ces2008
Latest
Hands-on with the ASUS R50A
It's been a real MID / UMPC bonanza at CES this year, and we're not done quite yet. We got to handle the ASUS R50A at the company's small -- yet crowded -- booth, and we've brought back pictures for the gang. While the design is fairly solid on the device, the unit feels a bit slippery to the touch. The button / navigation placement works, though coming to grips with everything wasn't exactly a smooth transition. Once again, we're seeing that miniaturized Vista, and honestly, we're not totally convinced this is the platform of choice for these pixel-dense screens. Check out the gallery and see the little guy in action.%Gallery-13312%
Hands-on with an HD Radio prototype phone
During a brief booth visit at iBiquity, we had opportunity to see what's coming for the HD-Radio people, and the future does include mobile. We've no details to offer here as there were really none to get, but hey, pics are at least something. The device is a bit weak in the knees, but we think the HD Radio types will likely bust out some nice sets, perhaps we'll even see something from partner Samsung.%Gallery-13281%
Bumblebee spotted on CES floor
The Transformers' Bumblebee showed up on the CES show floor this year, though we have to say he was more than a little worse for wear. According to reports, he'd been out drinking all night with David Caruso at the Bellagio, and couldn't find his keys when he woke up... which we're sure you can imagine is a major problem for him. When we requested an interview, the alien robot claimed he wasn't feeling too well, and asked if we had a swimming pool and two gigantic Alka-Seltzer tablets.
UTStarcom's CES 2008 booth tour
In terms of layout, UTStarcom's booth is close to a dead ringer for its showing at last year's CES; just the promos and handsets have changed, basically. The darlings of the show have to be the HSM180, an absolutely bizarre HSDPA candybar featuring two circles for a keypad, and the TXT8010, a QWERTY slider with an attitude for CDMA networks. Check 'em out, yo.%Gallery-13264%
Hands-on with the LimePC
THTF (which stands for Tsinghua Tongfang, if you must know) is at CES showing its LimePC series of simple, lightweight computers, and we took a particular interest in three of 'em, ordered by size from largest to smallest: the UMPC, HandheldPC, and PalmPC (pictured) models. All three pack an uber-low power mobileGT core from Freescale, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, and touchscreen displays; the Palm PC and HandheldPC feature either 8 or 16GB of Flash, while the UMPC upgrades to a hard drive between 30 and 100GB in capacity. Though both the hardware and the Linux-based software were extremely raw here, we see promise in these totally hackable little beasts -- particularly in the smaller of the two, both of which are totally pocketable. Check out the gallery to see all three doing their thing.%Gallery-13271%
THX's CES 2008 booth tour
We took a stroll through the THX booth, where they were showing off all sorts of audio Jedi magic. In-car audio got some attention, evidenced by the Lincoln MKS at the booth featuring THX tech. Worry not, though, the living room experience hasn't been forgotten.%Gallery-13255%
Butt-on with the ButtKicker
Let's be honest, gaming chairs in all flavors of "enhancement" from vibration to sound to cup holders and beyond are quickly becoming a dime a dozen -- but the ButtKicker not only takes a different approach to vibration enhancement than other options but also wins the "most notable name" award in the arena. For one thing, it's not a chair -- it's a device you can install on any office chair to add vibration experience to not just gaming but anything producing sound on your computer including music and other media players. There are also two other versions of the device for use in home theater and auto installations (you can retrofit pretty much any old Lazy-boy in your living room). At $99 the gaming-focused version of the ButtKicker is cheaper than a lot of all-in-one gaming chair solutions as well. Oh, and how does the thing feel? Let's just say it tickled us in many nuanced ways.%Gallery-13283%
Video: eCoupled not demoing its wireless power system
We were totally stoked to see eCoupled's "Intelligent Wireless Power" system in action -- the rep even said they'd try and cook us a burger on their wireless Foreman grill -- but when Veronica got there, "power fluctuations" kept them from demoing anything more than a Zune that lit up when placed directly on a charging pad. VB was way too nice to call them out on video, but come on -- you don't run around promising wireless burgers and then barely compete with a WildCharger. Check out Veronica's barely-concealed boredom after the break.
Samsung's CES 2008 booth tour
Despite the shadow of justifiable hype cast by Panasonic's 150-inch TV, Pioneer's 9-mm thin and "extreme contrast" prototype plasmas, Samsung still managed to make a respectable (yet quiet) showing at CES 2008. After all, it's not every day we see a pair of 31- and 14-inch OLED TVs, a touch-screen RTS-A1100 Media Center beauty, and 82-inch quadHD and 52-inch Ultra Slim LCDs. They've even tamed their usual push of "world's first, fastest, biggest, etc." boasting... a bit. But hey, it wouldn't be Samsung if they didn't crow a little.%Gallery-13272%
CES 2008: Most random booth gimmick award
Mind you, we've seen no shortage of crazy antics to grab attendee attention out on the show floor (P.T. Barnum would be very, very proud), but this year's award for randomest booth gimmick goes to wall mounting solutions company Vantage Point, who (rather successfully) drew their flock via this oxygen bar in their booth. We did overhear them get a lot of product inquiries out of the deal... about where to buy an oxygen bar (but we're sure the mental road to wall mounting curiosity is super short).
Hands-on with Samsung's Q1 Ultra UMPC
Meet the WiBrain B1's bigger, meaner brother -- the Samsung Q1 Ultra. We've been lovingly gazing at pictures of this behemoth for some time now, but we finally got a chance to toss it around at ye old CES this year. Truth? It's kind of messed up looking, and that keypad isn't any easier to use than it looks. For some reason, Samsung thought the layout should slant downward, but we can't say why. At any rate, the model we had was running Vista -- if a bit slowly -- and had a pretty nice looking display. Hit the gallery and see the goods for yourself. %Gallery-13260%
Eyes-on: Samsung's 82-inch QuadHD & 52-inch Ultra Slim LCDs
Samsung can join Hitachi while crying into their sake as its 52-inch "thinnest non-OLED HDTV ever" is around 4x as thick as Pioneer's 9mm heroin-chic Kuro. Take heart Sammy, because your 82-inch -- and btw, what is with the 82-inch obsession (2005 & 2006 CES), we need to talk about that -- Quad HD display is like looking out of a window, if we had bigger and cleaner windows. Check out the gallery to see what we mean.%Gallery-13265%
Hands-on with Denon's super-separates
If the idea of a receiver is just too lowbrow for you, check out Denon's processor/amplifier separates, the AVP/POA-A1HDCI ('AVP' for the processor, 'POA' for the amp). Six HDMI 1.3 inputs, two parallel HDMI outputs and Silicon Optix Realta video processing are some processor highlights; the amp packs in 10 channels at 150-watts. While you're at it, why settle for a Blu-ray player when you can get a dedicated transport? That back panel picture of the DVD-2500BTCI is no prototype unit -- all you get is a power cord, HDMI output, and RS-232. Spin those bits off the Blu-ray disc and send them on to the AVP-A1HDCI for decoding. Pricing is securely in the "if you have to ask..." category: $7k for the AVP-A1HDCI, $7k for the POA-A1HDCI and $1200 for the DVD-2500BTCI.%Gallery-13251%
Digital Photo Frame Watch, it's a watch and a photo frame
Finally, you can throw out that slide carousel you've kept strapped to your wrist for the last two decades and replace it with the absolute latest in cutting edge digital photo frame technology. Introducing the aptly titled Digital Photo Frame Watch, whose packaging promises "It's a real watch." But wait, it gets better. This "real watch" stores 140 pictures in its copious 2MB of internal memory, all for playback on its no doubt gorgeous OLED color display. This is the future, folks. It's here. We've seen it. And it shows pictures.On your wrist.
NEC has its own 2880x900 curved gaming display
We feel sorry for poor NEC. While everyone at CES is busy buzzing about Alienware's gorgeous curved DLP display (including us), NEC is quietly showing off its CRVD-42DWX+ display that's more or less identical: a 2880x900 (double WXGA+) panel with a contrast ratio of 10000:1. We're assuming they're both built by the same ODM, Ostendo, so hopefully some healthy competition will help bring one of these two beauties within your meager gaming budget. Unfortunately, like the Alienware model, there's no pricing or shipping information. Ogle some more pics in our gallery below.%Gallery-13275%
Hands-on with Qualcomm's Snapdragon-powered "Anchorage"
We sat down with one of Qualcomm's fancy new reference designs today, the Anchorage QWERTY slider phone. Let's be perfectly clear -- the Inventec-crafted device won't ever see the light of day in this exact form, Qualcomm just needed some eye candy with which to demonstrate its new Snapdragon platform. The chipset features a highly specialized and customized ARM-based core and graphics from ATI -- both actually licensed this time around, we're told -- and tries to take advantage of as many technologies that Snapdragon offers as possible: MediaFLO support, blazing clock speeds (1GHz to be exact), high resolutions (SVGA here), and the list goes on. Snapdragon-powered devices should hit retail from HTC and Samsung by the end of the year. Click on for pics, just don't get too attached since this is as close as you'll ever get to it, alright?%Gallery-13243%
Video: Downloading content with Blu-ray interactive
It's pretty cheery in the Blu-ray camp this year, for several reasons -- and one of them is the launch of BD Live. We're not exactly certain why they picked downloadable ringtones from Godzilla as the demo, but Veronica was brave enough to sit through the lowest point of Matthew Broderick's career to snag us this demo. Check it all out after the break!Update: Sorry, YouTube was being a little balky -- video's up again!
AMD's LIVE! Ultra branding is so SUPER DUPER! Awesome
In a superlative heave of marketing masturbation, AMD just announced their "AMD LIVE! Ultra" brand. Having learned nothing from Intel's Viiv debacle, AMD will soon stuff systems powered by AMD's Spider and Puma platforms optimized for HD video playback into the extended AMD LIVE! brand. That includes machines packing AMD's quad-core or dual-core tech with ATI Radeon HD graphics, AMD chipsets, and a pre-load of AMD's LIVE! Explorer media viewer and browsing application (pictured above). The brands will infect our AMD desktops starting the first half of 2008 -- laptops in the 2nd half. See, that didn't take 1,162 words now did it AMD?
Hands-on with the Marantz VS3002 HDMI switcher
Readers who tuned in before CES already got the details on the Marantz VS3002 HDMI switcher, but we'll recap really quick before we move to the pics. Six inputs and two parallel outputs, HDMI 1.3 and RS-232. And lookee here: there are six HDMI inputs and two outputs around back! This is priced at $349 and will ship in February.%Gallery-13242%
Video: Bill Gates is looking for a job -- fruitlessly
Would you hire a 52 year old college dropout who's only had one job his entire life? Ok, but what if the college he dropped out of was Harvard, and the one job he's is as founder and chairman of the world's most powerful software company? No, not even then? If you haven't already seen it, watch as our man Bill flounders in the hunt for a new gig, as shown at his final CES keynote a couple of days ago. Good luck out there, man -- and don't forget, if you're looking for a few extra bucks we'd love your help covering Macworld next week.