<B>Thomas J. Norton</B><BR>
Time was when CES meant small, unexciting televisions lining the back isles of the convention center. Those times are well past, as manufacturers both large and small vie for the sexiest video presentation. The winner this year was clearly Samsung, with their 102-inch plasma (as before, all screen sizes here are diagonal unless stated otherwise). How they got this monster to Las Vegas and into the convention center free of damage and fully functional remains one of the seven mysteries of the show (another was who distributed all of those pornographic calling cards around the men's restrooms—but let's not go there).
The official opening day of CES brings more announcements - and more gawking attendees to fight your way through. Geoffrey Morrison, Home Theater Magazine's Video Editor, more than once voiced his desire for a cattle prod. Fortunately for everyone concerned, none of the exhibitors were displaying cattle prods although a quick trip through the Las Vegas Convention Center aisles will take you past vendors showing everything from telescopes to hand-held electronic Bible navigators to flying discs with LED lights inside. It's such a shame all we get to cover is home theater gear...
Tens of thousands of dealers, distributors, reporters, and gear-happy users pass through the doors of the Las Vegas Convention Center on the first official day of CES 2005.
If the current trend continues, companies will offer music implants at next year's CES. This year merely tiny had to suffice. Ever-smaller flash-memory chips enable some amazing compressed-music playback devices that make the hard-disk-based Apple iPod Mini look elephantine.
The first public day of the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show reached new heights with announcements from Echostar's Dish Network and DirecTV. These satellite-TV providers plan to turn the sky over the equator into the equivalent of a freeway in rush hour.
The forces competing to win the prize of the next-generation DVD - the disc that will carry high-definition movies and other HD content - squared off with competing press conferences on the first day of the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show. As in exhibition sports, they played real ball, but the score counted little toward the championship.
This is the most hard-driving Consumer Electronics Show in history. Once limited to computers, hard-disk drives, or simply hard drives, now inhabit a wide array of audio and video components.
The popularity of flat-panel TVs with LCD (liquid-crystal display) screens was very much in evidence at CES 2005. From well-established names like Sharp and Toshiba to relative newcomers in the U.S. market like BenQ and Moxell, a good number of manufacturers displayed LCD models ranging from 15 to 55 inches.
By far one of the biggest challenges for most people installing a home theater system is wiring the speakers - especially the surrounds because they're typically placed quite a ways from the rest. Wireless connections are an obvious solution, and at this year's CES, several manufacturers offered systems taking advantage of 2.4-GHz wireless technology to feed the surrounds.
Sanyo makes it very clear who they like in the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray battle.
