Tens of thousands of dealers, distributors, reporters, and gear-happy users pass through the doors of the Las Vegas Convention Center on the first official day of CES 2005.
If the current trend continues, companies will offer music implants at next year's CES. This year merely tiny had to suffice. Ever-smaller flash-memory chips enable some amazing compressed-music playback devices that make the hard-disk-based Apple iPod Mini look elephantine.
The first public day of the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show reached new heights with announcements from Echostar's Dish Network and DirecTV. These satellite-TV providers plan to turn the sky over the equator into the equivalent of a freeway in rush hour.
The forces competing to win the prize of the next-generation DVD - the disc that will carry high-definition movies and other HD content - squared off with competing press conferences on the first day of the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show. As in exhibition sports, they played real ball, but the score counted little toward the championship.
This is the most hard-driving Consumer Electronics Show in history. Once limited to computers, hard-disk drives, or simply hard drives, now inhabit a wide array of audio and video components.
The popularity of flat-panel TVs with LCD (liquid-crystal display) screens was very much in evidence at CES 2005. From well-established names like Sharp and Toshiba to relative newcomers in the U.S. market like BenQ and Moxell, a good number of manufacturers displayed LCD models ranging from 15 to 55 inches.
By far one of the biggest challenges for most people installing a home theater system is wiring the speakers - especially the surrounds because they're typically placed quite a ways from the rest. Wireless connections are an obvious solution, and at this year's CES, several manufacturers offered systems taking advantage of 2.4-GHz wireless technology to feed the surrounds.
Audio gear - designed for high-fidelity reproduction of recorded music - once ruled the Consumer Electronics Show, but now audio is for the most part only a handmaiden to video. However, for those who place sound first, some impressive components begged a hearing.
Maybe the economy is really taking off. Or maybe it's simply that the cancellation of the big fall compute show, COMDEX, has sent all the computer types scurrying off to CES, but this year the show seems incredibly crowded. The isles were blocked, the press room didn't have a seat to spare (in contrast to the press room at CEDIA, where you could play catch most afternoons without bothering anyone), and the traffic and parking made LA—at least on a slow day—look like Barstow.
Sanyo makes it very clear who they like in the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray battle.
