Matthijs Hutten, the product’s marketing manager, because it makes an analogue version. And not everyone would keep the move permanently anyway – unless they had an abundance of flash cards.
A neat touch is its internal database, which allows it to be connected to PVRs so that you can programme it to record a favourite programme automatically. Well almost. It’s not networked and doesn’t have an Electronic Programme Guide (EPG), so you have to manually programme it to record. But SanDisk is looking at possibly producing a version in the future that also has an EPG.
It costs €130.
January 7, 2007
Youtube comes to a TV near you (Video demo)
Netgear is setting Youtube content free from the computer, allowing consumers to watch movies of backyard wrestling matches and exploding Coke+Mentos bottles from their living room TVs with its new Digital Entertainer HD.
Using the Youtube API, the appliance lets users browse and search for user generated videos directly from their living room sofas.
The $349 device is essentially a media adapter on steroids, connecting users to any audio, image and video file that is available on their networks. Attach a PC with a TV Tuner and you've got yourself a personal video recorder. It will even allow you to play music purchased from the iTunes music, provided it is stored on a computer running Windows.
Below you watch a video with a demo of the device.
January 7, 2007
Things to make you go Nee-Nor
No child should ever be without a fire engine TV in their bedroom.
For any parents now realising that their children are deprived because they don't have one, this Hanspree TV can be yours for a mere $15,000. For that you get a 42in LCD 1080p TV in a hand made fire engine chassis.
No one has been tempted so far, but Hanspree said if someone did want such a TV, it could be made to order.
January 7, 2007
CEA dresses up gloomy industry growth data
Growth in overall sales of consumer electronics this year will be cut in half, according to data from the Consumer Electronics Association that organizes CES. Consumer this year will spend only 6.5 per more on gadgets than last year, where the industry grew by an impressive 13.5 per cent in 2006.
At a press event on Saturday, the sector tried its hardest to slap a bright coating on the dark data. Spending on consumer gadgets is still more than double overall economic growth, indicating that the CE sector is at least stealing consumer dollars from other sectors of the economy, cheered Sean Wargo, a senior industry analyst for CEA.
The real issue, however is that there is a lack of new innovations that can drive new consumer spending at premium prices. Flat panel TVs have become mainstream items and likewise their prices have started a rapid decline. The same is the case of portable media players.
Services such as Youtube may be on the rise, but they don't have any impact on consumer buying – at least not yet. And the question remains if they ever will.
Wargo is confident that the next big thing will come in the near future. But such a prediction should be expected from a trade association on the eve of its biggest annual cheer fest.
Nothing hip left about it
January 5, 2007
Cebit bleeding red ink
While CES is showing off its robust health for its upcoming 2007 edition, Europe's main high tech tradeshow Cebit is heading for a dark storm.
After making €11m in profit last year, Cebit's 2007 edition is likely to loose €6m, the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung claimed earlier this week (in German, and subscription required).
The financially hard times are caused by a mass exodus of tier one exhibitors from the show in Hannover, Germany. Last year Sony pulled out, and this year Nokia, Motorola, Benq, Konica/Minolta and Lenovo are following. The show will rent out 15 per cent less floor space, and visitor counts are expected to display a similar drop.
The likely culprit is the classical 7 fat years syndrome: the show for years kept growing and growing, but failed to attract the right audience. As the T-Shirt hunters and star-gazers moved in, the corporate buyers moved on to more focused events like 3GSM in Barcelona and IFA in Berlin.
Add that to the fact that Hannover isn't exactly Las Vegas. The town has an embarrassing lack of hotel bed, forcing delegates to stay with local residents or commute in from far away places. Reality is catching up with Cebit.
At Cebit, any time is beer time (photo from Cebit 2005)
technorati tags: cebit, ces, blog, tradeshow, finances, nokia, sony, motorola, benq, konica/minolta, lenovo
January 5, 2007
Microsoft home server rumors increase
As Microsoft chairman Bill Gates gets closer to opening up the Consumer Electronics Show this Sunday, rumors are increasing that he plans to unveil some kind of home media server and storage appliance.
Details are extremely hard to come by, but the appliance will allegedly offer central storage and for digital media, and stream it to devices throughout the home. Think some shoebox that you set up once and than had in the meter closet or under the sofa.
As our digital media library are expanding beyond digital photos and mp3 to include TV recordings and digital home videos, the need to access that information in an way that is easy to use will further increase. A home media server would be one way to solve that issue.
But other parties will no doubt insist that adding more hard drives and CPUs to the home is the wrong solution for this problem. Cisco in particular is bound to point out that you can simply stream all this information over the network (in the process allowing Cisco to sell more routers).
Tech savvy consumers however will be disappointed by a hosted solution that has limited flexibility. A box that gets warm and that they can pet is the perfect solution.
But that is, of course, provided that the rumors are true.
Anthology's Yellow Machine made an attempt at launching a home media server, but few paid attention.
technorati tags: media+server, microsoft, ces, ces+blog, las+vegas, bill+gates, gates, microsoft
January 4, 2007
HD DVD and Blu-ray perform in shotgun wedding
Warner Bros has done the sensible thing and forged a single disk that will play on both HD DVD and Blu-ray disk drives.
The movie studio's chief executive Barry Meyer will officially unveil
the new Total Hi-Def disk on Tuesday at a CES press conference.
Hail to Warner Bros for ensuring that consumers don't have to go looking for a HD-DVD or Blu-ray logo on their DVD disks in the future. And shame on the two consortia for launching a standards war that is all about making money and completely overlooked the end user.
technorati tags: hd+dvd, HD, bluray, warner+bros
January 4, 2007
Beware of the big blue monster
IBM is planning a return to Las Vegas next week, as the firm for the first time in 10 years will be exhibiting at CES.
Big Blue doesn't plan a foray into the field of Consumer Electronics. It doesn't sell any of the consumer gadgets like PCs, notebooks and 56k modems that is was showing off in the last millennium.
The firm however will be shining the spotlight on its chips and components that have found their way into may of today's consumer devices, such as the Power processor that drives both the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 gaming consoles, or the Cell processor that it co-designed with Sony.
Convincing IBM to return to the show is a major victory for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) that puts the event together. Big names leaving a show normally is a telltale sign that a show has peaked and that exhibitors are growing tired of the free T-shirt hunting crowds.
IBM apparently doesn't feel that there's a risk there.
technorati tags: ces, las+vegas, ces+blog, cesblog, ibm, boothbabe
January 3, 2007
Join the memory race
Overclocking your processor is so 2006. In 2007 all the cool geeks will resort to overclocking their memory.
But if you're one of the wannabes who can't even compile his own Linux kernel, Patriot Memory will help you to look cool nonetheless – at the right price of course.
Patriot plans to unveil the world's "fastest memory" at CES next week. The firm's RAM chips will run at 1302Mhz, making the 1111Mhz Corsair DHX look like unsalted peanuts.
What does 1302Mhz memory get you? The manufacturer promises superior gaming performance. But you better prepare for an inflated power bill and a heating problem on the side as well.
Overclocked memory is the penis enlargement of the computer industry. It looks great if you want to brag to your friends, but it's highly unpractical.
Corsair overclocked memory, hidden somewhere under the 3 fans that are required to keep the beast running cool.
technorati tags: CES, CES+blog, las+vegas, overclocking, memory, patriot+memory
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