Some guys have all the fun. And so while I was busy moving offices, Tsahi went to Vegas for CES. And while he was walking the floors, I was getting my ear cleaned. But I have decided that staying in the office while others party at CES won’t stop me from writing my own impressions of the show, even I was a few thousand kilometers away from it.
So biting on Tsahi’s take-away left-overs, here’s my CES from-a-far impressions:
- As Tsahi recently noted, everything is getting bigger and… smaller. On the one hand, CES was all about larger, slimmer, fully equipped flat panel TV sets. If you’re not interested in TVs, you better book a different show. On the other hand, mobile TV was hot, and they featured cool mobile applications like the SlingBox for the iPhone as well as Open Mobile Video Coalition announcements.
- Video conferencing can be inexpensive. And it’s not just Cisco talking about “home Telepresence” all the time. It is the ubiquitous Skype (I specifically like the Ai Guru SV1 from Asus), Creative Labs’ inPerson, new devices from iRiver and more. Tsahi wrote a whole “been there, seen it” post about it.
- Telepresence Robot? Give me a break!
- Everyone’s talking about open platforms and social everything. Even conservative companies like Microsoft and Verizon are now introducing their “open” platforms, and everyone’s got something to do with social media, widgets and sharing of multimedia cross devices and networks. I especially liked the Sony Cybershot G3 and Samsung and Yahoo’s Internet@TV.
- 3D is HOT. TV manufacturers, content providers and everybody else wants a piece of the action, with or without the glasses. And even if Tsahi is right (and he usually is…), and the current prototypes suck, this is definitely something to look out for.
Still, nothing REALLY BIG came out of CES this year. Remember, folks, CES is where the VCR, the CD player and the DVD were introduced. But this year there were no real breakthroughs for Tsahi to write home about. Oh, well. There is always next year…
