CES 2007 Quick Notes

It always seems that the days in Vegas is never long enough. Too much to do, see, eat, yeah, as they say, "The city that never sleeps" and Vegas lives up to it without any disappointment.

Video Gaming

It's been a while that we thoroughly walked through CES, since the video game sector of this show shifted over to E3 about 11 years ago. Now that E3 has transformed itself to a more cozy and focused group, speculation has been surfaced that maybe next year, we might see more video game manufacturers besides Sony and Microsoft. We'll talk more about this in our complete write-up. For now, enjoy the snaps of the gaming booths in our photo gallery.

Future of Televisions

Over the years, many analysts have written off Plasma TV's, claiming that LCD's and later SED's ( Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display) would later replace both technologies. SED's technology promises CRT performance with the depth of the thinnest LCD on the market.

So far, from what retailers and CES supporters have shown, Plasma is long from it's demise, and with it's constant improvement with it's burn-in issue and dramatically increased lifespan (comparable to that of the life of an LCD, between 40-60K hours half-life), there is little reason not to buy a plasma. For the most part, plasma at the same resolution as LCD does display the better image and costs less for larger sizes. Manufacturers at this year's show have demonstrated that Plasma production is not slowing down, but increasing, not only in production, but in size as well (up to 103 screen).

Like Plasma's, LCD's have their followers. For those conscious with power consumption, high emf outputs, these are some of their advantages over their plasma counterpart. As CES has shown over the years, the market is large enough to have these two technologies co-exist and why not? This just gives consumers more choices and more choices means, more competition, hence lower prices for everyone. Sharp and Sony being solely LCD's manufacturers have lead this market is producing the best LCD picture can offer. While the burn-in issue on an LCD is much less likely than a plasma, it's drawbacks still remain with it's weak black level (for most LCD's), less depth and for some, poor refresh rate (needed to manipulate fast panning images and response time, important for video games generally). So like Plasma, LCD's have made dramatic improvements in those categories with insane refresh rates of 4ms (Sharp 46 1080p model) and dynamic backlighting (motion backlighting technique to provide truer black levels, unlike static backlighting where the black levels are grey). Both LCD and Plasma's have their pro's and con's and because both technologies are not perfect, this allows them to penetrate the market together and until there is a better technologies at similar or lower price points, we just don't see either technology falling by the waistside anytime soon.

SED. This technology was created by Canon almost 3 decades ago, but at the time, the production cost was unreasonable and it wasn't until 1999 that Canon partnered up with Toshiba to revisit the potential of it. Like any new technology, once SED is introduced, it will not be perfect and will certainly be criticized like any newcomer to the market, moreso to production and selling cost on top of it's proclaimed performance. At CES, SED has some running models, but it is way too early to determine where SED will place in the television sector. Time will tell if this new technology will deliver what it promises.

HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray

Ah, it wouldn't be Sony, if it wasn't another technology that forces consumers to choose between. Sony has lost a few major battles as we've all heard with it's Beta (even though a superior format), the Mini-Disc (lackluster success and pretty much forgotten) and their SACD (audiophile quality CD's that mimmick that of analog LP without all the noise). Sony's latest, 'hey pick me' creation is none other than Blu-Ray. In short, it's the next generation medium for DVD movies, running at an astonishing 1080p 24fps format. On paper, Blu-Ray is the superior format and if history shows anything, superior performance doesn't equal guaranteed success. Ironically, even though the specs show that Blu-Ray should display the better picture, the first generation movies released on Blu-Ray has not proved this.

This initial weakness in picture performance opened the door for HD-DVD supporters, but like a bad ending horror flick, Toshiba (the creator of HD-DVD) couldn't execute their business plan any worse. With only one HD-DVD player (with a revision unit) released (with a hideous load time of almost 2 minutes) for the first 6 months of it's introduction, it leaves consumers with doubt of who is really supporting this format. In this day and age of electronics, less choices is bad business, especially when there is only one. Let alone that the picture quality, while being an advancement over upscaled DVD players, is not the dramatic increase that consumers expected. Add in the fact that the current units only output 720p, even if it's picture is better than Blu-Ray, consumers don't know any better and compare technologies using numbers (720p vs. 1080p).

Retailers, such as Best Buy and Circuit City in the United States have shown that Blu-Ray players have outsold HD-DVD's by large numbers. This is not counting the PS3 as a Blu-ray player. Furthermore, if CES 2007 is an indication of Blu-ray supporters, you can put a nail in the HD-DVD coffin. Let's just say that Blu-ray was everywhere. Booth to booth, from one manufacturer to another, Blu-ray players suffocated it's HD-DVD counterpart. Off of memory, we could name 8-10 manufacturers who had a working or prototype Blu-ray player, while rarely seeing HD-DVD players at other booths. We didn't get a chance to read through an article written about Blu-ray's future, but from what we can recall, the title read 'Blu-ray inevitable.' From what we saw at the show, we'd have to agree. Let alone, one of the booths displayed the list of hardware and software supporters for Blu-ray and it's an incredible chunk of the market. Some of the former supporters of HD-DVD have not fully committed and have changed their outlook on a wait-and-see basis, so the future of HD-DVD is looking more like betamax.

For the first round of holiday retail sales and the support at CES, Blu-ray is the clear picture and winner. The consumer's purchasing the hardware and software will be the determining factor of who will reign king, so next year will set the way to a more definitive answer.

More to come in our next write-up. Great show so far and always neat stuff to see.