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Lessons Learned at CES
January 18, 2007
I was in awe last week as I walked around at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It’s truly an amazing experience. The sheer size of this convention is mind-boggling. It’s the one trade show that actually challenges the tourist industry infrastructure of America’s biggest tourist town.
The convention center was filled with multiple pavilions, each holding display booths of companies showing their goods. Some were about video, where I spent most of my time. Others were about cell phones, audio, photography and just about anything else considered consumer electronics. It’s so big, so overwhelming, it’s hard to remember much of what I saw.
But I did come away with a few impressions. I went into a small screening room and put on some goggles to watch TV. The goggles were much more sophisticated than the cellophane-lens glasses handed out in theaters to watch a 3-D movie. These had a switch that allowed you to watch an impressive 3-D movie on a big flat-panel TV. The picture was so real, I ducked when the missiles were launched over my head. Another setting on the switch was for interactive gamers who could change the view of the playing field from theirs to their opponent’s. All this was done through a standard digital converter, a regular HDTV and no additional bandwidth on the cable system. Pretty cool.
Of course, television makers had different versions of the biggest flat-screen TV ever built. They broke through 100 inches last year, and this year, it’s 100 inches plus a foot. But I was much more impressed by more subtle changes in HDTVs. I saw a display of one manufacturer’s new 50-plus-inch HDTVs right next to last year’s version of the very same TV. The example was elegantly simple -- beer bottles moving across the screen. The difference in clarity of the Heineken label was, simply put, astounding. It seemed to me that last year’s HDTV was a transitional picture, like those first color TVs with the rounded sides and green-tinted pictures -- great against black-and-white TVs but nothing compared to the color TVs delivered a couple of years later.
Then there was the Panasonic flat-screen TV that was displaying a two-way CableCARD inserted directly into the back of the TV. This design eliminated the need for any box -- cable’s or the TV manufacturer’s. It had all of the two-way features being offered by the cable company, including the guide and VOD.
That display made me think of the most important thing I learned from the show. It occurred to me that this TV, a product of private negotiations, was the perfect example of the marketplace working. No fewer than four major TV manufacturers were showing the two-way CableCARD. They would be available for sale this year. These four companies signed agreements with the cable industry, through CableLabs, to deliver this wonderful, consumer-friendly technology. PRESTO! There were their products and there was no government intervention. All of the pieces fell right into place!
Posted by Michael Willner on January 18, 2007 | Comments (2)
