IEEE Spectrum @ CES

Press Day Reflections

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:26:20 -0500

After sitting through press conferences from several of the big and broad—televisions to cell phones—consumer electronics companies today, the day before the opening of the 2012 International Consumer Electronics show, I have more questions than answers, questions that I’ll investigate further as the show progresses. Here’s a sampling of my list—please ask your questions in the comments, and I’ll see if I can track answers to those down as well.

• How much do those crazy-thin 55-inch OLED TVs cost?

• And how long are they going to last before they color shift? The blue OLED pixels have had longevity issues—are they really fixed?

• How do voice control and gesture control TVs deal with family squabbles? I fear these control options, intriguing as they are, are going to make me yearn for the days when we all just battled over the remote.

• If the refrigerator is talking to the stove and tells it what to cook, and it’s also suggesting menus based on “fitness goals”, is it secretly also communicating to the bathroom scale?

• Are consumers really ready for rooftop solar systems they can wrap up and give someone for Christmas?

• How much computing power does it take to do the image processing for a beyond-HDTV 8 megapixel television? And what is that baby going to cost?

• Does anyone really care about Google TV, MySpace TV, or any other form of WebTV until we see what Apple comes up with?

Add your questions below. And follow my CES explorations on Twitter @TeklaPerry.

OLPC Reboots with $100 Tablet

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:12:00 -0500

The OLPC is showing off the latest prototype of their affordable tablet for developing countries, the XO 3.0. It sports:

an optional indoor/outdoor Pixel Qi display (a technology that we called a winner in 2010, developed by former Dream Jobber Mary Lou Jepsen)
a hand crank and solar panel for power (six minutes of cranking for an hour of power)
a Marvell Armada PXA618 ARM-based system-on-a-chip that allows the tablet to run on just 2 Watts. (We also profiled Marvell CEO Sehat Sutardja last year.

The OLPC hasn’t finalized the price, because they’re still deciding on materials, but they’re shooting for under $100.

Still, they’re not the only bargain tablet-maker around these days. The Canadian company Datawind has garnered lots of attention for their Aakash Ubislate 7, a tablet device that the Indian governmnet plans to sell for a subsidized price of less than $50.

For more, check out Gizmodo’s quick video, or The Verge’s in-depth reveiw.

Hologram alternatives for 3-D video

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:35:30 -0500

Hologram alternatives for 3-D video

Pixel Qi’s latest low-power displays

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:25:41 -0500

Pixel Qi’s latest low-power displays

Glasses of the Future

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:03:02 -0500

Glasses of the Future

Internet TV Meets Pad Computer

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 13:02:41 -0500

Internet TV Meets Pad Computer

Murata Girl and Murata Boy Demo at CES

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 13:02:00 -0500

Murata Girl and Murata Boy Demo at CES:

There's 3D Printing... And Then There's 3D Printing

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 13:01:13 -0500

There's 3D Printing... And Then There's 3D Printing

From Surround Sound to Surround Smell

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 13:00:38 -0500

From Surround Sound to Surround Smell

IEEE Communications Society demos a collaborative app and 3D video preview software

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:35:00 -0500

The IEEE Communications Society booth highlighted a couple of mobile-focused applications. The first is an app called Smyle, that allows groups to chat, share locations and images, and collaborate on real-time whiteboards. For example, if your friend was lost at CES, you could load a map of the show floor, and then draw the best route to meet up. The app is free, and is available for Android and desktop browsers.

The second demo at the booth was an interesting attempt to add more context to online multimedia content. Telcordia’s 3D Visual Media Search Technology aims to improve user’s experience with online video by extracting individual frames and presenting them in an interactive 3D shape. This allows the user to see if the media is really what they’re looking for, before they begin streaming it. The visualization also provides a quick way to search the content for moments of interest, like scoring plays in a sporting event.

Hands-on with a color e-ink e-reader from Hanvon. As you can...

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:56:00 -0500

Hands-on with a color e-ink e-reader from Hanvon. As you can see, the colors are pretty muted.

Motorola's Xoom tablet is first to run Android 3.0

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 04:57:00 -0500

The Xoom looks like a very solid tablet, one that seems capable of giving the iPad a run for its money. It was the first tablet announced to run Android 3.0 (nicknamed Honeycomb, it’s the tablet-focused version of the OS that Google has been working on). The Honeycomb demos we saw running were a big improvement over most Android tablets running 2.x versions.

But the Xoom has one downside- when it launches on Verizon in the U.S. (scheduled for the first quarter of 2011), it won’t be able to access the carrier’s LTE network. Motorola plans to offer 4G upgrades in the fall, but that will require customers to mail the tablet back to the manufacturer. The whole antenna chipset will have to be replaced.

How quickly fashions change. Last year active-shuttered glasses...

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 02:13:00 -0500

How quickly fashions change. Last year active-shuttered glasses for seeing 3D were all the rage, but this year companies seem poised to forgo the glasses, especially when it comes to 3D TVs. In December, IEEE Spectrum described the basics for “3D without the four eyes“—or autostereoscopic displays—and this week we hope to see at CES some major attempts. Toshiba is already selling glasses-free TVs in Japan, and we expect that on Thursday we’ll see larger 56- and 65-inch versions. According to Forbes, LG Electronics will also reveal an autostereoscopic model, a 31 inch 3D “OLED” TV.

But spectacles fans shouldn’t dismay. Although Sony also prepared some 3D autostereoscopic TV “prototypes” for its press preview on Wednesday night—another of their prototypes took an entirely different tack. Instead of getting rid of the shades, it gets rid of the screen. A company spokesperson said they predict the visor (pictured above) might come in handy for both watching 3D movies and playing more realistic video games.

E-readers like the Kindle may require less power and look better...

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:34:00 -0500

E-readers like the Kindle may require less power and look better in the sun compared to their LED back-lit tablet counterparts, but they’re missing one thing—color. At least they were. At this year’s CES, Qualcomm is again showing off their Mirasol color display. ~~Rumor has it that the technology will appear in a forthcoming line of Pocketbook e-readers.~~ (There have still been no e-reader announcements yet, but a Pocketbook device still looks likely).

We also took some video to compare the Mirasol display agains the color E-ink display of a new Hanvon e-reader:

Notion Ink Adam finally looks ready to excite

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:41:00 -0500

I’ve long been worried that the Notion Ink Adam would turn into vaporware- it just seemed too good to be true, and press access to early prototypes had been spotty. Not to mention that after the release of the iPad, it was hard to be sure of any tablet still under development (consider the fate of Plastic Logic’s QUE, which seemed much further along at last year’s CES).

But it looks like the Adam has been worth the wait. It combines a Pixel Qi display with the custom Eden UI (built on top of Android) and a dual core Tegra 2 processor. It’s a unique approach to a tablet genre that’s often crowded with dull wannabes.

Sony press preview at CES unveils tonight a bewildering number...

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:08:00 -0500

Sony press preview at CES unveils tonight a bewildering number of 3D technologies. One favorite was this two-eyed version of Sony’s Bloggie (a Flip competitor). It can take HD 3D movies on the go and has a glasses-free display built in. Sony says it will be available in April for about US $250.

Not sure if this is confirmed yet, but if true, it’s bad...

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:57:00 -0500

Not sure if this is confirmed yet, but if true, it’s bad news for Samsung Galaxy Tab owners.

FROM ces2011tablets:

Android honeycomb minimum requirement is dual core

http://www.androidmobile.co.nz/recent-news-list/item/356-android-honeycomb-minimum-dual-core

Toshiba's 3D laptop and TV - no glasses required

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:03:46 -0500

cnnmoneytech:

First, and coolest, is the glasses-less 3D technology. The laptop uses a webcam to follow your eyes and beam the 3D content accordingly (this was by far my favorite). The TV allows multiple people to view 3D from all angles (though some worked better than others, as we discuss in the video below). Also, Toshiba somehow figured out how to design a video player that converts 2D content into 3D. Pretty incredible.

The third product (which we didn’t include in the vid) is Toshiba’s as-yet-unnamed tablet, which will run on Google’s Android. Toshiba is waiting until Google releases Honeycomb, the version of Android that will be optimized for tablets.

The glasses-less 3D is a totally cool new experience — and I wonder if it will make consumers clamor for 3D. A ton of companies have been pouring their money into 3D TV for the past few years, but it seems like consumers either aren’t interested or aren’t willing to shell out a ton of cash for it.

As my Vegas cabbie said to me last night, “I have a f—-ing 90-inch 1080p HD TV. How much f—-ing better can the picture get?” (He was, of course, from New York originally.) Do you agree? Let us know in the comments below. -Julianne

olivertwisted: In honor CES opening today, I bring you “Great...

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:59:20 -0500

olivertwisted:

In honor CES opening today, I bring you “Great Moments in CES History”

Bill Gates, meet The Rock. The Rock, meet Bill Gates.

Mac iNews: Apple need not worry about CES’s conga line of iPad wannabes

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:57:23 -0500

Mac iNews: Apple need not worry about CES’s conga line of iPad wannabes:

Apple is inescapable, even at a show they don’t attend.

macinews:

“More bullish prognostications in advance of Apple’s next earnings report,” John Paczkowski reports for AllThingsD.

“In his preview of CES, Barclays’ Ben Reitzes claims the company need not worry much about the conga line of iPad rivals expected to be announced at the show,” Paczkowski reports….