Visiting the Consumer Electronics Show (6–9 January) is always an exhausting and thrilling event. The exhibitions are packed, eventful, and huge, covering the complete space at the Las Vegas Convention Center and the conference rooms at the Hilton and a few more in several hotels along the Strip. Economy slow? Well, the only way to tell would be to clock the time going from one side of a hall to the other: 5 minutes? 10 minutes? 30? Gave up? 😉
Well, I survived and recovered after just a few weeks. 🙂 And I only visited the show, I was not an exhibitor and running demos, answering questions, holding business conferences, and what not during my time with Fuze3.
These were the highlights at the CES:
Your new TV Experience
- 3D-TV — A new trend, and as 3D movies are now a wee bit cheaper to produce, you notice more and more 3D movies offered in the cinemas. While 3D movies were not so popular in the video and TV market, that is going to change!
The former solution separating the, well, visual channels using card-board spectacles with green/red or purple/yellow colored lenses left much to be desired.The new solutions demonstrated at the CES are using polarized glasses.I saw products (more for video games) displaying right and left simultaneously on a monitor with two video inputs, (card-board) spectacles with (fixed) polarized lenses suffice.
The more high-end solution for the 3D-TVs use polarized shutter-glasses, turning the LCD lenses black alternating between left and right with 120 Hz. The synchronization between the spectacles and the displayed video is done with an IR transmitter at the TV or 3D BluRay player and the IR receiver in the glasses (replace its coin cell battery frequently).
- IP-TV and TV widgets — OK, using a BluRay player with BD-live the link TV to internet is already a given. (Remember just 10 years ago the set-top boxes to display internet content on the TV? Reading text on the analog TVs was a bit of a pain…)The new TVs will come with direct internet connectivity to provide streaming video, be it video-on-demand from providers such as NetFlix or Vudu, Hulu, and others, reruns available from the various TV broadcasters’ web sites, or content from social media such as MyVideo, YouTube, etc. , etc.
Smart Phones, Touch Screens, Gesture Controls
- Resolutions on screens of today’s smart phones or handhelds are incredible; reading books or web content with crisp letters, sharp pictures is a fun exercise. Sporting high-end graphics and fast processors, equipped with large storage space, WiFi capable, a photo/video camera, and what not, those little gadgets have a performance easily surpassing what was considered a fast PC just few years ago.A variety of applications (aka, Apps) is readily available for download and use. Put in a SIM card, and you can even use your device to place and receive calls; when you are not watching TV. 😉
Would have Johann Phillip Reis ever imagined what his telephone would become 150 years later?
- The evolution of the smart phones really took off with use of touch screens. Just point your finger(s), select and start the app, scroll or resize the image; much easier than – after successfully locating it somewhere on your screen, first — to move the mouse pointer to the desired spot there and perhaps press a few control keys in the process.Touch screens are more and more becoming every day use. Automated Teller Machines at your local bank, self-checkout terminals in stores, navigation and multimedia center displays in your car, monitors in hospitals, oscilloscopes and waveform monitors and analyzers, the thermostat to control A/C and heater in your home, and the list goes on and on.
Solutions are available to even allow several users to control apps simultaneously on the same (larger) screen. Say, select the photos and arrange them to build and print an album; review a catalog and place orders; or just play games together.
- There can be cases where you cannot touch the screen, it may be out of reach, there may be hygienic reasons.
What now?In the 60-ies Disneyland had prepared displays showing mannequins that basically where remotely controlled robots. Scenes were prepared showing episodes from favorite feature films with said robots as actors.
In reality, behind the scenes human actors were strapped in some sort of armor sporting large arrays of sensors, to capture each and every movement of the human, from the whole body, to the head with the eyes and lips, the arms and individual fingers, and so on. All that data was then transmitted in hundreds of cables and controlled said robot, following its, well, master like a puppet on an electronic string. In real-time.
That technology soon evolved into capturing and storing all the movements on a special tape recorder. And the robots were now operated by just playing back those tapes.
Over time the manual process was then automated using (then a room full of) powerful computers to controlling more sophisticating machines. Quite spectacularly shown when the first Star Wars movies came out.
Today, that idea of Walt Disney’s is as live as ever. Instead of a truck-load of sensors and over-sized trunks of cables, a simple camera or a set of cameras suffices: The capturing and the control through gestures!
A computer “sees”, i.e., recognizes eyes, fingers, and what not, analyzes their movements. That then is translated into the corresponding action.
You select a 3D image just by pointing, wiggling a finger to zoom in or out, rotate to the desired viewing angle.
Or you operate devices in a clean room, located perhaps thousands of miles away; just move your hands and pretend you are touching controls.Or you are the puppeteer of an avatar in an adventure movie… 🙂
else…
- New smart phones with a plentiful of features. And yes, you can still place and receive a telephone call! 😉
- eye.fi — I found their products since quite some time, a WiFi capable SD card; i.e., while taking a picture, your photo will not only be stored on the SD card but also transmitted over your local wireless network or even the internet to a host.
- Smart Meters, Smart (WiFi) Plugs, etc. All to become very useful for the emerging Smart (electrical) Grid. More products to watch out soon!
- Wireless Displays — get away of video cables; send the HD stream to your TV or monitor using your WiFi network.
- BluRay players with built-in HDD, to store or buffer your video-on-demand stream, to store your multimedia files there to playback your songs, your photos, etc.
- …
.
Coming up: The NAB Show hosted in Las Vegas (10–15 April).
Shall I go?
.
© February 2010 Jürgen Menge, San José