Consumers Electronics Show 2005 – Las Vegas

It became a big tradition here at Target PC to pack our bags twice a year for Las-Vegas. Once for Comdex taking place every month of November and then just two months later in January for CES.

Two big shows focused at totally different markets. Comdex was of course the main event paying attention to the IT world and CES for the electronics market. With the cancellation of Comdex last year, hundreds of companies counting on the famous once a year event had to start looking elsewhere to keep their clients up to date.

For our regular readers, you most probably already know that the cancellation of Comdex didn't come by surprise. While the show was enormous during its existence, the few recent years dramatically put this event to its lowest attendance, mostly due to the several changes of owner ship and nothing less than weak management.

With CES being just two months later, most of the IT world has decided to go along with CES for their exhibitions. Quite frankly we didn't know what to expect of this year's event, mixing up the world of IT and Electronics could be an interesting yet confusing path to some people.

SONY

We we're quite impressed with this year's Sony presentation; they had one of the most brilliant ideas to date. Two pretty girls we're picking up people from the main entrance and inviting them to assist a 15 minute presentation in front of a big screen. The whole presentation was starting with a display of a blue garage door where just after it opens up and a short movie showing off Sony's latest products. At the end, all the lights turned off and a main light pointing out to a similar blue garage door on the right was slowly opening to the enormous demo room, quite a concept.

What caught our eye at their booth were their latest mobile phones. We had the chance to review their previous models over the past few months; we always liked their vision and concepts. I'm happy to say that their latest mobile line looks better than ever.

P910 (left) and S710a (right)

The new S710a is a small phone featuring a flip over display and an embedded 1.3 Mega Pixel Camera. We will be taking a closer look at this unit later on next month.

The P910a is the newer version of the P900 model. Main differences include an addition of a QWERTY keyboard on the back of the flip for text input.

SAMSUNG

LN-R570D – 57” LCD TV

Samsung was showing off their 57” LCD TV. Supported resolution is 1920x1080 along with a 5000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio and a 8ms response time. Its one of the world's largest LCD TV in production.

Z102 – 102” Plasma TV

This product was getting some very big attention around the audience and it definitely caught our eye as well. This is a 102” Plasma screen. Maximal resolution of this unit is 1920x1080p full HD resolution. It features two TV tuners with split and picture in picture option and full connectivity for PC, DVI, HDMI and STB.

YP-MT6 – MP3 Player

The MT6 Mp3 player comes in 256mb, 512mb and 1GB versions. The player supports OGG, MP3, WMA, Secure WMA, WAV and Audio SAF files. The product is USB2.0 compatible and has a playback time of up to 42hrs using a single AA battery.

LG Philips

20.1 inch LTPS AMOLED

On the second floor over at LG/PHILIPS a prototype 21.1inch wide XGA LTPS amoled LCD screen was on the floor. This unit supports a resolution of up to 1280x800, 1000:1 contrast ratio and an impressive 0.01ms response time.

What's even more interesting is that the unit it self is less than 1 inch in depth. This technology is scheduled to touch the market around 2007 for computer screens and could go into replacing your home TV's by the end of 2009.

Applied IPS technology – 2.4inch VGA screen for mobile applications.

Other interesting products from the LG Philips group were their 2.4inch VGA screen designed for mobile applications such as cell phones. They had a prototype mobile phone on display and the end results we're as if you we're watching a standard PC LCD screen.

The LCD spots an active area of 34.84(W)x49.42(H), a resolution of 480x640 along a 332 ppi pixel pitch. The contrast ratio is at 300:1, response time 25ms and supports up to 262k colors.

Their staff showed us a little demo using a magnifier glass on the 2.4VGA screen along on a 2.4 standard display and the results spoke for them self's; no pixels!

At the LG main booth an interesting product was their 72” plasma screen. This 72” is the biggest plasma in production on the market going for a whopping 50,000$ USD.

JVC

At the JVC booth we found a cool innovation in car mobility. Their new in dash car DVD player acts as a normal DVD player for the front dash and in addition gives you the option to remove the LCD unit and install it in the rear head rest using the included rear mount.

The unit is available on the market for a similar price as their pioneer competition.

SHARP – AQUOS.

Over at Sharp with their AQUOS brand name for TV's we saw an attractive 65” LCD TV.

This unit is the world's largest production LCD TV with a response time of less than 12ms.

D-LINK

D-Link had a pretty big booth over at CES showing off their latest innovations. Interesting products included their new GamerLounge products. The D-Link GamingLounge routers provide an uninterrupted and latency free gaming experience.

The DGL-4300 gaming router supports up to 108Mbps 802.11g transfers, 1000Mbps Gigabit ports and customizable settings for games and applications. Other products in the GamingLounge section include the DGL-4100 Broadband Gigabit gaming router along with the DGL-3420 Wireless 108AG Gaming adapter. We should be taking a look at these products very soon.

They we're getting some good attention with their Media Player line.

The DSM-320 is the standard media player that connects to your existing home entertainment center allowing the sharing of music, videos and photos on your big screen TV. The DSM 320 supports IEEE 802.11g wireless standard with transfer speeds up to 54Mbps.

Their newer DSM 320RD media player offers the same functions but in addition features a built in DVD player along with a smart card reader. The more high end version is the DSM 5208R and in addition also acts as a wireless media server.

D-Link had a prototype DSM-220 portable media player featuring a built in LCD along with a 20GB hard drive. This unit has an integrated 802.11g connection allowing to stream data anywhere in the house.

Get-together Pictures

Joe Chan from OCZ getting the party started

Oleg Mitskaniouk (TargetPC.COM, Jessica Luken (OCZ) and Carlos David Donoso (Target PC.COM

Alex Mei (OCZ) and Oleg Mitskaniouk (TargetPC.COM)

Jessica Luken (Marketing for OCZ, Carlos David Donoso (TargetPC.COM) and Alex Mei (VP of Marketing OCZ)

Carl Nelson (Harcoreware.net), Oleg Mitskaniouk (Target PC.COM), John Chow (Thetechzone.com) and (Hardcoreware.net)

Shinedown performing live at the Spy Another Day event

Spy Another Day Event - Gary Coleman perfoming

Oleg Mitskaniouk (TargetPC) and Jon Lovitz at the Spy Another Day event that took place at the Rain Night Club (PALMS)

Rod Stewart Performing LIVE!

At the private Rod Stewart Concert (Paris Paris)

Tony Hawk Live at the Sirius Radio Booth

Michael S. Scott (Technical Media Manager at D-Link) along Oleg Mitskaniouk (Target PC.COM)

SUMMATION

We we're quite satisfied with this year's show, with companies moving from Comdex to CES we noticed an interesting mix of the electronics and IT world on one big floor. Unfortunately due to our unlucky flight schedule and the recent snow storm in Chicago we got stuck at the O'Hare international airport for a full day where it got us a day late at this year's event. But that was just the beginning when we realized that the airline lost our baggage, so in other words the first day was basically lost and the second was a full shopping day for clothing. Luckily we still managed to cruise around and get some new interesting contacts that we will be soon featuring on Target PC. With CES 2005 proving it self to be a stable solution for IT companies we have full confidence that next year's event should be stronger than ever with more and more companies making the move to CES.