Event Coverage

A Sneak Peek of CES 2010

By Vincent Chang - 6 Jan 2010

CES Unveiled Press Event

CES Unveiled Press Event

For the media horde that has descended onto Las Vegas like a locust blight, CES has its official event, CES Unveiled, where the best innovations that have been honored for 2010 by its panel of judges are displayed. Along with more than 60 exhibitors, it was a great chance for the media to check out what to expect for the actual show (and test drive their recording equipment).

We managed to drop by for a short while and returned for the following tidbits to tide you over till 7 Jan (Pacific Standard Time), when the show starts proper.

The CES Unveiled preview event was a hotbed of activity as the world's media converged to get the early scoops from the trade show.

Each year, CES honors the most innovative of products and they were shown to the press at CES Unveiled. We spotted some familiar recent products like ATI's Radeon HD 5870.

Videophones have not really taken off in a big way. Instead we got webcams and Skype. However, ASUS latest take on this genre, the AiGuru SVIT adds a 7-inch touchscreen and that is sufficient to convince the panel to honor it for the home networking segment.

Everyone's predicting that 3D TVs will be the big thing this year, what with Blu-ray 3D standards official now. We're not inclined to believe in the hype, though the vendors are definitely pushing it very heavily, like Mitsubishi, who has a 82-inch 3D panel available.

Marvell's Armada is a new family of ARM processors designed for smartphones released a couple of months ago. It can be used in a broad spectrum of devices, from e-book readers like these to even HD media set-top boxes. Snapdragon and Tegra 2, watch out!

Spring Design alleges that Barnes & Noble stole its e-book reader design, dubbed Alex. Going by the similarity with the nook due to the dual screens (bottom is touchscreen capable), it looks like it has a case. It's slated to launch on 7 Jan and is powered by Marvell's Armada of course.

Some of the USB 3.0 certified devices include Western Digital MyBook external drives. However, a sign that getting the masses to buy these upgraded standards is not that easy - we spotted the SD card association pushing its SDXC format at CES Unveiled, something that was announced early last year.

3M was present too with its pico projector but this product here is by Microvision, who has a laser pico projector (Show WX) to compete with the likes of Dell and 3M.

One of the booths that had more than its fair share of attention was at Syabase, where the lure of free popcorn along with a set-top box that plays everything proved too enticing. With a very long and extensive list of supported formats, including online content, the Popbox looks promising.

The black Popbox weighs only 450g and comes with two USB ports, one at the front and one at the back. Ethernet is present and Wi-Fi support is optional.

Injecting some excitement at the event, we spotted the Parrot AR.drone, a robot drone that can be piloted by the user remotely with an iPhone or iPod Touch. The developers also claim that it has the potential to be used in Augmented Reality games, due to the mounted cameras.

We have played with some of these new Lenovo Thinkpad offerings, like the X100e in the office and even done a preview. Not surprisingly though, Lenovo had the whole lineup at CES.

We also saw MSI hawking its notebooks and nettops, with a new netbook, the Wind U160, among them. Pinetrail netbook of course.

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