09 Jan 2010
It's been a long hard week for many people in Las Vegas this week, as over 100,000 people flocked to the city for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
Three huge convention centre halls and numerous other locations have been used to demonstrate the next generation of electronic technology, and a dizzying parade of new systems, peripherals and add-ons have been put on display.
Shaun Nichols and I have now headed home, and will do the rest of the coverage remotely. But in keeping with last year's Top 10 list we've compiled our choices for the best and worst aspects of the show, and some tips for how to get the best out of your CES visit.
THE BEST:
Honourable
mention: 3D TV
Shaun Nichols: We'll say more on the 3D platform later in the
list, but there are some impressive applications for 3D displays, particularly
on the gaming front.
If you were to ask most people five or six years ago about gesture-controlled gaming, many would dismiss it as a passing fad or a gimmick. Lo and behold, the Wii comes along and the use of gestures to control movement is seen as a revolution.
There is likely to be a similar application for 3D TV sets. As the sets become cheaper and more widely adopted, hopefully it will emerge, and the money and energy spent on these systems will not go to waste.
Iain Thomson: In some applications 3D displays actually do make some sense, as we saw at the show.
Movies in particular can be rather good, provided that the director doesn't do lots of pointless 'monster lunges directly at you' type shots. While the effect isn't true 3D it's a pretty good facsimile of the reality.
But some things didn't seem to get a lot out of the 3D environment. We both played the Avatar 3D first person shooter and, as far as I was concerned, the effect was ropey and added nothing to the gameplay.
Based on the buzz we're going to be seeing a lot more of 3D, so we'd better get used to it and developers had better pick up their game.
5.
Nvidia's Tegra platform
Shaun Nichols: With everyone looking to roll out smaller, more
efficient, more powerful tablet models, some were asking who was going to
provide the processing muscle. Nvidia answered the call big time with its
updated
Tegra platform.
Running with eight independent processors and the first dual-core Coretex A9 chip, Tegra looks to be pretty formidable. While the competition was weighted in Tegra's favour, the comparisons Nvidia made to Intel's Atom chip showed the new platform to be more than impressive.
If the new round of tablets is going to take off, more powerful and efficient processors will be needed. Tegra looks like it may just be able to meet those demands.
Iain Thomson: Nvidia's updated platform certainly looks the business and I think it'll do very well in the market.
Computing is getting increasingly visual and Nvidia is in a good position to capitalise on the shift. For a lot of the new tablets coming out with multitouch support, graphic controls are the way forward and that trend is accelerating.
However, there was one aspect of Nvidia's news that I found a little disturbing - the amount of times it was mentioned putting it in cars. To my mind there is already far too much distraction for drivers, be it mobile phones or entertainment systems, and we need to cut down on this, not add to it.
Latest stories from Web
Related articles
Related jobs
Poll
Are you confident that the UK's IT infrastructure is secure from attack in the wake of the Flame malware revelations?
V3 examines the key strengths and weaknesses of Samsung's latest iPhone killer
Connect with V3.co.uk
Social networking is almost ubiquitous. This white paper examines the benefits and risks and it looks at the different ways companies can reconcile them
The importance of understanding your infrastructure
Service Manager - Technology Managed Services, Service...
Reporting to the Managing Director, the role of the Client...
Senior Technical Support/ Support Engineer...
Job Purpose To analyse system requirements...
Keep up to date with the latest products, services and technologies from the world's leading IT companies. IThound.com brings you over 2,000 white papers, case studies and analyst reports.
Do you agree?
The CES Flu
It's really quite simple - get your flu jabs in plenty of time before the show! They won't protect you from colds, of course, but at least you won't spend the latter part of CES in your hotel room, shivering fully-dressed under three duvets.
Posted by: Jon Green 15 Jan 2010
About trade show floor bottlenecks
In your discussion about trade show traffic etiquette, I suggest there is a larger, systemic culprit. It's not merely oblivious conventioneers stopping to gawk at shiny things. It's about the design of the trade show floor itself. Why do you think the aisles are proportioned and laid out the way they are? Generally, it's to squeeze as many booths as possible into a given hall, limited only by venue rules and the local fire code. If the show organizers were to choose a lower density floor plan, achieved by widening all aisles by even just one foot, it would dramatically improve the conference experience for the attendees and keep CES as a "must do" for attendees and companies. Or to look at it from the other perspective, let's not forget, selfish and short sighted decisions of conference organizers can over time kill a show (see also: Comdex).
Posted by: Scott 14 Jan 2010
Great review
Thanks for the interesting article guys.
Posted by: Ian 13 Jan 2010