In 28 years of attending the International Consumer Electronics Show, I never witnessed the tide of humanity that swept into the opening day of this year's CES. Usually the crowds swell on the second and third days of the show, but this opening day rivaled the most crowded days of yore, and then some.
The insanity begins at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Thursday, January 8, Day 1 of the International Consumer Electronics Show, when the doors open to the public - tens of thousands of dealers, installers, and just plain folks eager to see, hear, and get their hands on the latest high-tech wonders.
Will your next TV be wire-free? To judge from the sets on display at this year's CES, models that wirelessly pull in programs using the Wi-Fi standard are the next hot thing in TV tech. Most of the Wi-Fi-enabled sets here, including models from Sony, Sharp, and Philips, are LCD TVs in the 12- to 23-inch size range.
In a town where poker is a religion, there's nothing like laying down a royal flush. Arousing the press for an early morning press conference on the far side of the Strip from the Convention Center, JVC introduced the ultimate DVD/VHS combo player-recorder.
A big, wide world of LCD televisions is just one of the eye-catching displays at the Philips booth. Connected Planet is the company's umbrella for a broad range of products - like Internet-connected Streamium TVs - that use "wireless, broadband, and mobile-enabling technologies to provide seamless accessibility to entertainment, information, and services."
Integra and Integra Research finally learned what pizza makers have known for decades. You establish a reputation for a great basic pie and finish it off to suit each customer's taste. Actually, these brands are simply designing high-end audio/video electronic components as if they were PCs.
If New York is the city that never sleeps, then Las Vegas is his loud, drunk cousin who's keeping him up all night. Add to Sin City's inherent rowdiness the congestion and general sexual frustration of the 100,000+ people attending the annual Consumer Electronics Show, and insomnia becomes less an inconvenience than a benefit.
Sonnefeld photos by Michelle Hood Barry Sonnenfeld is the master of droll. You can see it in his work, from John Travolta's suave, minivan-driving gangster in GetShorty to Tommy Lee Jones's slow-burning G-man in Men in Black to Patrick Warburton's oblivious superhero in The Tick.
Listings compiled by Peter Pachal Photo by Tony Cordoza Nothing's more frustrating than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole - except possibly trying to play a multichannel Super Audio CD on a DVD-Video player.
Photo by Tony Cordoza Not long ago, the idea of ripping music onto a hard drive, where it is automatically sorted by artist, album, genre, and so on, and then having it streamed throughout our home was unimaginable.
