On-Site Report by Yanman [Next Page]
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For
those of you that have never attended any type of very large trade show,
let me start off by assuring you that it is not at
all glamorous. Long lines, bad food, lots of walking, interesting cab
rides, and a few rude people added in just for fun. With around 100,000 or
so attendees The Consumer Electronics Show, CES is one of the largest shows
around and showcases home theater equipment, audio, video, and computer
products.
With that out of the way lets get started with the good
stuff.
I'm going to forgo posting the press releases for now (If you want they are all available at www.cesweb.org) and just "call it like I saw it." As I weed through all the press info I will post the most import to our news area.
After checking into the hotel (why does my room need to be near a roller coaster?), and getting my badge, the first thing that I happened upon was the Panasonic D train. (Click here for all the photos).
Inside the D for digital train I was escorted through three rooms of digital delight. First stop DVD Audio and a demo of the differences between CD, DVD, and DVD audio. The most obvious of course, the sound! For those of you that just bought a DVD player may want to close your ears for a sec, to play DVD audio you will need a new player.
After some research though, I found out that this is not 100% the case. There are two "zones" on a DVD audio disc a "audio zone" and a "video zone". The video zone was originally intended for cover art etc. but if the manufacturer of this disc wishes a 5.1 sound mix may be added to this zone and that 5.1 mix, with less clarity of course, can be played on a "standard" DVD player. More on this as time passes.
The next room was filled with DVD players, no real surprises here, there was a soon to be available progressive scan DVD player that was interesting. (I think the guy said it weighted in at over 40 lbs.) Check the link above for the photos.
Then it was off to the HDTV room for a comparison of three HDTV sets, RPTV, Plasma, and a good sized tube set. All the people in the group I was in agreed that the tube set looked the best even though all the sets looked amazing.
The TiVo Guy was everywhere at the show, here he is sitting on my laptop.
Every now and then we saw something that maybe we shouldn't have.
I'm not sure what this robot was all about, but he sure was tall, for reference the guy standing in front of him was about 6 foot.
