greg gibson's first impressions
Live from CES 2004 in Las Vegas, Nevada

By Associate Editor Greg Gibson

CES 2004 is over 4.5 million square feet of electronics at its best. Vendors from all over the world launch and announce their products lines for 2004 and 2005 at this show, where over 100,000 attendees get to see the latest in what the the tech industry has to offer. NextGen Electronics is at the show in force, with 8 writers on site, reporting and gathering future stories.

You Wouldn't Believe It Even If You Were Here / "2004 - Year of HDTV"

Most importantly, Next Gen Electronics was invited by Tony Jasinowski, Director, RDVDC (this is the consortium of large manufacturing companies [Hitachi, LG, Hitachi, Philips, Samsung, et al) created as a promotion group to standardize and promote the DVD-RAM format. Tony personally invited us to the special press briefing announcing the finalization of Blu-Ray Disc - the next generation of DVD!

The importance of Blu-Ray Disc is that current DVDs use a "red laser" to read the data format. As everyone remembers from high school physics, red light has a longer wave length than blue light... so if a blue light laser is used, significantly more data can be packed into a disc because the blue light laser is much "finer" and can allow smaller data to be achieved. Data compression (getting more data on a disk) is important because a current DVD can pack about 2 hours of standard definition (480p) on a 4.8Gigabyte disc - but if you want to have a full HDTV picture (1080i) then you need to have a disc capable of holding about 50 Gigabytes of improved picture detail! A current DVD of 4.8 Gigabits can hold only 20 minutes of HDTV picture quality...

Well, Blu-Ray Disc intends to make a quantum, revolutionary jump in technology and provide HDTV movies with improved special features and enhanced The Blu-Ray Disc process intends to provide DVD readers and DVD movies in HDTV (1080i) by 2005-2006. This is important for those buying an HDTV this year - if you also purchase a 480p DVD, it will be "obsolete" in 2 years! You could wait (assuming you have a good DVD now) and invest in the new Blu-Ray Disc technology.

Blu-Ray Disc also provide a "surprise" by announcing that Dell and HP were also going to adopt and embrace Blu-Ray Disc technology... therefore, DVDs produced on your PC will be fully 1080i HDTV compatible! That is good news, since the IT community does drive a lot of money in the market.

Importantly, I cornered the President of Philips Electronics and the Vice President of Hitachi, both of whom had attended the press conference - and ask the question of "backward compatibility"! This is an important concept because the blue laser is not natively compatible to "decode" a current "red laser" DVD - and consumers will certainly NOT want to suddenly replace their DVD collections just to get the HDTV picture! Both Philips and Hitachi stated that it would be up to the manufacturer (Hitachi, SONY, Philips, Panasonic, Pioneer, et al) to provide a unit that include "backward compatibility"... but that both their companies intended to ensure that their current customers (with 480p DVDs) would be able to use their "old" DVDs in the new systems.

HDTV LAND

You would not believe how many LCDs, DLPs, Plasmas are here. All sizes, all colors (frames), and some radical pieces of furniture (from one unit that was all chrome and steel, to one that was provided in multiple frame colors.

There must be $10 million in displays in this place!

OK - I know you are asking - was there a display that totally knocked your socks off?

YES! Benq (formerly Acer) have revolutionized their display product line. They are now producing an extremely high end monitor, and HGTV line... their computer monitors (17 to 24 inch) LCDs are extremely bright (contrast ratio above 600:1). However, it was the World-Wide release of their widescreen LCDs that too the show by storm... specifically, their new 46-inch LCD with an 800:1 contrast ratio. This unit absolutely blew the socks off the rest of the CES show! While it is not going to be released until the 3rd quarter of 2004, this unit is certainly one that high end (estimate retail price around $10,000) buyers would want to consider.

The Benq 30 inch LCDs will be released in the 2nd quarter of 2004 and the 26 inch LCD is being released now. Benq is certainly a new brand name to a lot of people, but well worth stopping and taking a look at... very good quality in the LCD technology.

AWARD: "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??"

We also want to provide the minuses as well as the pluses... and there was one manufacturer, unveiling a new product, that we just had to stop and ask ourselves "what were they thinking?". So, although I am sure there are some readers who will say - "WOW that's great!", I just have to award the first day "what were you thinking award" to EPSON television. Specifically, I was walking the floor and noticed that EPSON was making HDTVs! Their line was primarily DLPs around 30 to 50 inches... nice picture. So I was initially impressed.

I then noticed a large panel at the bottom of the set, and enthusiastically (but erroneously) assumed it was a built in DVD (or something)! Well ... it was a built in printer! Now you can watch TV or plug you camera media into the TV, and if you like it - you hit a button and then Volia! You get a high quality picture printed of the screen or picture!

Sorry EPSON, but when I process my digital pictures, I want to spend a lot of time cropping and adjusting the components... not just print from a TV. So, I gotta ask - "What were you thinking?"

[post script] - I met a really nice couple after the show and was telling them about my award... but in the middle, one said - yea, having a printer would be great to print out the picture when they want you to call a number.... this confirms that one person's plus is another person's minus...

Commentary By: Greg Gibson ggibson@nextgenelectronics.com