Happy New Year!

Just a few hours before we say goodbye to 2009 and welcome in 2010 andI am sitting in my office getting all packed up to head to Las Vegas for the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. The snow is coming down here as I look out my office window at Connecticut’s State Capitol.

As I write this there is still no deal between FOX and Time Warner, meaning at the stroke of midnight tonight many cable customers might lose their FOX channels. Dish Network which is normally involved in some kind of New Year’s programming spat is sitting in the hot seat this year with no disputes going on. Dish has been taking out full page ads in papers around the country letting Time Warner customers know that they could be losing their FOX stations soon. My how times have changed, I can remember the start of other years where companies were taking out ads saying that Dish Network was going to lose channels.

DIRECTV is in a programming dispute with Rainbow Media and have yet to come to terms on a new contract, and while the deadline is tonight it appears that negotiations are going well enough that it appears the channels will remain on DIRECTV while positive talks continue. I have been told by several DIRECTV csr’s that there has been no prep given to them in preparing for the loss of the Rainbow channels. They said that before Versus was dropped they received a lot of prep and training in order to be able to help and comfort upset fans of the Versus channel.

It appears that 3D television will be the rage at CES. As we reported the other day it is expected that DIRECTV will launch a 3D HDTV channel and now we are hearing that the channel will be launched at CES and a number of HDTV set manufacturers will be using the DIRECTV 3D HD channel as their demo material on their new sets. And while we have been told by DIRECTV that they will not be hold a press conference at CES to announce the 3D HD channel, I am still hearing from a few folks that Eric Shanks from DIRECTV will be making an announcement at one of the television manufactures events. (Something we are trying to verify with DIRECTV as we want to be there for the announcement so that we can cover it for you!)

I have mixed feelings on 3D TV, while it sounds cool, I can’t imagine it being practical for home viewers. I can’t imagine viewers wanting to come home and being required to wear 3D glasses to watch TV. If you sat for all 3 hours of the movie Avatar you will know what I am talking about. And while the 3D might be great I don’t expect it to look anything like Avatar did on the big screen.

I currently see the 3DTV move more of a fad then anything else, but its a fad the electronics industry hopes will catch on. In fact I believe many of them need it to catch on, after all with the low costs of flat panel televisions most folks now have at least one and other then 3DTV there is nothing big coming down the line in the world of major consumer electronics.

I don’t see myself going out and buying a new set to watch 3D television, I just purchased a new Samsung LED TV a few months ago and love it and am not going to replace it just so I can wear 3D glasses and watch a very limited supply of 3D content.

But with that said I will admit I have not experienced 3DTV yet, so I am not going to make any final judgments on it until I see it myself and that just what I plan on doing next week at CES.

So now I am packing up getting ready to go, this trip to Vegas will be a combo vacation and business trip for me. It’s business because I am going to go and report on what I see, but also a vacation of sorts for me because as many times as I have been to Las Vegas covering CES I have never really explored Las Vegas as a tourist. I will have a few days before CES starts to check things out and its something I am looking forward to.

So as I finish packing I want to wish all of you reading a very happy, safe and prosperous 2010! Happy new year! We will see you next week that the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show from Las Vegas!