CES 2013

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CES 2013
CES 2013: On the Show Floor
Bob Ankosko  |  Jan 10, 2013  |  0 comments
You just never know who or what you’re going to run into while walking the show floor…

Dancing Robots: Tosy’s mRobo Ultra Bass is actually an MP3 player with a built-in speaker. When the music starts to play, the little guy turns into a dancin’ fool with some serious moves. Best part: Watching his head pop out from his chest when the music starts (mRobo is a mere torso before he springs into action).

And then there's...

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CES 2013
Samsung's Improved Plasmas
Tom Norton  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
Samsung's new F8500 plasma sets have been redesigned to provide not only darker blacks but brighter whites as well. In a darkened room demo (not the room in the photo!), a comparison with last year's Samsung plasma was convincing, and we hope to get our hands on one to confirm it when the sets become available about mid year.
CES 2013
Samsung's Plain Old HD-2
Tom Norton  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
Also on display was the full range of Samsung's new LED-LCD sets. Shown is the F8000, available in a range of sizes up to 75-inches, it's said to offer much improved black levels with Samsung's Precision Black and Micro Dimming Ultimate (zone edge dimming). In a press demo in the same private, darkened room in which we saw the F8500 plasma, it did seem to have admirably rich blacks.
CES 2013
CES 2013: A new brand goes BOOM
Brent Butterworth  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
A party Monday night at the Palms Towers in Las Vegas launched a colorful new audio brand targeted at ... well, whatever marketing term applies to people in their teens and 20s. (Gen-Z? Milennials? The beard/trucker hat/thick glasses set?) BOOM is a division of DEI holdings, whose other brands include Polk and Definitive Technology.
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CES 2013
Sony's 4K in Print
Tom Norton  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
Sony was the only Ultra HD 4K exhibitor that showed a still of a newspaper page in both standard HD and 4K Ultra HD. The photo shown here (standard HD) and below (4K) only show a very small area of the screen.
CES 2013
Sony's 4K in Print - 2
Tom Norton  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
The color shift you may see here and above, plus moire, are the likely result of my camera's pixels strobing with the pixels on your screen. But other than cropping and identical downscaling, no other processing was performed on the photos here and above. The improved clarity of 4K version here is impossible to miss even after the photos were reduced so they could be used in our blog format. The differences were even more obvious in person.
CES 2013
Klipsch, Jamo, Energy
Tom Norton  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
Times change. The once illustrious speaker brands Klipsch, Jamo, and Energy now belong to conglomerate VOXX (along with RCA, AR, and others). This lonely kiosk on the main convention center floor didn't look too encouraging, given the vitality of those brands at past shows. At the Venetian, where most of the audio exhibits are held, things looked slightly better. I'd expect the Klipsch name to be kept relatively sacrosanct, and there were some nice looking Jamo floor-standers on static display. But the Energy Demo was relegated to a modest-looking sound bar.
CES 2013
Samsung's 4K Round-up
Tom Norton  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
A gathering of the 4K clans was held at the Samsung booth.
CES 2013
Samsung's 4K Does Local Dimming
Tom Norton  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
Samsung's upcoming Ultra HD 4K sets will feature full array backlighting with zone local dimming, The 85-inch set shown here can be set up with its floor stand or the stands legs removed and the set mounted to the wall. It can then be moved down within the outer frame, as needed, to adjust to the desired height. The speakers are located in the outer frame. In addition, a switch box is included that can accept multiple sources and connect then to the set via a single thin (non HDMI) cable.
CES 2013
LG Has Your 21:9 Monitor
Tom Norton  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
This 21:9, 29-inch may not be just the ticket for that big screen home theater, although it can display 2.35:1 films without black bars. But its primary application will be for a computer monitor, where it can display multiple images at once, including a 4-screen split for multitasking.
CES 2013
Sharp Does IGZO
Tom Norton  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
As mentioned in our early CES entries, Sharp is working on a new variation on LCD display technology, called IGZO for Indium, Gallium, Zinc, and Oxygen. It is said to offer ultra low power consumption, improved touch screen capabilities, and twice the potential resolution of conventional LCD. The limited range of products produced to date include a 4K, 32-inch monitor said to be useful for medical imaging, financial analysis, and other possible applications.

Screen shots are notoriously bad at showing the quality of a display, but even on your computer screen you can see the potential. This shot is only a portion of the entire screen image.

CES 2013
Sharp Does 4K IGZO - 2
Tom Norton  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
As with the picture above, even computer resolution can give a hint of the image quality Sharp has achieved in its 32-inch IGZO display.
CES 2013
CES 2013: Off the Beaten Audio Path
Bob Ankosko  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
Polk Live: Showgoers listened over UltraFocus 8000 noise-cancelling headphones ($349) while Baltimore’s “cosmic soul cowboy” Bosley Brown and band performed live in a soundproof booth, the first stop in Polk’s Listen Up Tour. Next stop: Macworld.

LP to iPhone: Ion’s iLP digital conversion turntable ($129) records directly to an iPad, iPhone, or iPod using the free EZ Vinyl/Tape Converter app. The table has a USB port for connection to a PC and RCA outputs if you want to go old-school and skip the digital conversion.

Discreet Sound: Want a little music in the bathroom or maybe out in the garage while you finish your Mr. Fix-It project? No problem, just plug SoundFly Air ($200) into any AC outlet and stream tunes from your iPhone or iPad; up to four Flys can be controlled simultaneously. A Bluetooth version that works with only one speaker is available for $180. Sound is decent—much better than the awful sounding Outlet Speaker ($100) BēmWireless introduced at CES.

CES 2013
Sonus Venere Continues Winning Streak
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
Sonus Faber seems incapable of producing a speaker that sounds anything less than fabulous and the new Venere line is no exception. The line includes the 2.0 monitor (shown, $1700/pair), the 1.5 monitor ($1200/pair), 3.0 tower ($3500/pair), the 2.5 tower ($2500/pair), an on-wall model called The Wall, ($700/each), and a center called The Center ($800). Features include a new silk dome tweeter, combination polypropylene and fiberglass woofers, an enclosure that mimics the shape of $120,000 Aida floorstander, and a new Italian walnut finish in addition to gloss white and black. Add a sub from REL, another Fine Sounds brand, and you're good to go.
CES 2013
Monitor Takes to the Air
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 09, 2013  |  0 comments
There are loads of compact audio systems with AirPlay and Bluetooth wireless compatibility at CES, but how many of them include Monitor Audio's one-inch gold dome tweeter and four-inch aluminum woofer in a biamped configuration for a mere $500? The Airstream 5300 has wider dispersion than an earlier model, with tweeters pushed to the far sides of the baffle, and it has a threaded insert for wall mounting, a nicety you won't find in many competitors.

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