2014 International CES Day 1

For the press, it is actually Day 3, because the press events began on Sunday. As usual, the most impressive Press Conference, for me, was Sony. (I should mention that I felt this way the last 4 years as well, but by the end of the conference I had changed my mind.) Sony was showing a new Music Video Recorder for $299 along with purported samples that demonstrated High Definition video with amazing clarity and amazing audio recorded by the two tiny speakers. This could dramatically increase the quality of videos on YouTube and other services and make them extremely easy to create. Sony also demonstrated editing software, but it wasn't clear about how it was distributed or priced. I am not sure that the cloud will have the capacity to store all of the huge video files that will result from widespread adoption of this device and the inevitable knockoffs. Sony also introduced their new 4K camcorder selling for around $2,000. This is really cheap for a camera capable of recording in this high resolution format, but it remains to be seen if the market cares. For their part, the entire panel at the Digital Hollywood Conference session entitled "Video Anytime: Understanding the Value Proposition" thought the 4K format and content in particular had no market appeal, and thus no return on investment. One panelist even emphatically called it "idiotic". I remember a similar response a few years ago when another panel was asked about the future of High Definition Television. Obviously, both panels were shortsighted, but the recent panel seemed misguided and out of touch with their own industry, as well. According to panelists in other presentations I attended at CES and Storage Visions, the Video production and post production industries have embraced the 4K format for several years. Several persons stated that all movies have been recorded in 4K for some time. This year's panel justified the inevitable failure of the 4K format by comparing it to the 3D format, which seems wrong-headed to me. Everyone has complaints about the 3D format, or actually formats, but the biggest one is that it is disruptive, and not in a good way. Because everything is not 3D, the viewer has to keep changing glasses, equipment, etc. Ultra HD (4K) is different - it is merely evolution, replacing the current 1K High Definition format just a it replaced whatever that was before it. Everyone sees it as an improvement and it is even less disruptive than HDTV was. In short, 4K is inevitable as are higher formats until the limit of the hardware is reached, if ever. In fact, HDTV will probably be scarce 10 years from if not sooner. Anyone who resists 4K might as well get out of the industry. All of the supporting industries are gearing up to support 4K with cheaper and faster storage and higher Internet bandwidths so it will be a smoother transition than anyone imagines. Once you have seen a 4K program, you won't want to go back. Oh, any by-the-way, Netflix supports it, so, case closed. Enough about video. The other most interesting category at this CES is the headphone. For some reason the market seems to have exploded, and everyone is bringing out new lines of headphones. There are headphones for athletes that are fitted and guaranteed never to fall out. There are over the ear, in the ear, on the ear, and hybrid varieties in thousands of colors and sizes. A Monster sales person attributed the expansion to Dr. Dre, the rap artist who brought out his own line of headphones set some kind of modern record for advertising and product placement. To me, the question is, what kind of headphone provides the best sound and the least damage to the ear? There also seems to be a dispute over which headphones are the favorites of musicians, so I will try to get to the bottom of that. In the meantime, Audio-Technica gave me a lovely pair of fitted in-the-ear headphones and promised to show pictures of me snow boarding with them on the big screen at CES. Hopefully that won't last long, and no one will see it, but I will be testing and reporting on the headphones. I am off to the ShowStoppers party/product promotion fiesta at the Wynn so there will be more from Day 1 later. Photos will be posted when I get around to it. Thanks for reading.