This week we catch up with the general news from the last couple of weeks. We are working on the CES report and you can keep track on the website with our full report. We’ll send the pdf file next week when it’s complete.
CES was interesting, as always. As expected, there were more OLED TVs, with Sony using LG’s panels and winning attention. However, its LCDs also looked very good. LG showed its ‘wallpaper’ thin TV and some curved OLEDs in a public display configuration. Samsung really pushed quantum dots and both Samsung and LG had ‘two box’ TV solutions, LG with a flat cable and Samsung using optical fibre to connect from the box to a display. Panasonic didn’t show its OLED TV publicly, but did show it privately, so the re-launch that some dealers hoped for didn’t happen.
Sony also had a TV where the sound was created by the panel – and LG Display was also showing that concept.
There was lots about VR and AR and I was very impressed by a demo during Intel’s press event of very high definition video with ‘6 degrees of freedom’. Viewers using VR headsets could move around the video (not CG) content, looking behind objects, or looking from the top. It was an eye-opener on the future of immersive video.
A big trend was the use of Virtual Personal Assistants (VPA’s) and Amazon has clearly got a lot of support for its voice API (Alexa) in a wide range of devices. Clearly input modalities are being developed and we saw interesting concepts and developments in gaze, touch, haptics (including non-touch haptics) and NFC use.
HDMI 2.1 was launched and USB Type-C rolled on towards dominance. There were a couple of new ‘notebook shells’ exploiting the use of USB Type C. We looked at a number of new smartphones, but few were innovative. Probably the Xiaomi was the best seen, as most brands keep new flagship devices for MWC next month. However, a number of the mainstream phones had good (and multiple) cameras.
The most interesting monitors were slim and 8K monitors from Dell (and no sign of last year’s OLED) and 1,000 cd/m² panels and monitors.
There was, of course, a lot of automotive coverage, with new car brands coming to the show this time. CE brands see big opportunities to sell new products and services once drivers don’t have to pay attention to the road and car makers are developing new approaches.
In the areas we don’t look at in detail, it was apparent that a huge amount of effort is going into health and fitness and you can get smart ‘almost anything’. I’m sure I spotted ‘Smart pants to monitor erectile disfunction’ while walking through the Sands Expo (although I couldn’t find it on the web, when checking for this report).
Anyway, I need to get on with editing and writing the CES report, so look out for it next week.
Bob
CES 50 Years – Image: Meko
