Every year at CES Sony invites the press to a pre-show press event.  Usually, it is boring with only a modicum of real news.  This year was different.  The event was well staged - albeit totally scripted, and there were some cool innovations and new products to see.

Chris Chinnock
Senior Analyst and Editor
for Insight Media

Topping Sony’s list was the unveiling of a new Internet-connected TV concept complete with deals from a number of content providers.  Sony said that in 2007 the majority of new Sony televisions - starting with several BRAVIA flat-panel LCD TVs this spring - will accept an attachable module that can stream broadband high-definition and other Internet video content to the TV.  The module will be available this summer and content control will be thru the TV’s remote.

Partners in the new concept include AOL, Yahoo! and Grouper, now part of Sony Pictures Entertainment, as well as Sony Pictures itself and Sony BMG.  Sony has also developed Xross Media Bar (XMB), an icon-based user interface similar to what is already found on PlayStation3 (PS3) and PlayStationPortable.

One very important feature - all of this content will be delivered for FREE.  While Sony says the module can support streaming of HD material, the demonstration of content from the various partners was clearly not HD and looked quite bad as a matter of fact.  The strategy looks like a pre-emptive strike against HP who is expected to unveil more about its somewhat similar MediaSmart TV plans at CES.

In technology, we noticed that Sony is aggressively embracing the newly adopted color standard for extended color gamut, xvYCC.  Sony will call products that support this capability x.y. Color.  Not only did the company introduce camcorders that can acquire content in this new color space, but it also showed TVs that are matched to display it.

In a series of vignettes at various stations around the large Sony booth, speakers highlighted some of the products or demonstrators on display.  For example, Sony showed a 55″ SXRD rear-projection set with a laser light engine as a technology demonstrator.  This was packed into a slim, 12″ deep cabinet which appeared to be very similar to a cabinet design it showed a year ago at CES, but was never introduced.  Sony did not announce any launch for the laser-based TV either.  Image quality was quite good with speckle eliminated by slowly moving the screen - an approach that does not compromise image sharpness.  Contrast was stated as 10,000:1, the same as its other SXRD-based TVs.

In LCD-TVs, Sony announced a new 70″ model with an LED backlight that will retail for about $33K.  A similar 82″ prototype was also shown (Sony can make these 2-up on it largest glass substrates).  As expected, the image quality was quite impressive. 

The 82″ prototype was used to illustrate this extended color gamut in a side-by-side, split-screen comparison.  Most noticeable was the more deeply saturated reds.  Sony is also touting a true 10-bit processing pipeline, which includes panel drivers.  One spokesman noted that others claim 10-bit color processing, but they then drive the panel at 8-bits, so it is a bit misleading.

Sony will also focus on motion response in its LCDs.  Its approach is to increase the refresh rate to 120Hz and to do an interpolated frame, not a black frame or a duplicate frame, which is needed for the faster refresh.  This was also demonstrated in a side-by-side split-screen on the 82″, with excellent results with an 8ms panel.

Finally, Sony debuted what is probably the largest OLED TV to date - a 27″ model.  This was shown with a bunch of 11″ TVs as technology demonstrators, with no commercialization plans set.  What was not said, but implied, was that Sony needs to consider how and when to transition to OLEDs so as not to cannibalize its existing lines of displays and TVs.

The OLEDs were stunning with a reported 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and extremely thin at 10mm and 3mm for the 27″ and 11″ units.  Lifetime remains a bit of an issue, however, so the technology is not yet ready for production.

On the PS3 front, Sony claimed that by the end of 2006 it had shipped 1M PS3 platforms in the US - a faster start rate than even its megahit PS2 platform (110M sold to date).  Sony wants to hit 6M PS3 sales by the end of March. 

The PS3 includes a Blu-ray player of course, and Sony also announced the introduction of two more BD players at CES, as well as the new TP1 Digital Living System, a one-of-a-kind home computer. The computer is round and white - Sony styling at its best.

Finally, Sony highlighted it e-book reader product as well as it ultra-mobile PC - a one pound notebook PC the size of a small, but thick notepad that presenter Hideyuki Furumi pulled out of his coat pocket.

Sony is coming off a good year driven by the success of its Bravia TVs and it appears to be carrying the momentum into 2007.  The only real potential pothole in an otherwise rosy outlook remains Blu-ray, where the war with HD DVD and now Total HD is heating up.