CES 2011: Show Floor Coverage (Part 5)

And now, for Part 5 of our CES 2011 coverage straight from Las Vegas. Sleepless nights to get you all the updates straight from the show floor and featuring Panasonic, Razer, Creative, Audio Technica and so much more.

By Aloysius Low - 9 Jan 2011

Panasonic's Booth

Known for both its Viera range of television sets, Lumix range of cameras and Toughbook brand of notebooks, we popped by Panasonic's massive booth to check out what they have. Well, apart from some new surprises, it would seem Panasonic's booth focused more on the content and how it is delivered to you in your home, like 3D broadcasting. We also saw some home theater set ups and a new lens for the GF2 to take 3D pictures, and Hollywood directors who came down for a chat session at the booth.

Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge) and Michael Mann (Public Enemies) and Oliver Stone (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps) at the Panasonic booth for a discussion.

One of the more crowded parts of the booth was the section where Panasonic was showing off a Veira tablet. The cool thing about this tablet is the ability to control your TV sets and changing channels by just flicking the video channel in your tablet upwards to your TV set.

New Blu-ray players from Panasonic: the DMP-BDT210, the DMP-BDT310 and the DMP-BDT110. Each unit has their own distinctive features, but all share Skype capabilities and 3D Blu-ray playback.

Here's a bunch of new slim stereo players that will probably soon make their way to the market soon.

The 50-inch version of Panasonic's Plasma GT30 series showing just how much football fans will enjoy having 3D sports in their living room.

Audio Technica's booth

Audio Technica's booth was a little harder to find, located at the back of the South Halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center. We are glad we made the trip though, since we spotted a few gems in the form of an in-ear noise canceling headset. This means you don't need a big, bulky headset anymore.

We headed to the Audio Technica booth to check out the headsets that's sure to be there.

This is the new in-ear audio canceling headset, the ATH-ANC23. Uses their Quiet Point technology and is capable of reducing noise by 90%.

Also new are these new range of Solid Bass headphones for a booming experience while still keeping the mid and highs accurate.

Altec Lansing's Booth

Altec Lansing's key device would be this inMotion Air, which allows you to playback your music from 300 feet (~91 meters). It also has a rechargeable battery for 7 hours of playback.

Creative's Booth

Creative's Sound Blaster Tactic3D Alpha was announced at the show and features USB/3.5mm connectivity. There's THX TruStudio Pro Surround for a 3D audio experience and has customizable touch screen controls for gaming.

D-Link's Booth

We were also pretty curious about what new networking products that D-Link could come out with and discovered that D-Link was venturing into the cloud with its newest Miicassa technology for its storage routers. If you have one of the newer models and live in the US, then soon, you'll be able to get access to this new cloud-based image and video sharing app. Global roll out is unknown for now, and you will need a newer model storage router to benefit from this.

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like. It basically resides in your browser, and when clicked upon, expands up to let you access the service. There are plans for Micassa apps for smartphones too.

You can share your music/video folders by inviting someone and give them access. There, they can access your shared items on your storage router, and there's no need for them to require other permissions as all this is down via D-Link's web service.

Here's a bunch of their new Wireless N network cameras (and one wired) that allow you to monitor a place over a network. Great for those security conscious types.

Razer's Booth

Razer has been making a splash with plenty of new products, but the one announced at CES takes the cake with its very interesting form factor and design. The Razer Switchblade is a mini Intel Atom based notebook that's made for gaming and features a keyboard that changes dynamically depending on the game you play. Cool eh? Also announced is the Razer Onza, a Xbox 360 controller that finally makes a long awaited appearance.

The Razer Onza, an Xbox 360 controller that features programmable buttons and backlit keys for playing in the night.

The highlight of Razer's show is the Razer Switchblade, a mini notebook powered by the Intel Atom processor that let's you play games with a keyboard that switches to a different layout depending on the game you play.

For a game like DoTA, the keys change into one that allow for easy access to scroll the map, while some buttons allow for easy access to the inventory. On the far right, the keys are mapped to the skills that are used by the heroes.

Pixel Qi's Booth

We heard rumors of the Notion Ink Adam tablet at CES, and decided to hunt it down. We heard rumors of it being at the Pixel Qi booth (though really, it's just a small meeting room and not an exhibitor booth), so we headed down there. Sadly, the tablet was no longer there and Pixel Qi could only show us a tablet that uses their screen. Still worth a look though, but we were left disappointed.

The Pixel Qi tablet with the backlight turned on.

The same tablet with the lights turned off and the transreflective screen in action.

Sennheiser's Booth

Sennheiser told us that they had plenty of new stuff to show us and boy were they not wrong. Noise canceling in-ear headphones, new updates to their headphone lines and some pretty looking models made for Adidas. Check it out.

The new noise cancelling CXC 700 in-ear head phones are powered by Sennheiser's NoiseGard technology and has 3 modes of noise canceling levels for the right environment.

The MM550 Travel noise canceling headset is designed with frequent travellers in mind and can link with your smartphone via Bluetooth. The head pads were really comfortable when we tried it and enclosed our ears perfectly.

The HD 220 is a partnership with Adidas and feature a solid bass sound and noise blocking technology.

Viewsonic's Booth

With Viewsonic already launching the ViewPad 7 and 10 tablets, we wondered what they would have at their booth. We were quite amused when we stopped by.