Consumer Electronics Glow
The CES show in Las Vegas is one of the more strange things I’ve seen in America. The show is HUGE, spanning 3 convention halls and engulfing 120,000 people. 
ALL hotel rooms in the city were booked up. I could not even imagine the number of TVs and computer monitors in the halls, but I know that I received the equivalent of 50 Xrays worth of radiation while there. Walking from exhibit to exhibit, you actually feel the heat of each space change depending on the number of screens they have. Some exhibits actually have portable air conditioning units for the interrogation-style meeting rooms.
I started off in the home theater pavilion, partly because I have a personal issue about getting HD programming in my house, but mostly because I was lost. This hall had a mix of pretty normal looking people: installers and theater designers, the digital plumbers of our time. Nothing really new here, unless you know (and care) a whole lot about cables and impendence and power conditioners.
It took me 2 hours to get through this hall, stopping at a few exhibits where I thought they would be able to help me out with the migration to HD land. Nope.
I moved on to the main hall, not even looking at the signs to see which exhibitors were there. I wanted to be surprised. Straight in the door, you walk into two HUGE exhibits by Microsoft and Intel. Granted, Microsoft had already decked their corporate cross-of-arms on many outdoor shopping centers on the Strip, and Intel had huge banners as you arrived at the airport, but here, well….this was over the top, especially given that Microsoft’s stuff doesn’t work. I wonder who’s gonna lose corporate jet privileges over that little snafu.
Samsung had a beautiful exhibit and I was struck by the nice balance they are posing between form and function. I snuck into Sony’s Qualia room, which was for “special guests,” (bouncers at the door) and got a view of some truly magnificent, yet ridiculously expensive TVs and assorted electronics. If Sony can bring this kind of quality of design to the masses, they will blow everyone else away.
The big attraction for many of the visitors to the convention is Swag. Companies give away more free stuff – from Tic-tacs to pens to tee-shirts to computers to bags – than anywhere else. I got a host of useless junk, and actually stood in line behind a nerdy programmer who yammered on about a video game and downsizing for 10 minutes to try and win a computer. I got a pen.
Just as there are the HUGE booths, there are also the smaller guys just trying to sell a couple of Batman USB drives. They try to draw attention with flashing lights and mirrorballs, like street vendors in Bangkok. All part of the ecosystem.
It snowed on Day 2. It looked so pretty coming down, highlighted by the dull background of the desert hills.
Met Buzz Aldrin. He was hawkin' Palm Pilots. Really interesting, vivacious guy, but kinda sad to be seeing him push things you know he would never use in a million light years.
Food was awesome. Dinner at Prime and Picasso, both excellent. Sandwich in the convention pretty much sucked.
Had five minutes to gamble and I went to the slots. I used to think they were a rip-off, but now I REALLY think they’re a rip-off. You don’t even deal in coins anymore. You put the money in, like you’re gonna buy a coke, you play, and when you want to cash-out by hitting the button, the machine plays a WAV file of coins hitting metal and prints out a ticket, much the same as the one you get when you park a car in a garage. Takes all the fun out of gambling (what fun there was) and makes me think they control the whole game now because they don’t have to service the damn machines anymore, just change the ticket roll and collect the bills. Ouch.
At the end of it all, I felt even more dubious about figuring out the HD equation. The problem with these shows is that you see all the things that are coming down the pike, and, all of sudden, what you just got seems, well, crappy. Ah, consumerism.
More pictures here
ALL hotel rooms in the city were booked up. I could not even imagine the number of TVs and computer monitors in the halls, but I know that I received the equivalent of 50 Xrays worth of radiation while there. Walking from exhibit to exhibit, you actually feel the heat of each space change depending on the number of screens they have. Some exhibits actually have portable air conditioning units for the interrogation-style meeting rooms.
I started off in the home theater pavilion, partly because I have a personal issue about getting HD programming in my house, but mostly because I was lost. This hall had a mix of pretty normal looking people: installers and theater designers, the digital plumbers of our time. Nothing really new here, unless you know (and care) a whole lot about cables and impendence and power conditioners.
It took me 2 hours to get through this hall, stopping at a few exhibits where I thought they would be able to help me out with the migration to HD land. Nope.
I moved on to the main hall, not even looking at the signs to see which exhibitors were there. I wanted to be surprised. Straight in the door, you walk into two HUGE exhibits by Microsoft and Intel. Granted, Microsoft had already decked their corporate cross-of-arms on many outdoor shopping centers on the Strip, and Intel had huge banners as you arrived at the airport, but here, well….this was over the top, especially given that Microsoft’s stuff doesn’t work. I wonder who’s gonna lose corporate jet privileges over that little snafu.
Samsung had a beautiful exhibit and I was struck by the nice balance they are posing between form and function. I snuck into Sony’s Qualia room, which was for “special guests,” (bouncers at the door) and got a view of some truly magnificent, yet ridiculously expensive TVs and assorted electronics. If Sony can bring this kind of quality of design to the masses, they will blow everyone else away.
The big attraction for many of the visitors to the convention is Swag. Companies give away more free stuff – from Tic-tacs to pens to tee-shirts to computers to bags – than anywhere else. I got a host of useless junk, and actually stood in line behind a nerdy programmer who yammered on about a video game and downsizing for 10 minutes to try and win a computer. I got a pen.
Just as there are the HUGE booths, there are also the smaller guys just trying to sell a couple of Batman USB drives. They try to draw attention with flashing lights and mirrorballs, like street vendors in Bangkok. All part of the ecosystem.
It snowed on Day 2. It looked so pretty coming down, highlighted by the dull background of the desert hills.
Met Buzz Aldrin. He was hawkin' Palm Pilots. Really interesting, vivacious guy, but kinda sad to be seeing him push things you know he would never use in a million light years.
Food was awesome. Dinner at Prime and Picasso, both excellent. Sandwich in the convention pretty much sucked.
Had five minutes to gamble and I went to the slots. I used to think they were a rip-off, but now I REALLY think they’re a rip-off. You don’t even deal in coins anymore. You put the money in, like you’re gonna buy a coke, you play, and when you want to cash-out by hitting the button, the machine plays a WAV file of coins hitting metal and prints out a ticket, much the same as the one you get when you park a car in a garage. Takes all the fun out of gambling (what fun there was) and makes me think they control the whole game now because they don’t have to service the damn machines anymore, just change the ticket roll and collect the bills. Ouch.
At the end of it all, I felt even more dubious about figuring out the HD equation. The problem with these shows is that you see all the things that are coming down the pike, and, all of sudden, what you just got seems, well, crappy. Ah, consumerism.
More pictures here
posted by Lou at 5:09 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks for the descripttion. Now I don't feel bad that I did not go.
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