CES 2010

As always, Sony has a major presence here at CES. A representative told me that this years exhibit is the largest in the history of CES, and they started working on the display before Christmas. The space is almost double from last year, because the game show Jeopardy has set up their set as part of the Sony booth to shoot a week's worth of show's for its 25th Anniversary.

The big message at Panasonic's press conference was 3D with "full HD" resolution (i.e., 1080p)—many current 3D systems cut the effective resolution in half to accommodate two eyes separately. The company is spearheading a drive to develop a standard for 3D HD content production, mastering, and display this year, with products appearing in 2010. Director James Cameron is on board, and Panasonic Hollywood Labs, Panasonic's R&D arm, is working with studios and manufacturers to achieve these goals. I've never found 3D all that compelling, and it sometimes gives me a slight headache after a while, so I welcome any substantive progress toward a standardized improvement.

The Digital Experience is an annual press event held at the Mirage that showcases the latest in mobile digital devices, computer peripherals and anything that is, well...digital. AV components are typically not part of the event, but this year Samsung showed two unique home theater products, the HT-BD8200, a 2.1 channel sound bar with a built-in network BD player (shown in the background) and a wall-mountable network BD player. The HT-BD8200 includes a wireless subwoofer and an iPod dock and can stream digital content from Netflix. Prices were not announced and the sound bar is expected to be available mid-year. Note: The wall-mountable BD player in the foreground is black, not red.

During CES they commission pretty much every large vehicle they can find to shuttle attendees from one venue to another. Vegas has purchased some very old double decker buses from England and put them into service as tour buses. Here we are outside the Sands/Venetian Convention Center and heading out to the main Las Vegas Convention Center. How many Convention Center's does one city need?

When the press conference for CISCO filled to capacity they announced it could be watched from the Press Room. Several of us headed over to find them still trying to get the feed linked in. However, once they did there was no audio, only the Power Point slide show. But wait, you can view it online. Everyone pulls out their laptops, heads to the URL, only to find a screen that says you must register first. OK! Logging in now...uh but you don't have the most current version of Real Player. Honestly, I didn't know that people were still using that. I haven't come across that in so long that obviously I didn't have the most current version. A quick download, but the site didn't recognize the plug-in. NEVERMIND

Toshiba announced that it will add Dolby Volume as a feature in its 2009 Regza line of LCD televisions. Dolby Volume delivers a consistent volume level by automatically bringing down the volume of louder stations or commercials or
raising the volume of lower channels or commercials to maintain the desired listening
level. It's a welcome feature since loud commercials can be very annoying.