Event Coverage

CES 2008: Home Entertainment Galore

By Terence Ang & Zachary Chan - 15 Jan 2008

Goodbye CES, Hello 2008<

Goodbye CES, Hello 2008

The biggest news from CES 2008 would probably be the constant tug-o-war between the two next-gen disc camps - Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) and the HD DVD Promotion Group. For this particular 2008 show however, it seems that the BDA had the one-upper this time round (yes, they even built a booth complete with the Black Pearl ship and a life-sized Jack Sparrow). Anyway, despite that edge, we see Samsung and LG introducing Duo HD set-top players that allow users to playback both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD movies. Of course, there seems to be more news on BD-Java features such as BD-Live and Bonus View, where viewers can access additional information from the Internet via their set-top players or watch a PiP commentary or access local storage while watching a BD movie.

On the TV side, the biggest news is probably Sony's and Samsung's introduction of OLED TVs, with Sony being the first to sell it at retail. We also saw TV resolutions supersede Full HD to hit resolutions four times that of Full HD. The third biggest trend we noticed is the race to create the slimmest TV - be it LCD or plasma. If you own a TV that's thicker than 9mm, you might just lose that super-nerd status among your TV pals.

While we were expecting more studio involvement in the show (well there were some booths by Sony Pictures, NBC Universal and a press conference on the role of movie studios in the tech world organized by Variety magazine) but CES 2008 is still very much a tech show, with little doses of entertainment and celebrity appearances on the side (Jerry Seinfeld, Tony Bennett, Dean Devlin, Yoko Ono and so on).

All in all, CES 2008 gave us a good glimpse of what exactly are the tech vendors focusing on for the next year and how they plan on pushing the boundaries of what's cool beyond just all this confusing talk about HD Ready/Full HD and the next-gen disc war.

 We're sure Homer Simpson won't mind having any of these technologies to get through 2008. And, while it would seem that he's already settled upon his popcorn of choice, the dust is far from settled yet.

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