OTHER TECH

It wasn't long ago that you'd hear old-school audiophiles at CES bemoaning the disappearance of tubes - the vacuum tubes in audio gear, that is. But the latest technology to beat a quick retreat from the mega-electronics show is the picture tube, or CRT, used in traditional TVs. With flat-panel plasma and LCD sets and DLP (Digital Light Processing) rear-projection TVs (RPTVs) hogging the spotlight, there was hardly a tube in sight at this year's show. That doesn't mean nobody's making CRT sets. But they're fast becoming commodity items, like pocket calculators and VCRs.

The upside of this shift is that companies are focusing on making flat TVs bigger and RPTVs slimmer. Visitors to the Samsung booth were wowed by working prototypes of immense 80-inch plasma and 57-inch LCD TVs - screen sizes that wouldn't have seemed possible a couple of years ago. And technology partners Thomson (RCA) and InFocus proved that DLP rear projection doesn't require a bulky box - at less than 7 inches deep, their ultra-skinny 50-inch TVs seemed to defy the laws of physics. DLP also received a boost from Toshiba, which said it would abandon LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) to make DLP-based RPTVs in 2004. And Samsung announced that DLP models using Texas Instruments' new 1080p (progressive-scan) xHD3 chip would arrive later this year. What this means is that DLP will soon rival LCoS in resolution - some current LCoS displays have a 1080p resolution.

Given both Toshiba's defection and DLP's generally high profile at the show, it seemed as if LCoS was falling behind in the race to become the next big thing in big-screen tech. But those thoughts were dispelled by Intel's announcement that it would start making LCoS chips for use in rear-projection HDTVs later this year. The arrival of the world's largest chipmaker in the LCoS camp has huge implications for the technology. Intel said its chip, which goes by the code name Cayley, will let set makers sell LCoS-based HDTVs for less than $2,000 (most current DLP models cost between three and five grand).

To judge from the sets on display at CES, your next TV could be large, thin - and wire-free. Both Sony and Sharp showed portable LCD TVs with rechargeable batteries that receive video using the Wi-Fi wireless standard - 802.11b on the Sharp and 802.11a, b, and g on the Sony. Sharp also unveiled 15- and 20-inch Open Aquos models with dual slots for an optional Wi-Fi card and a card holding a 5-gigabyte (GB) video hard-disk recorder. Wireless also showed up in some larger widescreen sets. Philips showed a 23-inch Streamium LCD HDTV with a built-in 802.11g Wi-Fi card (available this fall at a price to be announced). And Samsung had a 50-inch plasma that can receive high-def signals up to 30 feet from its outboard tuner via a wireless 802.11a connection ($13,000, available this summer).

Another trend was TVs with built-in tuners for receiving over-the-air digital broadcasts. But the FCC has said that all sets 36 inches and bigger must have digital tuners by July 2005, so that was hardly a surprise. A good number of HDTVs announced at the show by companies like LG, Pioneer, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sharp also had digital cable-compatible tuners and CableCARD slots to receive scrambled premium channels like HBO and Showtime. For now, CableCARD sets offer only one-way communication with providers, which nixes cool interactive features like pay-per-view and video-on-demand. But Panasonic says that sets supporting two-way digital service are being developed, with field trials planned for later this year. Finally, HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) - a smaller, audio-friendly version of the DVI (Digital Visual Interface) connections that started sprouting on HDTVs in 2003 - was a standard feature on most of the TVs announced at the show.

I usually have an eye out for camcorder developments when I go to CES, but this year's pickings were slim. No new high-def models were announced outside of a Panasonic cam that records high-def images to SD memory cards instead of tape. Exciting news, but the company doesn't expect any products to see the light of day before 2006. In the meantime, Panasonic proudly showed its SV-AV100 D-SNAP camcorder ($999). Smaller than a pack of cigarettes, it can record up to 20 minutes of standard-quality MPEG-2 video on its bundled 512-megabyte (MB) SD memory card. The company has 1- and 4-GB SD cards in the works, but don't expect them to come cheap (a 512-MB card currently costs $550).

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