CES and TV

And so this was christmas and now in the CE industry there remains a sense of anticipation around the CES show in Las Vegas starting this week. It remains the venue for industry products that are the make or break of corporate futures.

This year there will be further anorexia in screens .... how could they get any thinner?
LG are expected to debut their 55inch OLED panel that is 4mm thick ... and Samsung their fellow Korean competitor are expected to dem a screen without a bezel at all. I guess people wont worry about the chassis styling then ... The last OLED set that was attempted for consumer release was the Sony 11inch that was sold in Australia for the outrageous ticket of $6000 in 2007...turned out to have a nominal 2000 hour half life as well ...

Our favourite Japanese panel company being Sharp are looking for domination in the over 55 inch market ... their CES stand is all about integrating multiple uses of large screen Tvs in homes and offices, they have an 80inch touchscreen on display with multiply interactive content software that they feel will be de rigeur for the home in the forseeable future ... like a giant iPad on the wall in every room of a home ... love it.

There will be various attempts at glassless 3D ... Philips actually demonstrated one in 2006 ... but one suspects that these are doomed to become landfill in short order after the exasperating limitations of content and depth perception quality remain unchanged.

4K Tv's are out there with Sony having a 4096 x 2180 projector and Toshiba a 55inch 3840 res panel with built in facial recognition cameras so as to enable a lenticular based glasses free 3d for up to nine people .... content and playback formats put 4k TV into long term future ... one dreads the wiring protocol that currently requires no less than four hdmi cables for passing a signal at this resolution. I note that Peter jackson is shooting The Hobbit with Red Epic cameras that run 5K res.

Not to be outdone Sharp are displaying their 8K 85 inch screen with 7680 horizontal resolution first seen last Sepetember at the IFA ...

Personally I'm rather hopeful for the British Quantum Dot TV tech that is a step towards TVs as wallpaper ...

And the coolest thing of all is the Parrot UAV Dronecopter that is controlled and viewed from your smart phone ... first released as an indoor quadcopter in 2010, this year at the CES they are debuting the outdoor version.