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Las Vegas is very visually deceiving. Buildings, signs and objects are so large in Las Vegas they appear much closer than they really are. Case in point: The Las Vegas Hilton is next door to the LV Convention Center, but walking from one to the other can take 20-30 minutes or more . Last night I attended an event at the Wynn, which is next door to the Venetian. A friend suggested we walk rather than drive. After convincing him that was a mistake, we drove from one parking garage to the other and the distance turned out to be more than 1/2 mile. I have nothing against a good walk except when carrying my laptop computer and the tons of literature collected at the show. Gotta go, it's time to walk the convention floor, which is over 1.5 million square feet! Despite the saying that "Everything is bigger in Texas", the Lone Star state has nothing over Las Vegas.

It may sound glamourous to you, having the opportunity to come to CES, see all the latest new CE toys, and write about it for you. Yes, it can be fun and the best part for me is interacting with friends and colleagues I don't get to see year round. Days start early and usually end very late. However, this year I did't need an alarm clock to get me up in the morning, no matter how tired I might have been the night before. We are staying at the Hyatt Place, a wonderfully remodeled hotel, a bit off the beaten path, which is quiet and tranquil compared to the large themed hotels with casinos. But there is always a catch. It is right in front of McCarren airport and each and every plane flies directly over us. Fortunately, McCarren has a curfew from midnight to 6am. So there is a small window of opportunity for uninterrupted sleep but you can set your clock by that first flight of the morning.

Axar Media, a company based out of the UK, was showing a prototype of a Wireless HD system. The system looked simple enough with a transmitter and a receiver. Using two suites at the Venetian Hotel, they effectively demonstrated the transfer of an HD signal (both from a media player and a Blu-ray player) from one room to the next. They use the H.264 AVC video compression scheme to make the most effective use of the bandwidth. There is some degradation in the signal quality, and I detected some motion artifacts especially from the media server transfer. However, we have to start somewhere and the time for Wireless HD has finally come. Its just a matter of time before it will be as ubiquitous as streaming audio.