CES Finale

The final day had some first shadows of emptiness as most of the technical experts seemed to have disappeared. At least at some locations I visited. On the other hand all remaining staff was quite relaxed, even a bit exhausted.

Marvell was my first station and its new Google TV box, which is more ment to be some kind of reference design, got a lot of attention. Some tech geeks found out, that even this box contains a port of Google's Chrome browser and so this browser makes its first appearance on Andoid. If you want to did a bit deeper, just look at this article.

Besides becoming the new hardware reference platform for Google TV Marvell has an interesting footprint on lots of embedded device solutions.

You can find lots of NAs solutions based on the allways on computing chipsets they offer. Some of those products were collected at Marvells booth.

I missed to take a photo of the smile plug intended to support the OLPC project to simplify WiFi connectivity in the classroom.

Source Marvell

Finally, this company also has some stakes in the Conneced Home and presented their LED bulb controllers in a fully integrated smartphone controlled demo.

Lets follow on with another company making very nice products for Connected Homes: Greenwave received one of those best of show awards all companies are heading for at CES. The products have a nice design and offer a good integration with lots of sensors.

The small gateway teriminates no less than 3 different wireless technologies. Good HF design and engineering was required to solve the proximity problems.

After all the technical discussion I found this screen. No comment, or do you feel bothered? Also I was astonished how fast these Segways are. Careful drivers needed. 

In between all the advanced solutions offered there was also all the buzz on accessories and cheap solutions by mainly asian suppliers.

I especially took this picture as it shows a reasonable amount of low cost digital product design ideas. Just look from the left to the right. 8 different product categories on one booth. Liked that nice overview.

One of the most relevant problems for mobile users and the allways connect story is the limited capacity of batteries. A complete new industry is just focussing on bringing up solutions.

Liked the powerbag booth as the had the biggest bag including a charger. Power on the go built into these bags should be able to extend mobile user's digital live while travelling or just outside on the move. For my GErman readers I found a nice GOLEM article with a demo video on these products. Just click on the video it is all in English language. The built in multicharge hardware components can also be found under the mycharge brand. The interesting part is the idea of simultaneously charging all devices at the same time.

My last two very special picks were the Lytro cam I never saw before as a live model and "The Replicator", a device to print objects.

The rocket is such a "printed object". Nice. Astonishing how 3D printing developed within the last years.

Back to the bigger companies. Samsung had a lot to show off. Besides the allways improved smartphones there were some interesting concepts being presented. See also the press conference highlights. If you like also the full version. 

Disc to Digital allows a fully legal digital copy to be registered based on the DVDs and BluRays you own. Even I did not know that Ultraviolet was also ment to be made available for DVDs in the field.

Sony just quit the production of their relatively small and expensive OLED displays, now Samsung and LG promote this technology.

As an outlook to future remote control concept Samsung demoed gesture and voice based remote conrol combined with face recognition to control your TV. Here the excerpt of the press conference on this topic.

Nearly coming to an end I want to mention two different devices trying to solve an identical problem: Skyping in the livingroom. One goes with a very stylish, sleek and compact solution, called Biscotti. This really tiny device delivers astonishing results and also allows very simple setup and usage.

Just as a short comparison I added one picture of the second day again (my first gadget of the day). telyHD offers a complete different solution. A much larger device but offering HD video quality and an opend Android platform to enhance the baseline Skype experience.

I still think, both concept have their target customers. Just wanted to show them in comparison.

Now I finally get to my last "gadget of the day". Unfortunately it is not on the market today, but the announcement says it shall become reality in 2012. The best of CES awarded product was LGs 55 inch OLED dislplay. Razorsharp in 2D and even better color balance than the Samsung prototypes. 

And the 3D demo really blow me out of the socks. Just wearing the cheap polarizer glasses one could enjoy a never seen before quality of 3D. Better, than my Avatar experience in the 3D digital cinema. One could first time see the limitations of the visual material. The 3D effect was absolutely stable, no - really no - coordination problems distubing the viwieng expereince. You were just looking out of an imaginary window. You could freely walk around. No flickering , no struggeleing with the 3D effect. I decided to name it fir myself the first "Real 3D" experience. No better seen before.      

To be honest I never expected OLEDs to change a lot. But tha actual achievements and improvements combined with the four times physical resolutions create something new. There is a next generation TV technology on the horizon, even again defining a new aera of visual quality delivered to the homes. Some time to go for real mass markets. But better than ever, for sure.

So in the end it was again a golden new aera being started at a CES Las Vegas. More to come the following years. 

After having had a half day off it was a much more relaxing exercise to write down this last post.

Sincerely yours 

Klaus Miczewsky