I’m trying to leave most of our coverage of CES in the extremely capable hands of Evan, but there are a few items here and there that have caught my eye. Like this PalmSecure mouse from Fujitsu that uses vein pattern verification for security purposes, instead of fingerprint recognition.
The technology already has quite a few advantages over using fingerprints, not the least of which is the fact you simply hold your hand over the sensor instead of actually touching it. So if this type of security system was ever used on a public device like an ATM, the sensor has less of a chance of getting dirty over time. And in order to acquire an accurate image of the vein pattern, there has to be blood circulating through the body. I’m sure everyone has thought about circumventing a fingerprint security system by simply cutting off the victim’s finger, but that approach won’t work here. (Come on! I can’t be the only one who’s thought of that!)
While the technology is primarily being marketed as an “enterprise solution” Fujitsu hopes to have a consumer-friendly product ready in the near future.
Why do we come to CES? One reason: hot chicks are there specifically to be nice to us. Why is that? Because we’re all totally cool, right? Right. I wish. No, they’re trying to get us interested in their products, and damn if it doesn’t work like a charm.
This is the D-Link DSM-210 wireless photo frame. It has a 10″ 16:9 “10-Megapixel” (they’re lying about that) screen and is supposed to pull RSS feeds of photos or news over your wireless home network. It’s also supposed to be easy to set up… But I’ve heard all that before, and I’ll believe it when it comes out this spring for around $250.
Once again, there just has to be a winner in these hopelessly competitive CES TV spec wars. And when it comes to thin, it can only be the Pioneer Kuro plasma concept:
Looks good, right? 50″ at only 41 pounds, and just oozing contrast. Now check this out:
That’s a plasma TV in there… Not just in the thick (18mm) center; the screen extends through the thin (9mm) bezel. And it was actually too crowded for me to catch it perfectly edge on. You could practically julienne a carrot with the edge of this. Not that you’d want to do that, I’m just sayin’…
Not satisfied with having the biggest display at CES, Panasonic is hard at work shrinking the thickness of its plasmas… Now you see them:
Now you don’t.
Or, you wouldn’t, if it weren’t for the cords and mounts. No specs available besides the thickness (less than 1 inch). Expect these to be on the market sometime in 2010. Sigh.
There had to be a winner in the giant TV contest this year, and there most certainly was (nobody else even came close):
This monster plasma TV from Panasonic is 150 inches diagonal. That’s twelve and a half feet. Totally snubbing HD, its resolution is 2160 x 4096 (that’s 4x the resolution of HDTV). It requires 220 volts to operate (that’s twice what comes out of your sockets), and weighs I don’t even want to know how much. The picture below shows just how big it is; the pathetic little TV on the left is Panasonic’s 103″ model:
Want one? Rumor has it that you’ll be looking at something in the low six figs.
It’s certainly no secret that major electronics manufacturers are engaged in a running contest of “mine’s bigger!” when it comes to TVs. So, here are a few of the big and bigger TVs on display at CES:
I’m pretty sure that this custom Samsung plasma TV is 102 inches; nobody at the Samsung booth knew how big it was (seriously), so we had to get creative with some sheets of paper and mental trigonometry.
Panasonic 103″ plasma.
Sharp 108″ LCD.
Now, I don’t know a ton about HD TVs, but from just walking around and looking at them, I tended to favor smaller and crisper HD displays as opposed to the giant ones. I think the reason is that standard HDTV has a resolution of 2,073,600 pixels, and when you make a bigger HD TV, all you’re doing is increasing the size of each pixel. The huge HD TVs are certainly impressive, and look great from a distance, but personally, I’d take one of the smaller ones and just sit a little bit closer.
In a secretive little area in the LG exhibit was a glass case guarded by two PR people, enthusiastically keeping people from taking pictures of what was inside. So what was inside? Working prototypes of an LG watch phone. I flashed my press badge and they let me take a few pics, making me feel all kinds of special:
It’s GSM based, with a high resolution touchscreen, Bluetooth, and 3 buttons plus a scroll wheel. The guys at Engadget got some brief hands-on time with one of the prototypes, which illustrates how easy it is to use despite its size:
This is the real sort of 3D we’re talking about, now, as opposed to audio 3D… The LG 2D/3D LCD is an autostereoscopic display, which means that it fools your brain to thinking that a flat image has depth. A few other companies at CES had 3D displays that require some sort of glasses, but this one works (and, by George, it actually works) if you just stand there and look at it. Of course, the effect doesn’t transmit well in the above pic, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that the hamburger in the fake commercial is tasty in all three dimensions. The only caveat is that you have to be standing in a fairly specific spot to get the autostereoscopy to work like it’s supposed to… they actually had an “x” on the floor, but it’s more flexible than that. The visual effect can be a bit strange at times, but I’d take it over a pair of glasses any day.
When LG talks about 3D in relation to cell phones, they’re not talking about a third visual dimension (like, depth). Instead, they’ve gotten the phone to sync its vibrate feature and LED lights along with audio and video streams. It sounds gimmicky (and yes, it sort of is), but it’s also surprisingly effective: if you’re watching football and someone gets tackled, the phone vibrates sharply. Or if you’re watching NASCAR, the phone vibrates in sync with the passing cars. It makes the experience of watching content on that tiny screen much more interactive, and it works for movies, too. For the record: I don’t watch football or NASCAR.
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