CES 2012 Video Pictures and Impressions

OK, so here are the pictures I took and some commentary. Alas, I wanted to travel light and didn't take my DSLR. The pictures you see are from my Canon G10 fancy point and shoot camera. They were quite noisy at times as is typical of these small sensor units. But we digress.

LG OLED display:

LG Smart TV apps. These machines are sure coming along as far as look and feel. They have a remote with a mouse built-in. While not bad compared to old efforts, they still leave something to be desired as far as being able to point with any level of precision. Personally, I think they are making TVs too complicated.

Intel "WiDi" was being shown natively streaming to TVs and PS3. WiDi uses the Intel processor and graphics controller to compress your desktop/videos in real-time and send it to the TV wirelessly. So if you are watching something on Youtube and such and want to show it to someone, you can. It used to require a separate box but now it is built-in. Alas, it only works on certain configuration of these laptops as it also requires the Intel wireless chip to be used (which not every PC OEM uses). I saw LG supporting it in their newer TVs and Intel said Samsung and Toshiba have also joined up.



One of the issues with WiDi is that it takes it a while to encode the video. The delay used to be 0.7 seconds which would make it very hard to use some apps and certainly games. They say the delay is down to 0.2 seconds but they allow TV companies to go as high as 0.5 seconds. This is still too high for games but maybe OK for browsing the web and such. PS3 delay is many seconds but it is good to see it support it natively too (using DLNA).

Google TV is supposed to do to TVs what it has done to Android phones. Last year it was a disaster as far as how little it did. It is looking a bit better this year but still has ways to go. Shame as they are leaving room for Apple's rumored TV product to clean their clocks.

Anyway, here is a drawing app running on it:

These are some snapshots of LG's TVs for 2011. As with all Samsung and Sony, they had no pricing or firm schedules. Likely they will ship by spring. As I noted in the other thread, they have gotten better with demo material for 3-D (which is all they were showing). This made the snapshots hard to see though.











I am a fan of thin frames myself which looks like it is only showing up on their higher end line.

Not exactly a video product but here is Sigma's "sigmonster" super telephoto zoom lens. If the $32,000 price doesn't kill you, the 34 pound weight would! This has been out for a while (two years?)

Both phones and smart TVs are starting to encroach on the gaming platforms. Here is the best example on Panasonic TV where a simple app you run turns your TV into a racing game. The graphics were quite nice for such a free app. Maybe they catch on as a way to keep kids occupied in doctor's offices and such .



I did not take a picture of it but I saw more 3-D gaming at Intel booth. I say they are 5-7 years behind PCs and game consoles in overall performance for mobile platforms.

Panasonic was touting their new Plasma panels technology with faster response time and lowered black level/improved contrast in the new VT50 series. For the first time, they did what Pioneer used to do with the Kuru line, showing them in fully darkened room compared to their current generation. The demos were fantastic. Until OLED ships, this will be the competition for best flat panel.

They call the technology Neo Plasma black 2500. The number comes from its response time which is now .00025 seconds (1/4000 sec). As you see in this signage, they are also brighter, closing the gap with LCDs:



As you can imagine, it was impossible to take pictures of the side-by-side dark room demo with a small camera, no tripod, and moving images. But I tried .



Today's set on the left, the 2012 model on the right. Notice the contrast increase.

Now we are on to Samsung. Before I move on, let me say that the size of the LG, Samsung, and Sony booths were incredible. Never seen so much on display and so much real estate by any one company. You literally got lost in their booths. The breath of technology has increased so much from phones to TVs and these guys are investing big. I suspect the booth alone cost them $5M+ to rent.

Style wise, I thought the Samsung higher-end lines were a knock out with super thin bezels. And it seems they have finally turned the corner in use of edge-lit LED backlight that is able to credibly change lighting levels in many regions. How uniform the lighting is, will have to wait until the review of real units. But a hopeful sign that thin and performance can be combined:

Look at how amazing this picture looks, even after going through my point and shoot camera and showing up on your monitor (three generations away). We have come so far in display technology.



Some moire pattern due to interference between my camera sensor and TV's pixels but nice to see the detail level:



Every Tom Dick and Harry had to show some kind of "4" display. These are units with 4X the resolution (2X in each dimension). There is no content in 4K and won't be anytime soon (think years). So it is all marketing hype unless you have a PC driving them and even then, due to HDMI limitations we are at 24 frames a second (so forget about gaming). And of course, no schedule or pricing either. The incremental improvement is small even with native 4K material:



This is the improved "micro-dimming" I talked about earlier. This is a nice display where they blacken the image but let the backlight dance around as it adjusts. Unfortunately it is hard to see with reflections and poor camera image but hopefully you get an idea of how the TV is adjusting the different regions based on how dark or light the image is. The result being that you get better contrast as the dark areas get less light (LCDs can't block all the light when "off" so they need this help to get dark enough). For this year, they are increasing the number of regions and how well they modulate them:







Here are some shots of different series.





My favorite was this series 8 with the very thin bezel.

Sony also had its flavor of improved local dimming which I did not take pictures of.

Here, they were showing some interesting technology where they can correct for too much parallax between the 3-D images. It had a nice improvement, getting rid of some of the annoying shots in 3-D. Alas, they had cooked up the demo a fair bit as you can see. The image on the right has huge amount of parallax. Not sure real 3-D production is ever this bad:



This is a camcorder with a built-in projector on the back of the flip out LCD! This was projecting onto 5-6 foot screen. Image was usable.

Sony's answer to Samsung/LG is the "Crystal display." Since Sony doesn't make its own panels, I suspect they are sourcing the same technology as others, especially since they are all the same magical 55 inches:

Here is the side-by-side of current LCDs and new. Terrible picture on my part but notice how the LCD has a color shift from a side angle that the Crystal does not. This is a major weakness of LCD where if you side off-axis, the color and contrast can suffer:


Here are the details:

Sim2 had a small presence, showing the new Mico 150 on stand. This is an LED light source projector. LEDs have the major advantage of turning on instantly, and lasting as long as the projector compared to few hundred hours for current projection bulbs (which cost a few hundred dollars to replace). The Mico 150/160 partially solve one problem with LEDs in that they are not usually very bright and don't support 3-D as a result. This one does have 3-D and 20% extra brightness due to water cooled light units. It also has a clever system where it constantly measures the color from the LED and adjusts them so that in all conditions of temperature, age, etc. the color is consistent.

Note: my company is a dealer for Sim2.

OK. That's it for now. Thread open for comments/questions .

That's the function of the demo material they picked. As I mentioned, they are getting clever using video sourced content as opposed to film. Lots of emphasis on color, etc. to hide deficiencies in black material and such.

Thank you for the kind words Bob. I figured I am not match for pro bloggers so I better sneak in some other slants in there to make the mark .