Audio Video News

For the last 25 years, about 1000 engineers from all regions of the world have gathered at the annual IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE) in Chicago to review and discuss the emerging technology trends in the consumer industry.

However, the face of consumer electronics has changed dramatically in just the last decade. Such a conference would have been limited to television and audio entertainment 10 years ago, but the content of the 1998 conference will be less than 25% television and over 75% communications and computing. As a result of the increasing importance of convergence products, the 1998 ICCE will move to Los Angeles for the first time to facilitate more participation from the multimedia-based West Coast growth firms.

According to Jim Farmer, president of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society, "The content of the 1998 conference reflects the fact that the consumer-electronics industry might now be better called the convergence-electronics industry. The most exciting new products are a combination of entertainment video/audio, computing, and communications; in short, convergence. The industry is moving well beyond TV and other hardware manufacturers to include software publishers, cable operators, telephone carriers, and Hollywood."

Specific topics of interest at the June '98 ICCE will include: HDTV, DVD, consumer computing, consumer personal communications, virtual reality, digital satellite TV, copyright-management systems, and Web TV. The conference will be held June 2-4, 1998, in the Los Angeles Airport Marriott; tutorial sessions will be held on May 31 and June 1. For more information, see the conference Web site.