Jeremy Toeman – Page 42

Bill Gates keynote @ CES2007

Posted on January 14, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

This was the tenth time Bill gave the keynote address at CES, but the first time I’d ever had the chance to go watch in person. Frankly, the 3 hours we spent just sitting in lines was enough of a disincentive to do it again next year, especially since the event was so well covered by others. Also, as Richard MacManus’ tag cloud shows, the content at the keynote was fairly, well, predictable. As a plus, I got to spend a lot of that time (and much of Monday as well) talking with Ron Dave Winer. Here’s a quick video of the line(s) of folks waiting to enter, then actually pouring into the auditorium.

All my pictures from the keynote are on Flickr.

We entered the theater at 5:30pm, Bill didn’t go on until 6:30. This left us with two entertainment options:

Ugh.

While watching the keynote itself, I was impressed with the quality of Vista. I’d seen much of the demos before (again, go here to find more detailed coverage), but this one just came across a little more polished than in the past. Interestingly though, I felt the event fell short. Not because there weren’t any famous people. Not because one of the demonstrators actually asked us to give him some applause. More because I just felt that Vista is finally at the level the OS is supposed to be. It’s not more than what it could be. It’s not a vision of the future, it’s a vision of today.

That’s a lot less than I’d expect from a visionary.

Are all HDMI cables the same?

Posted on January 14, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

You can buy a three foot HDMI cable for $10 or $100. But it’s all digital, right? So does it really make a difference? I did a quick interview with a booth staffer from Ethereal at CES, and while not everything he says is 100% right, it’s still pretty useful.

psst – in case you don’t feel like watching the video, the answer is pretty much “yes”.

Why consumers aren't at the Consumer Electronics Show

Posted on January 14, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

Not Welcome While I was at CES last week, one of my readers, Rex Thomas posted a comment here on the blog, voicing his lousy experience trying to get into CES this year. From his comment, it sounds like Rex had a very lousy time, and received poor information and advice from numerous people. I feel bad for Rex, and thought, as a member of “the industry” that I’d take a stab at an explanation. As a disclaimer here, I am not going to try to justify the poor communication/notifications on the CES Web site, which should absolutely be crystal clear for others like Rex.

First of all, it is a trade show, and by definition, that implies it’s for members of the specified trade. Unlike a Car Show or Boat Show, which are really expositions, it’s an event for people in an industry. The Fancy Food Show, for example, is similarly not open to the public, nor are most events of a similar nature. It just so happens to be named Consumer electronics show, since the industry itself is dubber Consumer Electronics.

Second, the show’s pretty crowded as it is, with over 140,000 people registered this year. If we were to assume it’s all by the book, that’s 140,000 consumer electronics employees, buyers, press/media, and other affiliated people. Again, that’s a lot of people! If there were no restrictions, that could easily double within a couple of years, and I don’t know how the city nor the convention could handle the traffic!

Third, consider the fact that until the past few years the primary goal of the event was retail sales and relationships. The show’s history was about introducing new consumer electronics products to retailers, and selling products. In the past few years, more and more media coverage has upped the profile of the show to the point where virtually anyone even connected to consumer technology has an awareness of “CES” and knows at least a bit about it. The event has absolutely transcended its humble origins, and today encompasses much more than just selling consumer electronics to retailers!

Finally, take the sum of the points above. There are a lot of people there, most of which have specific jobs to do. Both retailers and press have to get to as many relevant booths as they can. Booth staff need to demo and talk for hours on-end to as many of their target customers or media attendees as possible. If all the people who need to be there to do their job had to navigate around anyone and everyone who felt like coming to Vegas that week, they simply wouldn’t be able to get their jobs done. This is probably the key reason to restrict attendance to industry folks.

I know it seems like it’s a lot of fun, and in many ways it is fun. But it’s a lot of work for a lot of people. The people who work for consumer electronics companies tend to work through all of December just to prepare for the show, whether they are getting demos ready or designing and building booths or simply planning the logistics for staffers. Media and analysts also typically spend weeks just figuring out their calendars for the 4-day nerdapalooza. December is not a pleasant month for those of us in the consumer electronics industry!

So Rex, and others out there who think it’s unfair or should be changed, I hope this helps clarify a bit of why it’s technically a closed event. In the meantime, there are several events which are in fact open to the general public. CeBIT in Germany every March, as well as Digital Life in NYC in October, are both open for anyone to attend (I’d pick Digital Life over CeBIT any time).

Tuneview iPod Dock @ CES2007

Posted on January 14, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

iPod docks are popular. And why not? They get all your iPod music onto your existing stereo or play it back via internal speakers. Makes perfect sense. We’ve reviewed them before, and will review them again. The team from Keyspan Digital (they make those cool PC remotes) thinks they have a better docking station than anyone else, and in this video we let them do their pitch for their Tuneview dock.

The Dream Machine @ CES2007

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

With a name like The Dream Machine we could be talking about anything from a sleep tool to something a bit more R-rated. In this case, it’s a video game controller (sorry for the letdown if that wasn’t what you were hoping for). But it is a big controller and does all sorts of cool stuff! Watch the video and check out the photos below.

More CES Dream Machine coverage: The Gizmos, SF Gate (and their video), and Gizmodo.

Roboquad walks with a cool stride

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

WowWee, the company behind the massively popular Robosapien, introduced 5 new robots at CES this week. We shot this little video of the new Roboquad (a “spider-bot”) walking. This is gonna delight the kids and creep out the moms. Perfect! 😉

More Roboquad CES coverage: Engadget, StreetTech, technabob, and this robotics blog.

WildCharge: Wireless Gadget Power

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

WildCharge was one of the few companies whose press releases prior to CES really caught my eye. Wireless power? Whozawhatzit? Huh? Watch this video interview for a brief explanation:

Another interview here and more CES coverage here.

What makes the best stereos tick?

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

Ok, that subject line could take hours to answer, so while dropping by the Meridian booth at CES, I asked someone to answer it in about 60 seconds. For those of you unfamiliar with Meridian, they make, well, the best stereo equipment in the world. I’m sure that by writing that I’ve enraged either some little company that happens to out-do them, or people who own Meridian equipment and think the word “stereo” isn’t good enough. But right now since I can’t afford any of it, I get to call it like I see it. Now onto his answer…

Exclusive CES Interview with Fatal1ty!

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

I got a chance to meet Fatal1ty at the DirecTV press conference at CES this past week and grabbed a quick video. By exclusive I mean that I am the only one with exactly this video. Check out his thoughts on a professional gaming league!

A Tale of Two Satellite Press Conferences, part 2

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

Continuing from part 1…

DirecTV
From walking in it appeared that the DirecTV conference was going to be a bit of a rehash of Echostar, but once the lights dimmed, the difference was substantial. First of all, the presentation included… video. Yup, video – from a media company – what a surprise! I was also impressed that the company brought a team of execs, and a couple of guest stars!

The presentation from Chase Carey (President/CEO) began with a recap of 2006, then went on to discuss the year ahead. The focus will be on Sports, HD, and VOD, and will include new content and services to support the vision. Chase then professed the company’s HDTV leadership position.

Steven Roberts (VP of Games and Strategic Initiatives) came on to present DirecTV’s new Championship Gaming Series, which he described as a “sports league” for gaming. The league will debut later this year, and includes a draft, commissioner, and salaried players. They showed a promo video which I felt was a really exciting vision for gaming. This is definitely something I’d have applied for as a teenager, and I hope “the kids today” take advantage of the opportunity. Fatal1ty also appeared, as he’s under an exclusive contract with DirecTV. I also got a brief interview with him which I’ll post later.

Next up, Eric Shanks (EVP for Entertainment) took the stage to discuss a few new technologies and services. The theme of “being connected” is key, with their Viiv-enabled DVR as their first foray into a connected, digital home. Eric also showcased the upcoming DirecTV-on-demand (launching in Q1), which allows subscribers to view a whole new lineup of on-demand programming. Broadcasters will have the ability to create their own styles and themed “pages” for users.

Eric mentioned consumers’ frustrations with receiving announcements (for new channels, programming, features, etc) from DirecTV and how they are addressing it with a new feature called GMessages (the G is for Guide). In the demo, the program guide has new lines with ~~ads~~ announcements from DTV or broadcasters. These ~~ads~~ announcements can also include interactive features (e.g. “record this” or, more appropriately “buy now”). I don’t know about how many customers are complaining on this topic, but I’d recommend this article at PVRWire on some quite major complaints.

Next, Eric introduced TV veteran Rick Rosner as the pioneer/inventor of a new product coming soon from DirecTV called Sat+Go. Now I have the pleasure of having met Rick while I was working at Sling Media, as he was a big Slingbox owner and helped spread the word to Hollywood. Rick’s a great guy and a visionary, and while he loves his Slingbox, he really wanted to come up with a way to watch DirecTV without any connection, whether he’s in the middle of the desert or out camping somewhere. Thus, Sat+Go was born (read more from the NY Times). Congrats to Rick, couldn’t happen to a nicer guy!

Next up from Eric was a preview of the Nascar Hot Pass, a DirecTV exclusive debuting next month. For each race, the DTV/Nascar team will pick 5 racers and give them dedicated channels during the race. It adds 30 new cameras and 10 announcers per race! I’m not much of a Nascar fan myself, but it sounds like a great service to Nascar fans.

During Q&A, I decided to pop in a question myself, wanting to find out where DTV sees Internet/user-generated content (read: YouTube) fits in. DirecTV believes the trend is toward HDTV, and most UGC doesn’t look good (read: it looks very bad) on HD displays. That said, they acknowledge the growth and are looking into something down the road with “Web players.” My hunch is they’ve gone into it pretty far, as they even mentioned a possible implementation where Web videos could have a “send to my DVR” button added to the screen. This was actually my first time hearing a company like this one admit there is a benefit to working with Web services (as opposed to the PR rep at Moxi/Digeo who felt that its not the right target market and a bit too niche). I’m impressed!

The final interesting comment came as a reporter from a HD publication asked about 1080p support. DirecTV has not committed to 1080p, and their CTO rose to state that they weren’t making any commitments yet. As the reporter pushed on the question, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that they weren’t budging yet, and weren’t convinced on the benefits of the format. This is a sentiment I completely agree with, and will discuss in the future – don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-1080p, I just think there’s a lot of FUD on the topic.

Powerpoint slides, screenshots, and pictures from the event are below:

In Conclusion
I have decided to create an arbitrary scoring system to pronounce one of the two companies the First Ever Winner of the CES 2007 Battle of the Satellite Company Press Conferences…

DirecTV takes a gamble on broadcasting quite a few hours of video game competition. 1 point.
Both companies declare themselves “HD leaders”. 0 points.
DirecTV dedicates 5 new channels for car racing. Net gain of 0 points.
Echostar pledges no rate hikes and widens the channel lineups. 3 points.
DirecTV throws advertising into the program guide. -1 point.
Echostar gives the customer control with USB support. 1 point.
DirecTV tries a novel approach of letting someone outside their company propose a product and actually brings it to market. 1 point.
Echostar has Sling Media investment (worth 1 point) but no other mention of any Internet-based content or services (minus 2 points).
DirecTV addresses the Connected Home as well as Internet content services. 2 out of a 5 total point pool for the topic.

Initial score: Echostar 3, DirecTV 3. Holy cow, a tie. Hmm.. I need a tiebreaker. OK, how about:

DirecTV wins it by showing more than 0 seconds of video during their presentation.

A Tale of Two Satellite Press Conferences, part 1

Posted on January 12, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

While Sunday was the official Press Day at CES, Monday (and beyond) still offered a few press conferences. I decided to go to both the EchoStar (DISH Network) and DirecTV ones, which were conveniently back-to-back and in neighboring rooms. It was quite interesting to see the complete contrast in styles between both presentations.

Echostar/DISH Network
Echostar’s conference started with some corporate background and statistics (more than 13 million subscribers!), then moved on to discuss the focus for 2007. The motto was “it’s about time” and some of the key points included: a focus on DVR, no change to consumer pricing, and their HDTV leadership position.

Mark Jackson (president, Echostar technologies corporation – not the NBA player) took the podium to go into some details about new products, services, and technologies. New receivers are coming for 2007, many of which have the 2-room functionality. Mark stressed the importance of this both to consumers as well as to the installation costs.

The flagship new unit is the VIP622 HD receiver, coming to market in Q2, 2007. The unit sports:

500GB hard drive (roughly 500 hours of standard def recording, and somewhere between 40-65 hours of HDTV recording)
Support for VC-1 (Windows Media Video HD)
External USB HDD support! This was my favorite thing to hear, as it shows the embracement of empowering the consumer to make some of their own decisions. They’ve tested the system with most major USB drives, and it is their stated goal to support as many as possible. The sole limitation of the system is that content recorded on a given receiver can only be played back on the same receiver, so if you have another room or a vacation home, you can’t move the hard drive around.

Mark also mentioned a few strategic relationships, including AT&T Homezone (which they’d apparently like to replace), Sling Media (they are an investor), and Archos (whom they basically own). Afterwards, Charlie Ergen joined to answer Q&A.

Overall it was a fairly dry conference, without too much novelty or technology. Perfect for the financial community, but a little on the dull side for the rest of us. All their slides are ~~belong to us~~ below: