This year's CES revealed the latest trends in consumer electronics. The growing domination of Asia and convergence taken to a whole new level were topical themes this year. Unless otherwise noted, all images courtesy of CES.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) still remains the largest trade show in America, with more than 150,000 visitors and 65 miles of aisles zigzagging around the equivalent of 35 football fields of floor space at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Sands Convention Center and various other venues around Las Vegas, Nevada. It is the annual trek to Mecca for anyone interested in consumer electronics, including television sets, car and home stereo systems, cell phones, cameras (both still and video), MP3 players and accessories and the like.

Themes and Trends at the 2007 CES
Attending the same show for many years lets you pick up on major changes and trends, and there were several noticeable ones this year. One was the growing domination of Asia -- there were more products from Japan, South Korea and China, and fewer from Europe and the U.S. Another was convergence, which has been a theme for several years, but now seems to have gone to a whole new level. Hundreds of products and companies pitched their solutions for making television and other video available over the Internet at any time, any place -- without defining exactly how such content can be paid for, or how the required mega-bandwidth would be available. The good news for animators is that the market for new types of shows is likely to increase, that new means of distribution will be available (if Disney won't give you a deal, try YouTube) and that there is now a market for shorts -- whereas NBC or CBS would normally not talk to you about your indie-produced 10-minute video, you can now pitch their online departments, as such shorts are ideal for the Internet or mobile viewing market.

The nature of the show has changed palpably, with the old focus purely on gadgets evolving more and more to a concern with content, and how best to transfer and display it. The CEA (the Consumer Electronics Assn., the group that holds the CES) claims the show is now the "It" show for the entertainment biz, competing with NATPE, NAB and even the E3 as the place to be to see the future of content production for TV, film and gameplay. It seems that at a time when millions watch or listen to content on video iPods, cellphones or automobile a/v systems, it pays to be in synch with Generation Y. Leslie Moonves, the ceo of CBS, put it succinctly: "If you're not totally aware of what's happening in technology and the new kinds of delivery systems, you're going to go the way of the dinosaurs," he said. Disney's ceo, Bob Iger, like Moonves, a keynote speaker at the show, discussed the Mouse House's plans to expand its web portal, to create more content customized for mobile devices, to offer more shows from its film and TV subsidiaries and to form partnerships with platform providers such as Apple in order to couple content tightly with delivery options.

Keynote speakers Bob Iger (left) discussed the Mouse House's plans to expand its web portal while Leslie Moonves warned that those who don't stay on top of new delivery systems would go the way of the dinosaurs.

Whereas last year's show seemed to emphasize moving audio and video around the home, using a PC as a central control console, this year the emphasis was on video, and how to move it into or out of the home -- how to get it from a PC to the home TV screen, or make it go the other way, from normal TV inputs such as cable through some intermediate device to mobile platforms such as cellphones, laptops or car A/V (audio/video) systems. New gadgets are replacing the PC's previous central role in moving content back and forth via home and Internet, such as the Slingbox and the new AppleTV, which are simpler to use than a PC or traditional STBs (Set Top Boxes).

The reason why moving audio around the home (via a PC, which in any case usually has poor-quality A/V outputs) has been de-emphasized was obvious: why bother with accessing a central music repository on a single hard drive when every family member can carry around his/her entire music collection on an iPod? Instead of ways to access a home's PC for music, the emphasis this year was on compact amplifier/speaker setups to house an iPod -- there were hundreds of these available, many of them costing more than the iPod itself; a lot of car stereos can also house an iPod now, and display its data on the car system's main screen.

High-definition big screens dominated the show, fighting for wall space, arranged in neat rows ranging from around 40 inches (the "small" end of the lineup) to 70 inches or higher, with 100-inch-plus screens being the star of the show. These were not the 720p (720x1260 lines of resolution, progressive, not interlaced) screens of yesteryear, but super-definition 1080p (1080x1920 lines of resolution, progressive) screens, featuring twice as many pixels (around 2 million) as their 720p brethren. The old argument that it was useless to buy a high-def TV because no content was available for it seems to have been settled since last year -- for instance, the DISH satellite TV service now offers 25 HD channels, and its competitor, DirecTV, has announced plans to offer 100 HD channels by the end of 2007. Whereas the changeover has been painful for broadcasters (many of them now need two sets of TV trucks at sports events: one for standard-definition, one for high-definition, until new dual-capable cameras take over), the transition is inevitable - there is no denying that a football game looks better in high- definition on a large screen, whether at home or in a sports bar, and by this year HD will be the standard for any major game broadcast.

The response to the newly available HD content has been enthusiastic -- TV manufacturers expect to ship more than 16 million HD sets in the U.S. this year (many of them in large format), with similar sales growth in Japan and Korea (one Panasonic engineer told me that a Japanese household would be ashamed to show a 42-inch set in the living room -- anything that "small" would be a secondary set, in the bedroom). Europe, for some reason, has not kicked into the HD revolution yet, and seems content to still watch CRT tube sets, which are now considered so ancient that there was not a single one in sight at the CES booths.

Bluetooth and other forms of wireless also seem to be maturing, with many new products for WANs, PANs (Personal Area networks) and MANs (Metropolitan Area Networks), including WiFi (802.11x) and WiMax/WiBro (802.16). Remember all the iPod ads highlighting the white connecting cords going to the earphones? This year the cool thing will be wireless headsets powered by Bluetooth. The really cool thing will be Bluetooth headsets with built-in mikes, which can automatically switch between incoming phone calls and music from an MP3 player. Here are some random samples of the thousands of products available at the show.

Television Sets and Monitors
There are too many models of TVs to name even a representative fraction of them, and the models seem to change every month or so, but here is the pattern that seemed to emerge from seeing hundreds of sets from dozens of vendors. The advice below is for those of us with a budget -- if price is no object, by all means go for the 103-inch Panasonic 1080p plasma, for around $70,000.

For sets sized 40 inches or below, consider a flat LCD screen. Prices for these have come down substantially; Samsung and Sharp are very strong in this category. At this size, it may not matter whether resolution is 720p or 1080p.

For sets sized 40 to 50 inches, plasma is king. You should be able to get a great 50-inch plasma screen from Samsung or LG for around $1,500 (720p) to $3,000 (1080p). LCDs are starting to intrude into this area, but are still much more expensive.