[tt] NYT: Same Old Electronics Show, With Some Intriguing New Ideas

Fri Jan 11 00:38:48 UTC 2008

Same Old Electronics Show, With Some Intriguing New Ideas
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/technology/personaltech/10pogue.html

State of the Art
By DAVID POGUE

One million exhibitors. Sixty million attendees. Four trillion
booths spread across an area the size of Rhode Island.

Those aren't really the specs for the annual Consumer Electronics
Show in Las Vegas, but it sure feels like it. C.E.S. is the
largest (and most exhausting) trade show in North America, and
most of the people who attend it -- exclusively media and
electronics-industry personnel -- approach C.E.S. with queasy
dread. You emerge from each day with aching feet, a pocket full
of business cards and a craving for food that hasn't been
reconstituted, thawed and overpriced.

You also emerge with a sneak peek at the product-release timeline
for the year ahead. Lots of companies make new-product
announcements here, even six or eight months before the products
show up in stores.

C.E.S. 2008 offered few big announcements that got everybody
buzzing. Part of the reason may be that some of the most
interesting players -- the cellphone makers, the camera makers
and Apple -- have their own trade shows in the next month or two.

In any case, this week's show looked and felt pretty much the
same as always: hundreds of big flat-screen TVs, glass display
cases gleaming with shiny cellphones and a whole building filled
with car tech.

In fact, it would probably take you at least half an hour to
realize that you were not attending C.E.S. 2007. (One giveaway:
last year, Panasonic claimed that its 103-inch plasma set was the
world's largest TV. This year, Panasonic took that honor with its
150-inch model.)

Still, if you wandered around and asked enough questions, you
might have learned that a number of great ideas wait in 2008's
wings. In order to spare you the $350-a-night hotel bills and 25
miles of walking, here's a summary of some of the most
interesting developments-in-waiting that I had the chance to play
with.

SONY XEL-1. This tiny, 11-inch TV is the closest thing C.E.S. had
to a blockbuster. When you learn that it costs $2,500, you might
wonder why. But when you see it, you'll understand.

It's the thinnest TV on earth (three millimeters), and the
picture is breathtakingly spectacular. Its color range is far
superior to any other TV technology, and so is its contrast
ratio: a million to one (compared with 20,000 to 1 on a typical
plasma). You just can't get past the astonishing, real, liquid,
vivid look of this screen.

It's an O.L.E.D. screen, a new technology with low power
consumption and no motion ghosting. In time, the size will go up
and the price will go down. Get psyched. (Available now, $2,500.)

PARROT DF7700 DIGITAL PICTURE FRAME. Digital picture frames --
essentially tiny computer monitors -- are perennial favorites
among gift-givers, but loading photos onto them is a perennial
headache for the technologically challenged. This model, however,
has its own cellular phone number; the point is that you can send
pictures from your cameraphone directly to its 7-inch screen from
anywhere in the world.

The upside is that now the burden of supplying photos falls on
you, the technically proficient (and generous) gift giver. The
downside is the monthly cellular fee -- a first for a picture
frame. (Price and release date to be determined).

PANASONIC DVD-LS86. This one may be the biggest magic trick of
the show. It's a portable 8.5-inch DVD player that can play
movies for -- are you ready for this? -- 13 hours on a battery
charge. That's long enough for six or seven standard movies, or
once through "Transformers."

And yet this player doesn't look like a military field case.
Apart from a slightly thicker hinge, it's no bulkier than any
player. How did they do that? ($200, available now).

GARMIN NUVI 800. Lots of companies introduced G.P.S. units at
this show, including some that you might associate with G.P.S.
(like Sony, Hewlett-Packard, LG and Panasonic).

But Garmin's new top-of-the-line car unit comes with speech
recognition that's far more advanced than what's come before.

You can say, for example, "Find nearest Chinese food" to produce
a list of nearby Chinese restaurants; then you can say "line 2"
to select your favorite in the resulting list. You can also speak
the address of your destination, without having to lean forward
and tap it onto an on-screen keyboard.

So how do you prevent the sounds of everyday conversation (or,
worse, radio talk shows) from randomly reprogramming your G.P.S.
destination? The Nuvi comes with a tiny remote control that
straps onto your steering wheel. It has only two buttons: Listen
and Stop Listening. (Second-quarter 2008, $1,000).

ATP ELECTRONICS PHOTOFINDER. When you take a photo, your digital
camera stamps the resulting JPEG file with all kinds of invisible
data: the time and date, the exposure and shutter settings, and
so on. There's even a place in that invisible database to record
where the photo was taken -- its earthly coordinates -- but those
blanks remain empty today.

Enter the PhotoFinder, from ATP Electronics. After taking some
photos, you extract the memory card from your camera and slip it
into this tiny G.P.S. receiver, half a candy bar in size. It
stamps the latest photos with your G.P.S. coordinates. Later, on
your computer, you can use Google Earth or Picasa to see where
those pictures were snapped. (Spring, $100).

SONY ROLLY. It's a music player shaped like an egg. When you
press its top button once, the end caps open to reveal stereo
speakers, and lights flash to the music. When you press the
button twice, the thing starts flapping and twisting around on
the table, rolling around and, well, boogieing to the music.
Totally charming and totally pointless. (Spring, price to be
determined).

HD HUBS. Flywire from Belkin and AirHook HD Hub from Radiospire
each consists of two parts. There's a transmitter, into which you
plug your video sources (set-top box, TiVo, high-def DVD player
and so on). And there's a slim receiver that hangs on the back of
your flat-panel high-def TV set.

You don't need to drill any holes, run any wires or hire any
professionals; you just hang the TV wherever you like. The ugly
stack of A.V. components can be up to 50 feet away from the
screen itself, giving you much greater freedom of placement. The
transmitter sends uncompressed, full-resolution high-def video
and audio. (Flywire: Summer, $500-$600; AirHook HD hub: third
quarter, around $600).

ULTRATHIN TV SETS. Panasonic and Samsung demonstrated new TV sets
that are only one-inch thick. They're stunning -- when you're
looking at them on edge, that very first day. When you're looking
at them from the front, as you will the rest of your life, they
don't look any different from thicker sets. (Price and release
dates to be determined.)

FLASH-MEMORY HARD DRIVES. SanDisk displayed "hard drives" that
are pure flash memory. This is a big, big deal. Flash-memory hard
drives have no moving parts, so they're infinitely more rugged
and long-lasting than mechanical, spinning drives. They're also
much faster (SanDisk says that Windows Vista starts up in about
half the time), much smaller (5 millimeters thick), much quieter
(silent, in fact) and much lower in power consumption (0.4 watts
instead of 1 watt).

In fact, they're superior to regular hard drives in every single
way except two: capacity (maximum 72 gigabytes) and price.
Clearly, SanDisk feels that the planets have finally aligned for
flash hard drives to reach everyday laptops despite those
drawbacks.

(If the Internet rumors are right, Apple may feel that, too;
according to blogger speculation, the company will unveil a
superthin laptop next week with just such a flash "hard drive.")

So there you have it: 11 intriguing products -- out of the 43
quintillion that were on display at C.E.S. 2008.

E-mail: pogue at nytimes.com