THE FRONT LINE: JANUARY 12, 2008
CES 2008: Over The Top, As Usual
This year’s CES wasn’t characterized so much by “wild and crazy” product introductions as it was by iterations and evolution of existing technologies.
Figure 1. Las Vegas looks a lot less hectic from 30 stories up.
My trip to CES compressed a ton of meetings and both visits into two very long days. Along the way, I managed to visit over 35 manufacturers and catch two tabletop shows (Digital Experience and Show Stoppers), plus grab some face time at breakfast and dinner with technology movers and shakers.
Traffic was terrible, as usual. I opted to stay off the strip, within walking distance to the Las Vegas Convention Center — and that turned out to be a really smart move, as the monorail and every bus and taxi was jammed to the gills with attendees.
By now, you’ve probably heard most of the big news, such as Warner Brothers abandoning HD DVD for Blu-ray, and Comcast’s deal with Panasonic to develop a portable DVR to play back recorded media anyplace and any time.
Mitsubishi finally unveiled their laser DLP rear-projection TV set during a wild and noisy party at the Palm Casino, and there were the usual dozens of iPod appliance products to be seen, including a JVC LCD HDTV with an iPod dock.
But the “mine’s bigger than yours” flat panel wars of previous years were notably absent, aside from Panasonic’s 150-inch plasma monitor prototype and Sharp’s 108-inch LCD monitor, reprising its role from CES 2007. Wireless was big this year and there were demos of 802.11 and proprietary wireless HD connections both at the LVCC and off site.
Figure 2. Well, there had to be at least one show-off. It’s CES, after all.
Figure 3. JVC’s LCD HDTVs have really slimmed down, and they look pretty good, too.
More buzz came from super-thin LCD and plasma HDTVs — some actual products, and some concept demos. The continued decline of microdisplay RPTV technology was quite apparent, with only Samsung and Mitsubishi showing 1st-tier products of any interest. (Ironically, Texas Instruments’ DLP booth was their largest ever!)
Once again, Sony trotted out its 11-inch OLED HDTVs, along with a 27-inch prototype. But much of the buzz generated by that demo was offset by Samsung’s display of larger OLED HDTVs in 14-inch and 31-inch sizes, both manufactured by the company’s SDI division.
Plasma, which seems to have its epitaph written prematurely every CES, showed strong in Las Vegas with Pioneer’s amazing super-black KURO demo, not to mention a 9mm thick (1/3 inch) 50-inch plasma prototype. Samsung showed the world’s first 3D plasma for gamers, while Panasonic’s Viera suite had a host of advanced plasma technology demos, including glare reduction and shock resistance.
Figure 4. Sony’s not the only company making OLEDs.
Figure 5. Yep, Pioneer’s plasma screen is only .33 inches thick,
which is why it’s so !@#$%^& hard to photograph!
Flash memory took another huge leap forward with a pair of ruggedized 32 GB models (yes, you read that right), while another company made an end-run around DisplayPort by showing USB-based display interfaces. And there were plenty of digital media set-top boxes, including one that just might obsolete blue laser DVD if it ever catches on.
It would take a book to summarize everything I saw at the show. Instead, I’m going to focus on technology trends that portended the greatest near-term impact on HDTV and the products associated with those trends. Here they are:
Trend: HD set-top receivers for Internet downloading of movies and TV shows. VUDU showed their set-top receiver that can play back HD movies in the 1080p/24 format. The box costs $399 and you can download movies from Lionsgate, New Line Cinema, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal, Warner Bros. Studios, and Walt Disney Studios. There’s no activation fee, just pay-as-you-go rental and purchase fees, and all purchased titles reside in memory in the box. USB ports will provide future expansion storage.
Vudu’s box (and others sure to follow) are based on the assumption that viewers don’t need to own the packaged media, as long as they can access it any time. That could pose a long-term threat to packaged DVDs (red and blue laser) and an immediate headache for video rental chains, both online and brick-and-mortar stores.
Sling Media also had a full HD set-top on display. Unlike the Vudu, Sling’s Pro-HD can only work with analog component HD video connections or its internal ATSC receiver — but then again, it’s designed to be a place-shifting STB. Don’t look for HDMI inputs on this gadget any time soon.
Figure 6. Vudu’s Internet HD set-top is gunning for blue laser players.
Figure 7. The Slingbox Pro HD does it all through component video jacks.
Figure 8. LG’s MPH mobile DTV system works amazingly well, even at high speeds.
Trend: Super-thin flat panel HDTVs. Hitachi, JVC, Sharp, Samsung, and Pioneer all showed “skinny mini” LCD and plasma sets. The Hitachi and JVC sets are ready to ship and are just 1.5’ thick, while the Samsung and Sharp 1” thick displays were just prototypes (as was Pioneer’s iPod-thin plasma).
This trend clearly appeals to the crowd that buys HDTVs because they make for cool furniture. (Come to think of it, that’s a pretty big crowd, and a major reason that the rear-projection HDTV category is on life support!) But 1.5 inches isn’t the end of it — Hitachi also showed a .75” thick, 32” diagonal LCD monitor on a stand, alongside a 1.5” thick 50-inch plasma prototype.
JVC will have two 1080p models, the 42-inch LT-42SL89 and the 46-inch LT-46SL89, both of which have an improved backlight design to minimize hot spots from the cold-cathode fluorescent backlight. Hitachi’s line is more expansive, with three different lines (Director series, V-series, and S-series) based on 32-inch, 37-inch, and 42-inch models.
Sharp’s super-thin LCD demos included a 52-inch and a 65-inch model (both full 1080p), while Pioneer’s 50-inch “blade” plasma was mounted on glass. It weighs just 41 pounds and was a real eye-catcher.
Figure 9. Now, who wouldn’t want a 1-inch-thick,
52-inch diagonal Sharp 1080p LCD for their home?
Figure 10. Hey, where’s the projector? (Answer – under the table!)
Trend: 3D HDTV for gaming and regular viewing. The jury’s still out on what impact 3D will have on movie viewing at home, but there’s no question gamers want 3D. TI’s DLP booth showed not only a super-fast (240 Hz) refresh for stereoscopic HD, but a dual-channel simultaneous viewing system called DualView as well.
Conventional 3D glasses are synchronized to odd or even video frame counts from two blended video feeds. (And no, it’s not interlacing!) This allows two viewers to watch two entirely different programs on the same HDTV, or two gamers to play the different games simultaneously. The headsets detect a white emissive LED signal from the HDTV to differentiate the sequence of frames.
Mitsubishi’s laser RPTV also had a demo of 3D that was quite impressive, showing movie trailers from the upcoming feature film Voyage To The Center Of The Earth and NFL footage from RealD. Samsung’s 50” 3D plasma, although not quite bright enough for the overly bright trade show floor, also looked spectacular with active glasses.
Trend: Using serial ports to connect monitors. DisplayLink had a nice demonstration at Digital Experience and ShowStoppers of a standard computer-monitor interface using USWB 2.0 connections. Not only that; they were showing single and dual monitor mode, with the latter set up as a clone or as part of an extended desktop.
DisplayLink’s “solution” is timely, given that most laptops still don’t offer anything more than a 15-pin VGA connection for external monitors or projectors. It doesn’t replace HDMI, but then again, maybe the end user doesn’t need all of the copy protection embedded in HDMI. And DisplayPort is still slow getting out of the gate.
Given that every laptop computer has at least two USB 2.0 ports these days, doesn’t this seem like a simple, yet elegant solution to the “get rid of that bulky analog video cable” problem? It does to me…
Figure 11. It’s hard to see the wires in this Amimon HD demo. (That’s because there aren’t any.)
Figure 12. Jessica Alba looked just as surprised as we did when Mitsubishi
finally unveiled its Laser DLP rear-projection HDTV.
Trend: Wireless HD distribution in the home and office. OK, this isn’t exactly new. But enough companies were showing it that you’d have to assume wireless HD is finally mainstream. Samsung, LG, and Amimon were among those demonstrating high bit rate HD in the 4-5 GHz range. The WiMax pavilion was full of wireless demos, and there were a few 802.11 WiFi setups found all around the convention center.
The Amimon demo at the Hilton showed 1.5 Gb/s HD streamed from a media server to a Sony 40-inch LCD HDTV, with the same content delivered by a wire link on an adjacent, identical 40-inch LCD. It was hard to see any difference in image quality between the two. Belkin is one company that has started selling a wireless media transport system based on Amimon’s technology portfolio.
Trend: Small HD camcorders are ubiquitous. How many do you want? Hitachi, Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, and JVC all had ‘em on display. Some of the Hitachi models record to Blu-ray optical disc, while others use a combination of flash memory and internal hard drives. The day is coming soon when all camcorders will be HD.
Trend: Higher capacity flash memory. Corsair had a pair of 32 GB jump drives on display, one of which is supposedly waterproof to 200 meters (over 600 feet). I’m not sure why that’s an important feature, but this increased capacity — plus all of the 8GB and 16GB flash drives now at retail — are more than sufficient for storing HD TV shows and movies of various lengths.
32 GB flash offers as much capacity as a dual-layer HD DVD and 7 GB more than single-layer Blu-ray. More importantly, flash memory through a USB connection is about as universal a media storage format as you can find. It wouldn’t be a stretch to see a “secure” version of this product used with the Vudu STB mentioned earlier to watch movies on portable and mobile electronics, with no optical disc required.
Trend: Short-throw front projection systems. Sanyo had a neat demo of their PLC-XL50 super short-throw LCD projector, illuminating an 80” diagonal tabletop rear-projection glass insert from below with a projection throw of about a foot. Hitachi also demonstrated their HALCP-A100 short-throw projector by projecting maps from above onto a drafting table, jammed right up against a wall.
The question was raised in one booth about the viability of a similar product for home theater. Given the tight tolerances needed to make these projectors work and not produce severely keystoned images, I’m doubtful. But that’s not to say someone isn’t going to pull it off eventually. Combined with a wireless HD video connection, that would constitute a real “stealth” home theater installation.
Figure 13. Is it a screen, or is it textured glass? Actually, both.
Figure 14. Hitachi’s new camcorders record to and play back from Blu-ray discs.
PICK HITS
Vizio continues to add products to their line. Want a 50-inch 1080p plasma HDTV? The VP-504F is yours for just $1,699, and it’s got Silicon Optix’ REON processor on board. Believe it or not, there’s also a Vizio 32-inch plasma, the VP-322 ($689 MSRP)…Panasonic’s “shock-proof” plasma demo showed a metal ball smacking the front of a 50-inch plasma repeatedly with the force of 1 joule, yet the front glass remained unscathed…Optoma’s HD71 ($1,299) and HD65 ($999) low-cost 720p home theater projectors looked really good, and their 1080p HD80 ($2,999) can also work with anamorphic lenses.
Hauppauge Digital has a new HD PVR that connections to existing set-top boxes and encodes video using the H.264 codec. It uses the analog component (YPbPr) connections and re-digitizes SD and HD video, all for $249…Mitsubishi’s FL-7000U is a 3LCD 1920x1080 installation projector that’s rated at 5000 lumens. It’s pretty small and carries a price tag of about $15K…TI’s DLP booth had a demo by Ostendo of a panoramic RP display for gaming and simulations that was pretty cool…Samsung’s A-VSB mobile demo this year featured quarter-rate and third-rate coding without diversity antennas, unlike last year’s NAB demo.
I could have spent 2 hours in LG.Philips LCD’s demo suite, which had numerous walk-through exhibits of advanced LCD technology, including 8 ms and 4 ms video refresh with a scanning backlight, a triple-image rotating LCD monitor for digital signage (the special screen material revealed three different images at three different viewing angles), and color-corrected EEFL backlights. There were also demonstrations of a 4-inch flexible AM OLED and a 14.3-inch flexible monochrome display for E-paper.
Figure 15. On the right, your old dim, faded LCD HDTV. On the left, your LCD HDTV with
new and improved Dolby HDR for brighter whites! (Smells lemony, too…)
Figure 16. LG.Philips isn’t all about LCDs. Check out these OLED screens.
Toshiba has a new HD DVD Concierge service, whereby customers can get online assistance with their player and general questions about HD DVD. The players themselves have new levels of interactivity, including the ability to stream movie trailers and clips directly from a studio’s server…Westinghouse Digital showed an even larger product line of LCD HDTVs, including demo of wireless HD over HDMI connections, in partnership with Ultra Wideband (UWB) manufacturer PulseLink.
Dolby showed their HDR LCD display, acquired from Brightside Technologies. It uses a selectively modulated backlight to produce lower black levels and amazingly high contrast…LG was also driving around town to show off their MPH (Mobile Pedestrian Handheld) mobile DTV solution, developed with Harris…Stewart had a “floating” textured glass RP screen that drops down into a housing when not in use.
