This year's CES makes one thing abundantly clear: Large cathode-ray displays are dead. There are virtually no big CRT monitors or television sets being shown here. Synonymous with the 20th century, CRTs are the electronics industry's dinosaurs.
On Thursday, the first <I>official</I> day of CES, attendees were treated to another day of warm, dry weather—and a mind-boggling array of new home theater products.
That's a concise summary of the myriad press conferences held the day before the official opening of the 2003 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Rockford Corporation, which owns such brands as Rockford Fosgate, Lightning Audio, and MB Quart, used CES 2003 to showcase its newest member, NHT, and promote home-network products made by Rockford's new partner, SimpleDevices. Formerly owned by Recoton, speaker maker NHT used its CES limelight to promote its modular Evolution line and that line's latest addition, the on-wall L5 speaker.
Declaring "it's about the music," Sirius satellite radio today unveiled its plans for 2003, which include dedicated home tuners and nine new music channels, while its competitor, XM Satellite Radio, touted its 360,000-strong subscriber base as evidence of its vitality.
Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee. Directed by George Lucas. Aspect ratio: 2.35:1 (anamorphic). Dolby 5.1 Surround EX (English), Dolby 2.0 Surround (Spanish, French), THX. Two discs. 142 minutes. 2002. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment 2005544. PG. $29.98.
The late electronics wizard Henry Kloss, founder of Advent and co-founder of Acoustic Research and KLH, devised the concept of the high-performance compact radio back in the 1960s, and he invented timeless products to back up that innovative idea: His classic KLH Model 8 tabletop radio is still sought after, still sounds great, and fetches $500 and up on Internet auction sites. Cambridge SoundWorks, established by Kloss in 1988 and later sold to Creative Technology Ltd., began as a direct marketer of innovative, inexpensive, overachieving radios and powered multimedia speaker systems.
<I>Bigger, better, more.</I> That's the future as envisioned by technological giants Zenith Electronics Corporation and Royal Philips Electronics, which kicked off this year's edition of the world's largest trade show with huge flatscreen television sets and plans to make technological interconnectivity deeper and more seamless than it has ever been for the average citizen.
Sure, Hewlett-Packard's ambitious Media Center PC 883n ($1,999) could replace many of the A/V components in your home theater-including your DVD player, TiVo or ReplayTV hard-disk video recorder, and CD jukebox. But HP will be the first to admit that its chrome and black computer is not likely to become many families' main entertainment center.
<I>Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor. Directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. Aspect ratio: 4:3. Dolby Digital 5.1 (English), Dolby Digital 2.0 (French). Two DVDs. 103 minutes. 1952. Warner Home Video 125695621 27. G. $26.99.</I>