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Making the Wii Look Stupid
We did catch someone saying "this makes the Wii look stupid." And, actually, it kind of does. The 3DV Z Cam is a minuscule video camera equipped with an infrared beam, roughly the size of a web-cam, that sits on the bottom of your TV. That's where the fun starts. Flash gang signs to change channels or flick various components on or off; have a virtual dance-off outside of a specific square; KO a cartoon boxer with real jabs. But don't just take our word for it, check out the video above.
Guitar Hero's a terrific game, but doesn't do much in the way of teaching. (Unless you want to learn how embarrassingly uncoordinated you can be; in which case, kudos.) Enter a real maestro. Guitar Wizard and the forthcoming Piano Wizard go where few games dare to tread—they claim to make you more knowledgeable. Though initially skeptical, we have to admit, it seems to work. Their spokesperson promised to have web editor Megan Miller playing a song and reading music within 10 minutes. Lo and behold . . .
We test plenty of cars here at PopSci, but it's not everyday we get to try one as forward-looking and promising at the Equinox. The car runs on hydrogen fuel cells; turn the ignition and the car instantly (and silently) churns out enough electricity to power six houses. So how does that much raw, green power feel? Check it out as senior associate editor Sean Captain takes the Equinox on a spin up the Vegas Strip.
With all the glitz at CES, it can be easy to forget that the best tech does more than look slick: It actually solves real problems. And today I learned that we might be holding a major problem-solver right in the palms of our hands. At a forum on tech and the developing world, humanitarian experts explained how a simple cellphone—whether equipped with Web browsers or just text messages—can become a mini computer that brings business, health, and educational information to people in rural areas of Africa and other emerging countries.
The infrastructure is already there: Cell networks are far more widespread in Africa than are landlines or Internet connections, since it’s easier to set up cell towers than to run cables, and spotty electricity doesn’t affect low-power phones as much as it does computers. And given how many cellphones fill the booths at CES, said humanitarian-slash-entrepreneur Paul Meyer, you don’t need to design new products specifically for developing countries. (Not sure if that’s a dig at the One Laptop Per Child project.) “There’s no reason a doctor in Rwanda needs a cellphone that’s any different from the ones bought and paid for by two billion people around the globe,” Meyer said.
Next up, Meyer predicts, is an explosion of cellphone services in developing areas. His own company, Voxiva, has phone-based programs that help health officials track diseases, among other things. And another speaker, Daniel Annarose, described how cellphones are already helping Senegalese farmers earn a fair wage. Annarose’s company, Manobi, sends farmers text messages that list the market price of their crops, so they no longer have to rely solely on the word of the middlemen who buy their goods and then sell them for a much higher price. Manobi sends out 30,000 text messages a day, Annarose said, and many farmers have doubled their income.
By 2010, Annarose said, half of Africa’s 950 million people will have a cellphone—and maybe life-changing information at their fingertips.—Lauren Aaronson
I knew that GM had built real, road-ready hydrogen fuel cell
vehicles. But I didn’t really believe it until I saw one, and drove it.
The Chevy Equinox I piloted—one of about one hundred that GM
will put on the road later this year—looked as polished and user-friendly as
any new car on the lot. It’s a comfy, soccer-mom/dad vehicle that seems like
any other small SUV until you turn the ignition—err, I mean the key. There is
no ignition.
That cranks on a hydrogen fuel cell stack that instantly
produces enough electricity to power six houses—or to propel the Equinox like a
rocket. Its electric motor cranks out the torque as soon as you hit the
gas—err, I mean the accelerator. If you think electric motors are wimpy based
on how hybrids drive, that’s only because hybrids have very wimpy small motors.
With a full-sized model, you’ve got full-sized power. My biggest problem
driving around Vegas was to not go too fast and cause an accident.
Those mad scientists at Mitsubishi have built the ultimate
entertainment weapon—the laser TV! Lasers shooting out of a television screen
isn’t as scary as it may sound. But it does have one big benefit-color.
Lasers can be tuned to the exact wavelength of light you
like—down to the nanometer. So TV makers can produce the ideal shades of red,
green, and blue to produce the best colors possibly. Mitsubishi claims this
allows them to reproduce about 80 percent of all the colors humans can
see—versus about 40 percent for other TVs.
Is all that true? I can’t say for sure, but I know that
colors were stunning. And maybe I just had too many cocktails at the launch
party, but I think I saw colors that I hadn’t seen before on a TV.
In a clip from Moulin Rouge, for example, the yellows in the
dancer’s dresses and in their makeup were virtually luminescent. Same for the
falling yellow leaves in the great girl-on-girl battle from Hero. In Star Wars’
final encounter between Anakin and Obi Wan, the light sabers glowed a
fluorescent blue that I don’t think I saw in the theater.
General Motors' CEO Rick Wagoner just took the wraps off the Cadillac Provoq—the first car
ever introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show. Their latest fuel-cell
vehicle gets twice the range of the new Equinox SUVs that are about to hit the
road, and its “engine” is only half as large.
It still seems weird to put the words Cadillac, crossover
vehicle (small SUV) and environmental in the same sentence . . . maybe that’s why
they named it Provoq. (And hopefully they are better at engineering than at
spelling.)
In addition to looking badass, the Provoq has just about every green feature you (or GM) could think of. There's a plug on each side for
charging the lithium-ion batteries at home, plus a solar panel on the roof for
charging on the road. Louvers in the front of the car can open up to provide
more cooling or close to reduce wind resistance at high speed. The 300-mile
range is nice for convenience, but not critical. After all, you can refill the
car with hydrogen in about 8 minutes (at least, at the two or three dozen
hydrogen stations in the entire country).
But this ultra-green car doesn’t have Prius-style timidity.
It can hit 100 miles per hour and get to 60mph in 8.5 seconds—faster than
Cadillac’s current crossover. And I believe those numbers. I got to drive the super-peppy
Equinox around Vegas today and I was amazed at the whiplash acceleration.
(Despite the defamation of electric motors by internal-combustion enthusiasts,
motors are the ultimate sports car power plants—delivering high torque as soon
as you hit the gas—err, accelerator.)
Of course, like GM’s other hydrogen cars, you won’t be
buying a Provoq immediately. But you might do it pretty soon. GM hopes to be
selling the Equinox by 2010 (in the first city or city that builds enough
hydrogen refueling stations to make it practical.) No word yet on when the
Provoq will hit driveways, but I sure hope it’s soon.—Sean Captain
Great Moments in CES Demo Stages: Canon's Hideaway Harpist
You could spend a lifetime documenting the hilarity that is the CES demo stage—last year's crazy Intel lady was a highlight in '07, and thankfully she's back again this year—but something about the way this promo harpist for Canon gets neatly tucked away behind a curtain after her performance made me wish for this kind of setup in my own home. Take note, Canon! —John Mahoney
Despite sad news for the HD-DVD format, Toshiba soldiers on. Long known for their technical innovation (they were the first to develop laptop computers and flash memory), the Japanese company had a few interesting standouts hidden among the regular flow of updated TVs and the like, including a promising Linux-based UMPC.
LG Booth Highlights: A Cellphone Watch to Make James Bond Proud
Although still in the prototype stage, this mobile phone watch mockup from LG is still pretty impressive. Three tiny buttons scroll through a vertical menu interface, and calls I presume are router to a headset via Bluetooth (just guessing here, but holding your wrist to your ear doesn't seem too feasible). No more details now, but we'll be waiting for this one like James Bond in Q's candy store. —John Mahoney
That's what I heard someone saying when I walked by 3DV Systems’ booth. Their 3D camera lets you control games with movement, just like the Wii—except you don’t need to hold a controller. Watch the guy boxing in this video: He’s swinging his arms just like he would in a boxing ring, and his on-screen character moves exactly as he does. The trick is a web-cam-sized camera, placed near the TV, that sends out invisible infrared rays and times how long they take to bounce back. This captures 3D information that shows where each part of your body is at each point in time, and the game uses this location and position info just like a Wii game would. Right now 3DV is in talks with companies about making and selling the product, hopefully for under $200.
Watch for more details on the tech in an upcoming issue of PopSci, and in the meantime, check out the video after the jump. —Lauren Aaronson
Samsung is Korea's largest single corporation, and they have one of the largest booths here at CES. Aside from a bevy of new TVs and a ton of Wi-Max Asia-only mobile phones, Samsung packed in a few other interesting tidbits. Here are a handful that caught our eye.
We finally got a look at the SHOW, Microvision’s
almost-ready-for-prime-time laser projector. We certainly like the size—a
little bigger than an iPod in current form, and planned to be about iPod-sized
when other companies brand it and sell it around the end of the year.
But the video quality left us a little disappointed. Color is fantastic, thanks to the lasers. (More impressive than the white LEDs I
suspect are in 3M’s projector.) But for
the same reason, the detail was a bit lacking, due to a phenomenon called
“speckle.” When a laser hits a screen, some of the light bounces straight back,
into the oncoming beam, causing interference. The effect made it look like the
SHOW was projecting onto burlap instead of onto a smooth tablecloth, wall, or
screen.
And Microvision says it’s not something that can be fully
fixed—just an inherent property of lasers. Although they promise the final version
will look better. (And they could eliminate speckle if LEDs progress enough to
work with Microvision’s projection system.)
The folks from Microvision say that 9 out of 10 people they
showed it to didn’t even notice the speckle. That seems hard to believe. But
even with the speckles, the ability to shine big-screen images anywhere you go
is awfully appealing.—Sean Captain
Sony Booth Highlights: OLEDs-a-Plenty, Near-Field Communication and More
Sony is impressing a lot of people at CES this year. Their booth is an excellent mix of forward-looking prototypes as well as currently available products—and a few that are treading that line finely (like the soon-to-be-released three-millimeter-thin OLED TV seen above). As impressive as their TVs are, Sony's up to plenty more. See what else caught our eye after the break.
I had a nice chat today with Sangheung Shin, Samsung’s head
honcho for TV marketing. The really nice part is that he’s a straight
shooter—very frank about what’s going well and what isn’t.
He said he expects rear-projection sets (once Samsung’s
darling product) to go away in about five years. Why? Plasma—even in monster
screen sizes—will get so cheap that the money savings from RPTV is no longer
compelling enough. For TVs, fat is just not where it’s at.
Adding to the roar of buzz for ultra-slim TVs, Samsung
kicked out prototypes of a one-inch LCD (that they expect to sell in 2009) and
OLED panels that Mr. Shin expects to hit 30 to 40-inch screen sizes within five
years.—Sean Captain
To a certain extent, your computer's only as good as the stuff you plug into it. Give yours more than a face lift with these add-ons we've been eyeing. The Printstik, above, is just one of the thoughtful and well-designed peripherals debuting at CES. Check out some more, after the jump.—Abby Seiff
I went by Lenovo’s booth to check out their new laptops, and it turned out that their laptops checked me out instead. That’s because the laptops use your face, in addition to your password, as a security measure. As soon as you approach, the webcam takes your picture. Then face-recognition software called VeriFace compares your pic to photos of authorized users. If they match, you can log into the computer. If they don’t match, it’s a double whammy: Not only can you not log in, but the PC saves your pic, so the real owner can see who’s been snooping around her laptop. The tech showed up on a couple of Lenovo’s business-y ThinkPad laptops last year, but is about to make a much bigger showing now that Lenovo’s releasing its first consumer laptops for the U.S.—Lauren Aaronson
Want more? Check out our entire CES 2008 coverage here.
Wow - Panasonic just threw down a massive gauntlet. They just wheeled out on stage a 150-inch plasma. That's 42 inches bigger than the last record-holder (Sharp's 108-inch LCD), or like nine 50-inch TVs. The resolution is 2k by 4k, or four times today's highest high definition. No word on price, but I'd go buy a couple of lottery tickets today.
More from the Panasonic press conference after the jump.
On the one hand, Vegas does gaming really, really well. On the other, well, maybe it's not its strong suit. Even though gamers may get less CES love than the larger gadget crowd, if these products are any indication, they shouldn't feel short-shrifted; it's quality.—Abby Seiff
Panasonic’s standard-definition SDR-H60 ($550) boasts a 50X zoom lens – possibly the longest for a consumer model. (And it promises to keep steady with an improved image stabilizer that measures for hand jitters 4000 times per second.)
But competitors are close behind. Canon’s FS 10, 11 and 100 models go up to 48X through a digital trick. At such long telephoto, the image from the lens doesn’t fill the entire sensor. But since the camcorder “oversamples”—recording onto 1.7 megapixels before down-rezing the video to 0.69 megapixels, the camcorders still get enough data to fill out a standard-def video frame.
On the high-def side, Canon’s Vixia 10 and 100 models sport 12X zoom—Canon’s longest HD lens to date. But it still can’t catch Sony, which goes up to 15X on three HD models.
Video Vaults
Canon, Sony and Samsung offer more ways to store video. Following in Panasonic’s footsteps, they added the ability to archive video on the same kind of removable flash-memory cards found in still cameras: SD cards in the case of Canon and Samsung and MemorySticks for the Sonys. The companies also make models with built-in flash memory and give you the ability to copy video from one memory bank to another. So, for example, you can store video to the internal memory, then grab a clip and put it on a card to give to a friend. Sony goes one step further, though. It’s Hybrid + camcorders offer a third storage media—mini-DVD discs. You can choose to store video to any of the three media, and you can transfer clips (including edited mixes) from internal memory to DVDs or Memory Sticks.
Taking it slow
Sony has upped the slow-motion recording on its camcorders. The eight new models can now shoot up to TK seconds of video at 240 frames per second. Samsung also continues with slow-mo. Like its predecessors, the new SC-HMX20C camera (equipped with internal flash memory and an SD card slot) shoots high-def video at 300fps for up to 10 seconds. (To see what 300fps video looks like, check out our movies shot with the Casio Exilim EX-F1.)--Sean Captain
Want more? Check out our entire CES 2008 coverage here.
The Las Vegas Convention Center covers almost 70 acres, so when you’re wandering the halls at CES, it’s easy to forget that there’s a world outside. But new weather gadgets help keep indoor geeks posted on the conditions in the great beyond, so they’ll be ready should they ever venture out.
La Crosse Technology Weather Direct Replace your bedside alarm clock with this box, and you can get online weather forecasts—without a computer. A base station plugs into an Ethernet jack on your Internet router, downloads three-day forecasts, and sends them to this display using radio waves that reach 330 feet. The display can even show info from a wireless barometer, temperature sensor, or weather vane that you set up in your backyard.
Oregon Scientific InstaForecast Like LaCrosse’s display, Oregon Scientific’s pulls weather info off the Internet, but your computer has to be on for it to work. Software on your PC downloads five-day forecasts from the National Weather Service and elsewhere. Then a USB dongle wirelessly beams data to this tabletop gadget, no matter where in the house you put it. You can also set up wireless sensors to measure temperature and humidity, both indoors and out.
Honeywell Atomic Projection Clock with NOAA No Internet connection here, but there’s gadget-y fun nonetheless. This atomic clock projects the time and indoor temperature on the ceiling or wall. Its LCD display tells you about public weather alerts, such as tornado warnings, that are broadcast over NOAA’s radio service.—Lauren Aaronson
Want more? Check out our entire CES 2008 coverage here.
Just kidding about the second part. But what Pioneer has
done is just as amazing. Its latest Kuro prototype, unveiled at CES, can turn
the screen completely black while it’s running.
Why is this a big deal? Contrast is the most important
aspect of picture quality. A big difference between light and dark in a picture
heightens the appearance of detail and the richness of colors.
I can say with certainty that you’ve never seen anything black
on a modern TV screen. If you don’t believe that, just watch TV in a dark room
and wait till the screen fades to black between scenes or before a commercial.
The “black” screen is actually gray and probably gives off enough light to
illuminate the room. (Old-style CRTs can get pretty close to complete
black—which is why some videophiles originally mourned their demise.)
Vegas, baby! Monday's a big day at CES, with tons of press embargoes being lifted. Here's a round-up of some of the more intriguing goods that have been worming their way into our inboxes over the past few months.
We're digging the innovative designs from the big players (check iRiver's newest media player, above). But even kids' stuff is catching our eyes this January. View the full gallery after the jump. —Abby Seiff
Pioneer invited us to get a first look at its Advanced
Design Concept TV last night before the start of the show. Even this TV weary
tech reporter was agog at the thing. The 50-inch diagonal screen plasma
measures just 9 millimeters thick—less than an iPod and way skinnier than any
other full-sized TV. (Sony’s Lilliputian OLED set notwithstanding.)
Like JVC’s thin LCD, the Pioneer does have a small dirty
secret—a hump on the back that holds the electronics for the panel. But even
this is a mere 20-some millimeters thick. (Pioneer reps couldn’t remember the
exact figure.) And this is the real innovation.
Turns out 9 millimeters is about the same thickness of the glass panels inside all Pioneer’s current TVs. But the power supply and
extremely complex drive circuitry makes the whole thing about 100 millimeters
(4 inches) thick. It’s not clear whether this also includes the power
supply—probably the bulkiest component.
How did Pioneer do it? Well, they’re not saying. But there
is clearly some serious foo involved. So when can you get it? Pioneer says it
won’t be out in the coming year, but they definitely will sell it—combined with
their amazing new infinite contrast screen technology prototype (also revealed
at CES) as soon as they can. My bet is sometime in 2009.—Sean Captain
Want more? Check out our entire CES 2008 coverage here.
While the biggest photography news—especially in pro and semi-pro gear--will come later this month at the PMA show, several big camera makers are unleashing new models that redefine expectations of what a point-and-shoots can do.
The showstopper is certainly Casio’s Exilim EX-F1 supercam. With a smokin’ processor and a boatload of high-speed buffer memory, this $1000 prosumer model can shoot 60 six-megapixel still photos per second or from 300 to 1200 frames of video per second.
Casio also brought out the EX-S10—what they say is the world’s skinniest 10-megapixel camera (at least for this week.) Other claims to fame: high-contrast image captures of up to 1000:1 and “auto shutter” which automatically snaps a picture when the camera and subject are steady so the photo won’t be blurry.
Your Gaming Rig Needs the Alienware Curved Display
Sure you've seen two big flat-panels linked together side by side on gaming rigs before. But this bad boy ties them into one sveltely-curved unit. The Alienware Curved is a single 2880x900 (2x WXGA+ resolution), powered by DLP projection (so it's not that svelte, from behind anyway). But it works with any game that already supports dual-head WXGA+ setups and should hit gaming dens near you in the second half of '08. —John Mahoney
Want more? Check out our entire CES 2008 coverage here.
People who have thought much about it have concluded that
projectors are the one way to reconcile ever-tinier gadgets with the ever-more
data and media we have on them. And plenty of companies have been trying to
build a micro projector that you can carry in your pocket or even get built
into your cellphone or iPod.
But no one knew that 3M (yes, the Post It people) would be the first company to do it.
After two years of stealth development, they popped out a little press release
on Friday announcing that they had a working projector in hand—just as I was
finishing an article proclaiming Microvision to be the company that won the
race.
CES is chock-a-block with previews, but here's a few that have already caught our fancy. Check out this sneak peak of some Goods items, straight from the pages of our upcoming February and March issues.
Power Is Knowledge Keep tabs on your energy use with an LCD-equipped
surge protector. It displays real-time info on power draw, as measured
by a current transformer. Acoustic Research LCD Surge Protector $85; araccessories.com—Lauren Aaronson
Universal Keys Designed to work as a remote control for a
living-room Media Center PC, this pocket-sized Bluetooth keyboard can
also pair with a cellphone for typing text messages and e-mails.
Logitech diNovo Mini $150; logitech.com—L.A.
Following JVC’s announcement earlier today, LG introduced it’s own TV waifs at CES – measuring just 1.7 inches thick. The slim design is offered in two models in the company’s 60 Series line, those with 42- and 47-inch screens.
Triming the sets involved some radical re-working of their innards, as we describe in an article from our upcoming February issue. But now that it’s been done, expect other companies to follow. LG, for example, gets its panels from a joint venture with Philips that could also supply panels for Philips consumer products and to other companies.
Of course all these sets look like porkers compared to Pioneer's just-announced 9-millimeter-thick plasma TV prototype.—Sean Captain
Want more? Check out our entire CES 2008 coverage here.
Sony Camcorders Join Panasonic in offering face detection
Shortly after Panasonic’s announcement, Sony declared that its new models will also have face detection—so the camcorder stays focused on subjects even as they move around. Sony’s face-finding models—the high-def HDR-UX20, UX10, SR12, SR11, and SR10 and standard-def DCR-SR220, SR85 and DVD910—track up to eight faces and optimize not only focus but also color and light exposure. And when they compress the video for storage, they allocate more digital bits to the subjects’ mugs, so they come out looking sharper. Sony’s still cameras with face-detection are very adept at locking on the kisser, and the same Bionz image processor tech is now in the camcorders, so results should be good. In a very quick test, a preproduction model found up to four faces (the most I could get in a frame), even those in profile.
PopSci is covering the HDR-UX20 in its February issue, for a sneak peek, click here.—Sean Captain
Want more? Check out our entire CES 2008 coverage here.
Got too many buttons on your remote control? JVC thinks you
can get rid of all of them—maybe even the remote itself.
In a back corner of its suite at Caesar’s Palace, the
company was showing off concepts for the TV of tomorrow (or the day after
tomorrow). We’d seen some of them before—like the LED-backlit TV or the set
with a 180 frames per second refresh rate.
But new for us were the concepts of how to control your set.
The first uses a video camera (with microphone) to read sounds and hand
gestures. A company rep was demonstrating how you can snap your hands or clap
your fingers to turn on the TV, adjust the volume, or change channels. The
video also shows him doing something with hand gestures, though it wasn’t clear
to us what. (As you'll hear on the video, a bunch of people in the booth thought it was funny, at least.)
For a few years now, streaming media has been touted as the Next Big
Thing at CES. And for about as long it's fallen flat on its face as the
year unfolds with the promised products failing to live up to their
hype. Enter 2008. Okay, we're hardly fools; you won't catch us claiming
this is the year. That said, it's looking far more hopeful than usual.
For one, some of the most-anticipated products of previous years are
actually hitting the shelves this time around. SlingCatcher, a set-top
streamer we've had our eye on for a while is coming out with updated
software that sends not just movies or music from PC to TV,
but Internet content as well (think Charlie the Unicorn in High-Def).
Add to that the creativity and technology behind some of this year's
offerings—leaps and bounds ahead of what we've seen previously—and, my
friends, well lets keep our fingers crossed.
The television above is from Samsung's new line of Ethernet-equipped HDTVs. After the jump, more streamers than you can shake a stick at.—Abby Seiff
JVC’s new LCD sets are just 1.5 inches thick – in some places.
Like Hitachi and LG-Philips, the company has succeeded in making the LCD module itself much thinner.
But a TV is more than just a panel. It also has a power supply, dozens of processors, a TV tuner (in many cases) and other odds and ends that make up the guts of the TV.
And like a middle-aged office worker with a thing for donuts, JVC’s gut hangs out in the middle: The TV thickness roughly doubles on the back of the set to accommodate all those components. So we’re more impressed with Hitachi, which redesigned its power supply and rearranged other components to get the entire set down to 1.5 inches.
Not that we’d toss the JVC out of our bedroom—or living room, rumpus room, or dorm room. It’s still sleek compared to most other LCDs out there, and JVC is known for fine picture quality.
And if you’re hanging it on the wall, JVC has designed a cool motorized mount that works around the TV’s potbelly to get the set pretty close to flush.—Sean Captain
Want more? Check out our entire CES 2008 coverage here.
Back in March, we told you about Casio’s prototype
supercamera that shoots 60 six-megapixel still photos per second (better than
even pro SLRs) and standard-def video at up to 300 frames per second to make
some pretty impressive slow-mo movies.
Well today Casio took the wraps off the EXILIM Pro EX-F1–
the real version of the camera that you’ll be able to by in a few months for
$1,000. And they’ve added even more power.
CES One Year Later: The State of the Hi-Def Disc War
One of the big stories at last year's CES was the Blu-Ray HD-DVD format war, and more specifically, the death-knell of said war that many predicted after LG rolled out the first dual-format HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player. Well, here we are one year later, and sadly, this endlessly ridiculous format war continues.
On the eve of this year's show, Warner Bros.—one of HD-DVD's largest supporters and one of only a few studios to be releasing content on both formats, announced that they would be abandoning HD-DVD entirely in 2008 and focusing only on Blu-Ray. Again, many are using this news to officially signal the end of the war (due to HD-DVD's difficult times ahead), but if similar proclamations here last year in the wake of the LG player have taught us anything, we're going to wait until the proverbial fat lady sings.
Aside from being confusing as all get out to even savvy consumers, the format war will ultimately cost those involved (read: all of the major consumer electronics firms, and all of the major television and movie studios) a crap-ton of money. All over something where, unless your setup is sufficiently high-end (and configured properly), you might even have a hard time distinguishing between the hi-def formats and good 'ol standard DVD.
Here in Vegas, nothing world-changing in the world of hi-def players has been announced yet, save for this little tidbit from the HD-DVD Promo Group:
Based on the timing of the Warner Home Video announcement today, we have
decided to postpone our CES 2008 press conference scheduled for Sunday, January
6th at 8:30 p.m. in the Wynn Hotel. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We are currently discussing the potential impact of this announcement with
the other HD DVD partner companies and evaluating next steps.
Funeral bells chiming? We shall see.—John Mahoney
Want more? Check out our entire CES 2008 coverage here.
Models pack more automated functions, plus bigger zooms and more ways to store video
Not every camcorder owner is a cinematographer, but they all want cinematic results. Camcorder makers are obliging with models that help you set up great shots – and warn you if some weren’t so great.
Panasonic introduced models with face detection—so the camcorder stays focused on subjects even as they move around—tracking faces to optimize not only focus but also color and light exposure.
Panasonic includes face-detection on its HDC-SD9, and HS9. Panasonic also claims that the $800 SD9 is the world’s smallest HD camcorder, at 2.6 x 2.6 x 5 inches. To further help you out, the cameras have a new feature called Intelligent Shooting Navigation, which analyzes video as you shot it and warns if a scene didn’t come out because you panned too quickly or tilted the camera, or if the subject was backlit or the lighting was too low.
Think a flat-panel LCD or plasma set is slender? Think again. It’s time to replace your 4-inch-thick porker with a new model measuring under a deuce.
Following on Hitachi, which introduced 1.5-inch panels in the fall, JVC is introducing its own waifs here at CES. JVC also gets down to 1.5 inches (at it’s skinniest part, bulging to 2.9 inches in the center). JVC launched two screen sizes: slim 42 and 46 inches (pricing not set).
Triming the sets involved some radical re-working of their innards, as we describe in an article from our upcoming February issue. But now that it’s been done, expect other companies to follow. (Actually, you can expect another announcement in a few hours.)
Pioneer’s Knife-edge Plasma Makes iPhone look Like a Heifer
Remember the old days—three months ago—when a 1.5-inch thick
LCD TV seemed skinny? My, how times have changed.
Today in Las Vegas,
Pioneer announced a prototype 50-inch plasma screen with no bezel (frame)
around it and just 9 millimeters of thickness. (The iPhone is 12mm fat.) This
blows away anything in the LCD realm and comes awfully close to Sony’s OLED TV
(which is 3mm thick but also limited to a 10-inch diagonal screen size for the
foreseeable future.)
How did Pioneer do it? They aren’t saying yet, but for years
the company has been re-working plasma panels—rejiggering the cells,
eliminating sheets of glass or plastic filters—to get them skinner. Although
the intention there had been to make screen images look better, not to affect
how the screen itself looks.
Black is Black
Speaking of screen images, Pioneer also announced a
prototype that does what had seemed impossible: When it shows video with dark
scenes, black is actually black – not muddy gray like on every other TV (or
projector) in human history.
Pioneer’s Kuro plasmas won a Pop Sci Best of What’s New
Grand Award recently for cutting so-called idle luminance (the residual
brightness even in black scenes) by 80% over early models. With today’s
announcement, Pioneer seems to be saying it has eliminated the remaining 20%.
If so, they’ve done what had always been considered impossible.
I want my thin, black TV!
So when can you get this goodness? Definitely not in 2008,
says Pioneer. But they do plan to make sets (in 2009?) that combine both the
super-slim and absolute black technologies. Whew! Glad I didn’t shell out a ton
of dough for that LCD TV I was thinking about getting.—Sean Captain
Want more? Check out our entire CES 2008 coverage here.
At CES this year, toymaker WowWee continues its tradition of taking what had once been military- or millionaire-grade tech and selling it for less than the price of dinner for two at The Olive Garden.
Our favorite new creation is the FlyTech Bladestar a $50 autonomous flying robot. Essentially a helicopter blade with a set of perpendicular rotors to give it stability, the Bladestar uses infrared sensors to detect its proximity to obstacles walls, ceilings, pets and parents and avoid collisions. At least sometimes. The models we saw did a fair amount of crashing.
WowWee techs blamed that on the bright lights in the ballroom that messed with the infrared sensors.
In any case, it's just as much fun to watch whether it flying or crashing.—Sean Captain
Want more? Check out our entire CES 2008 coverage here.
Hands (and Mouth) on with Garmin’s Voice-recognition GPS
The good folks at Garmin gave us a ride from the Las Vegas airport
to our hotel to show off its new GPS units, and we were especially impressed with
the nuvi 800 (press release)–what
they claim is the first GPS to respond to “natural speech” voice commands.
Voice-rec isn’t brand-new in the GPS world. (Magellan, for
example has offered it for a while.) But the nuvi 800 is very slick. It (almost)
always got the commands on the first try and doesn’t require a verbal setup
warning that you’re about to give it a command. Just say the names of items on
the home screen and on following screens to navigate into the menus.
While the map is up and you’re driving, you can ask for any
data that applies, for example, like a list of nearby coffee shops, and reroute
the nav program if you have an emergency craving for a Vente Americano decaf.
Robots are always a big crowd-pleaser at CES, and this year’s no exception. WowWee, known for its innovative but affordable ‘bots, just announced four new products that uphold its reputation. And Erector (yup, of Erector sets) brought out three follow-ups to last year’s popular Spykee, a build-it-yourself Wi-Fi robot that acts like a roving webcam. Go with WowWee if you want your artificial friend to run right out of the box, or with the Erector DIY kits if you like to work for your robot love.
Continue reading below to see the best new robotic products to hit CES this week.
That's right, we're of course heading out to Vegas again this year to cover the world's largest consumer electronics trade show from top to bottom. Look here on the blog Sunday-Thursday for news, photos and video filed from the frenzied trade floor as every major manufacture rolls out the gear you'll be craving in '08. We've got our pedometers fired up—we're ready to go! —John Mahoney
I had a nice chat today with Sangheung Shin, Samsung’s head
honcho for TV marketing. The really nice part is that he’s a straight
shooter—very frank about what’s going well and what isn’t.
Remember the old days—three months ago—when a 1.5-inch thick
LCD TV seemed skinny? My, how times have changed.
