CES 2008 Catch-all

Fresh from Sony's press conference:

Sir Howard Singer is up now. One more major announcement. "The next champion product."

OLED TV! It's 3mm thick. Holy crap on a crap cracker, that TV is a beauty. 1000000 to 1 contrast ratio. Prototype 27-inch OLED will be on the show floor.

Niiiice.

I want a Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium. I want one so much I shall order one tomorrow.

The new Logitech diNovo Mini keyboard looks freaking sweet. I'm not too hot on the price, but this little bad boy is the perfect thing i've been looking for as a remote control for my PC for years now. PS3 compatibility is also a nice bonus.

Here's what appears to be a large chunk from Bill Gates' celebrity-laden 'last day' video.

Besides the HD-DVD canceling their pre-show interviews was there anything else mention on the HD-DVD front?

Warner and New Line going Blu ray only?

God damnit! The product manager for Samsung gave me an email this morning. Said that the item is, at this point of time "on the roadmap". He guessed, unofficially, that it would be available late January/early February, but that's pretty much an educated opinion.

It's so bleeding edge it hasn't even cut anything.

Oh I didn't see this thread. I guess I should have put Comcast and Docsis 3.0 in here which promises 160mb/s download speeds from your cable co.

A couple other neat things are the DLP TV which lets you 2 people wearing special glasses see 2 different full-screen pictures on the same TV.

Also some Tv manufacturers are building in iPod docks into their tvs.

Good lord am I in love with iRiver's design team. The LPlayer. (Basically a bigger version of their S10 which I own and am in love with.) and the Spinn.

Canon's new line of HD camcorders caught my eye. My older Canon Optura Pi seems to be on its last leg, and I am very interested in the HV30 (or better yet, close out deals on the HV20).

Asz wrote:

The new Logitech diNovo Mini keyboard looks freaking sweet. I'm not too hot on the price, but this little bad boy is the perfect thing i've been looking for as a remote control for my PC for years now. PS3 compatibility is also a nice bonus.

That is absolutely Beautiful, I would love to get one but at first I thought the price was 49.99 but than realized it's actually 150

I will keep an eye on it but chances are I will not get one anytime soon.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/ces-blu-...

I have it very ironic that such a poor release and sales of the PS3 has ultimately led in a round about way to the success of Blue Ray. Oh the irony. I can't think of a suitable analogy of this but it seems almost like a general sending in weak and poorly trained militia troops who get slaughtered but are a big enough diversion to let the general's trained troops attack from a flank and succeed. Or something like that.

It's just ironic that's all.

kilroy0097 wrote:

It's just ironic that's all.

Wasn't there a Chinese general who would march 10% of his troops out in front before a battle and have them kill themselves to frighten the enemy?

kilroy0097 wrote:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/ces-blu-...

I have it very ironic that such a poor release and sales of the PS3 has ultimately led in a round about way to the success of Blue Ray. Oh the irony. I can't think of a suitable analogy of this but it seems almost like a general sending in weak and poorly trained militia troops who get slaughtered but are a big enough diversion to let the general's trained troops attack from a flank and succeed. Or something like that.

It's just ironic that's all.

I read the linked article and didn't see where you drew the conclusion that poor sales helped Blu Ray or that it was ironic. Could you point out where you got that from?

wordsmythe wrote:

Wasn't there a Chinese general who would march 10% of his troops out in front before a battle and have them kill themselves to frighten the enemy?

Sorta. They were prisoners, made to execute themselves to scare the enemy.

Scaphism wrote:
kilroy0097 wrote:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/ces-blu-...

I have it very ironic that such a poor release and sales of the PS3 has ultimately led in a round about way to the success of Blue Ray. Oh the irony. I can't think of a suitable analogy of this but it seems almost like a general sending in weak and poorly trained militia troops who get slaughtered but are a big enough diversion to let the general's trained troops attack from a flank and succeed. Or something like that.

It's just ironic that's all.

I read the linked article and didn't see where you drew the conclusion that poor sales helped Blu Ray or that it was ironic. Could you point out where you got that from?

I guess the theory that the lack of sales and general apathy of the PS3 lead to Sony's almost immediately slashing the price to $399 resulting in a better than avg. Blu-Ray player for less than standalone units.

If the PS3 would have sold well initially then you'd have a lot of BR players in the marketplace too.

Really it's the fact the PS3 had BR in it in the first place that has helped push BR to the brink of victory in the format war.

Interesting too is that the Warner CEO thinks the inclusion of a Spiderman 3 is a big factor in helping promote BR awareness.

Fresh from Sony's press conference:
Quote:
Sir Howard Singer is up now. One more major announcement. "The next champion product."

OLED TV! It's 3mm thick. Holy crap on a crap cracker, that TV is a beauty. 1000000 to 1 contrast ratio. Prototype 27-inch OLED will be on the show floor.
Niiiice.

Pics of the Sony 27" OLED Prototype TV

Wow that thing is thin.

That OLED is seriously thin, I hope they can scale up the size and scale down the price soon.

How about a 9mm thick 50" Plasma.

Or a 150" Plasma:
IMAGE(http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/28/PICT0241_large.JPG)

Wonder what the price on that'll be...

Gameguru and trip1eX pretty much said it. My point was that the savior to Sony is the PS3 which is also at the same time the reason Sony was in so much trouble. So if it wasn't for the PS3 they probably would have lost the Blue Ray war. It took a poor release of a product and then attempting to fix their blunder which led to helping them win an even bigger prize.

The sacrifice of one thing to gain a bigger victory. It took something bad to make something good. Hence my Irony statement.

MikeMac wrote:

That OLED is seriously thin, I hope they can scale up the size and scale down the price soon.

How about a 9mm thick 50" Plasma.

Or a 150" Plasma:
IMAGE(http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/28/PICT0241_large.JPG)

Wonder what the price on that'll be... :o

Is that at the same 1920x1080 HD resolution? At that size, it seems like you'd start seeing very visible pixels... (although I'm at 102" with 720p, and you have to get quite close to the screen to see individual pixels...)

trip1eX wrote:

If the PS3 would have sold well initially then you'd have a lot of BR players in the marketplace too.

Really it's the fact the PS3 had BR in it in the first place that has helped push BR to the brink of victory in the format war.

Which is going to make it even sweeter when this generation of HD DVD players gets quickly jumped over by some form of digital distribution. The quicker the better in my book.

TheWalt wrote:

Is that at the same 1920x1080 HD resolution? At that size, it seems like you'd start seeing very visible pixels... (although I'm at 102" with 720p, and you have to get quite close to the screen to see individual pixels...)

Yea, 1080p for it. 20ft viewing distance is the sweet spot, much further back and the pixels blur together (unless your vision is better then 20/20), much closer and the view angle gets to be a bit much!

Don't worry though, plenty of 4K stuff coming for Real Men who measure the size of their screen in feet, not inches.

You call that a Zapper...?

IMAGE(http://media.arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.media/Wiiguns.JPG)

Ars Article wrote:

Seeing the CTA Digital booth leads one to ponder what is the oddest Wii peripheral being offered. Is is the light-up handle that simulates a lightsaber? Is it the fishing rod? Or possibly this immensely entertaining wall of hardcore Wii guns? Basically, these things are for people who find the Wii Zapper to be a little wussy. I approve.

The sacrifice of one thing to gain a bigger victory.

I dunno about bigger victory.. Sony doesn't personally stand to gain all that much from Blu-Ray. Most people are predicting over the life of the product fairly modest sales of all Blu-Ray related material. I dont think anyone truly believes that you'll replicate DVD like sales from either HD Optical Format.

edit.

AFAIK the various Blu-Ray patents arent wholly owned by any one company.. additionally the codec licensing fees are also spread amongst several companies. In short.. Blu-Ray victory isnt that big a deal personally for Sony.. certainly they'd much rather have the PS3 itself sell more hardware than the Xbox 360.. which so far it isnt.

Asz wrote:

Good lord am I in love with iRiver's design team. The LPlayer. (Basically a bigger version of their S10 which I own and am in love with.) and the Spinn.

You ain't kidding, I was thinking of getting a Lplayer, but then I saw the spinn...

Nomad wrote:

You call that a Zapper...?

IMAGE(http://media.arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.media/Wiiguns.JPG)

Ars Article wrote:

Seeing the CTA Digital booth leads one to ponder what is the oddest Wii peripheral being offered. Is is the light-up handle that simulates a lightsaber? Is it the fishing rod? Or possibly this immensely entertaining wall of hardcore Wii guns? Basically, these things are for people who find the Wii Zapper to be a little wussy. I approve.

Where do I get one of those?

If the shotgun actually pumped it'd be pretty damn cool.

Have there been any proposed prices/release dates for the second gen eeepc? The only one I could find was a BBC article where they were obviously mistaking Asus's entry-level Wimax laptop for the eeepc (and citing the price at around $1,000.)