News is rolling in from the Consumer Electronics Show. Gamers are going to see some new toys. But there is not much there for the movie buffs. Read on....
GADGET WATCH: CONTROL A PC WITH BODY MOTIONS
Jan 13, 2:16 PM (ET)
By PETER SVENSSON
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Don't trash your keyboard and mouse just yet. But three companies at the International Consumer Electronics Show demonstrated depth-sensing cameras that let you to control your computer by moving your hands or body.
Microsoft's Kinect add-on for the Xbox 360 console has already popularized these cameras for gaming. Now, the technology is being set loose for use on other devices. However, like many gadgets shown at the annual Las Vegas-based extravaganza of phones, PCs and TVs, the cameras aren't quite ready for the mass market.
The companies showed off their cameras to give software developers and gadget makers a chance to work with the technology and incorporate it in their products. For the rest of us, it's a taste of what the future might hold.
WHY IT'S HOT: The cameras represent another challenge to the keyboard-and-mouse regime, which is already being eroded by touch screens. If you're in front of a depth-sensing camera, you don't have to touch the screen to control it with your fingers or hands. (This works with non-depth-sensing cameras as well, but they're not as good at figuring out what you're doing.) At the PrimeSense booth, visitors could browse and play the contents of a digital video library with hand gestures - basically, anything you'd do with a mouse today. The Israeli company's camera goes into the Kinect and is now sold separately as the Asus Xtion.
BEHIND THE LENS: The cameras can tell how far away things are in their field of vision. PrimeSense does this by sending out an invisible pattern of light, and registering how it's deformed when it hits objects. SoftKinetics' camera works almost like radar, but with light: it sends out infrared light and measures how fast it comes back. Where it takes longer, it figures out that that part of the image is further away.
THE DOWNSIDE: If you buy one of these now, there isn't much you can do with it, unless you're a software developer. The Asus Xtion comes with a few simple Kinect-like games for your PC. For all of these cameras, the depth-sensing range is limited to about 12 feet, and at the far end of the range, accuracy is reduced. That means finger gestures may not be picked up from across the living room.
AVAILABILITY: Microsoft said it will start selling a "Kinect for Windows" camera starting Feb. 1st, for $249. Asus started selling the Xtion in December for $149. SoftKinetics, a Belgian company, started selling its camera around the same time for $499.
BEST IN SHOW: 6 GADGETS THAT DEFINED CES
Jan 13, 4:01 PM (ET)
By PETER SVENSSON
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Cheaper tablets, thinner laptops and an array of sleeker TVs stood out at this year's International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
More than 140,000 people gathered there this week, for an event that's growing despite the absence of Apple and more recently, the decision by Microsoft to make this the last year it participates.
A bevy of celebrities, including 50 Cent, Will.i.am, and Kelly Clarkson, stopped by to add glitz to the proceedings _but they were hardly the stars of the show. Here are some of the more significant gadgets that shined at CES:
Cheaper tablets - The industry's enthusiasm for tablets was considerably tempered this year compared to last, when more than a hundred manufacturers thought they could capitalize on the iPad's success with their own models based on Google Inc.' Android software. Sales were disappointing, in large part because Apple prices the iPad relatively low compared to the cost of making it. Then, late last year, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) (AMZN) demonstrated that you can take on Apple by selling a smaller, barebones tablet for $199. Analysts believe Amazon sold millions of Kindle Fires in little more than a month.
Now, Asian manufacturers are hoping to jump on Amazon's bandwagon. One of those companies, Taiwan's AsusTek Computer Inc., showed off a tablet with a Fire-sized screen and said it would sell it for $249. It's considerably more powerful than the Fire, sporting a premium "quadcore" processor. Still, one of the things that made the Fire a success - Amazon's library of e-books, music and movies - will be missing.
Nokia Lumia 900 - In recent years, the world's largest phone maker, Finland's Nokia Corp., has practically been a no-show in the U.S. market. That's hurt the company badly. Now, it hopes to come back with smartphones that run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Phone software. The Lumia 900 is its first such phone for the AT&T network, and the first Nokia phone to use AT&T's faster wireless "LTE" network. In a sign of how much is riding on these phones, both the Microsoft and Nokia CEOs showed up for Monday's announcement. The companies didn't announce price or availability. T-Mobile USA, a smaller carrier, started selling a more modest Lumia this week.
Lenovo K800 - While Nokia's been shut out of the U.S. phone market, Intel Corp. (INTC), the world's largest chipmaker, has been shut out of phones entirely. Its PC chips use too much power to go into a smartphone: they'd drain the battery in no time. That's a big problem for the company, since PC sales are flat in the developed world, while smartphone sales are exploding. Now, Intel says a new line of chips is ready for smartphone use, and Lenovo Corp. of China is the first to take them up on it, with a smartphone to be sold in China in the second quarter. Outwardly, it's indistinguishable from any other touchscreen phone, and it runs Android.
Motorola Mobility, the phone maker that's being bought by Google, also committed to making phones and other devices with Intel chips. Without offering many details, the company said the new devices will be on the market in the second half of the year.
OLED TVs - Both LG and Samsung showed off 55-inch TVs with screens made from organic light-emitting diodes rather than the standard liquid crystals or plasma cells, and said they'll on sale this year. They didn't say what they would cost, but analysts expect the price to be upwards of $5,000.
The sets are long-awaited. OLED TVs have been on the horizon for some time, but they're difficult to manufacture in large sizes. They provide a high-contrast picture with highly saturated colors. They can also be very thin: LG's set is just 4 millimeters thick, or one-sixth of an inch.
Ultrabooks - Intel created the "ultrabook" as a marketing term for thin, light and powerful laptop computers. They're essentially the Windows versions of Apple's MacBook Air. PC makers have embraced the term enthusiastically. As a result, there were scores of ultrabook models on display at the show.
Two that stood out were the Lenovo Yoga, which has a touch-sensitive screen that bends backward to fold over completely, turning the device into a large tablet. It will launch with the new Windows 8 operating system later this year. The HP Envy 14 is a more conventional luxury model, and goes on sale Feb. 8, but has two details that set it apart: a sensor for Near-Field Communications Chips (which means you can transfer information from a similarly equipped phone by tapping it to the PC) and an audio chip that can communicate with some headphones to provide much better audio quality than Bluetooth. The Envy 14 will cost $1,400.
Bob O'Donnell, an analyst with research firm IDC, believes ultrabooks are "not a fad.""We absolutely see ultrabooks as being the future of notebooks," he said. However, O'Donnell thinks ultrabooks will really take off once they are priced at about $800, closer to the price of regular laptops.
Canon G1 X - The Japanese camera maker revealed a compact camera that pushes into professional camera territory. Its G line of relatively large compact cameras has been popular among enthusiasts, and the G1 X extends the range by including an image sensor that's more than six times larger than other models in the range. Sensor size is the most important factor for a camera's image quality, far more than the number of megapixels - 14, for the G1 X. It's the first camera to use a sensor of this type, which is only 20 percent smaller than the "APS-C" sensors used in single-lens reflex cameras, or SLRs (though some luxury compacts from other manufacturers use APS-C sensors). The G1 X will have a 4x zoom lens that retracts into the metal body, and will sell for $800.
WEIRD GADGETS AT CES: MOTORIZED UNICYCLE, ANYONE?
Jan 16, 10:58 AM (ET)
By PETER SVENSSON
LAS VEGAS (AP) - A motorized, seat-less unicycle, a video game you control with your eyes, and a mind-reading headset that serves as a game controller were among the more bizarre gadgets being shown off at this year's International Consumer Electronics Show.
Some 3,100 exhibitors attended the show, and although there were plenty of mainstream technologies on display, the show attracted a fair share of off-beat gadgets. Here's a roundup of some of the weirdest devices:
- SOLOWHEEL. Picture a unicycle without a frame or saddle, and you have the Solowheel. Not working for you? Ok, add this to the picture: footboards that fold out from the wheel. To ride it, you stand on the footboards and straddle the wheel. Lean forward, and the wheel engages a battery-powered electric motor that can send it _and hopefully its rider- zooming along at 10 miles per hour. The wheel has a gyroscope that helps keep the rider upright. In other words, it's like a Segway with only one wheel.
Because of the rechargeable battery, which has a 15- to 20-mile range, the Solowheel weighs 26 pounds. That's as much as a folding bike, but the Solowheel is more compact. It's sold by Inventist LLC for $1,800. Its creator is a serial inventor, Shane Chen, previously came up with the AquaSkipper, a human-powered hydrofoil.
Who's it for? Brave people with a good sense of balance, who want to utterly surprise everyone they meet.
- FOAM FIGHTERS. Toy companies are eager to link their products with smartphone and tablet games, creating toys that are an amusing blend of virtual and real. Foam Fighters are made of two sheets of thin foam, painted and shaped like World War II fighter planes such as the famous Mitsubishi Zero. Toss them in the air, and they fly like paper airplanes. Better yet, you can attach them to a plastic arm with a suction cup that, in turn, sticks to the back of an iPhone, iPad or Android phone, right next to the camera. The airplane shows up on screen, and if you download a free app, the fighter plane will look like it's zooming around in war-torn skies, controlled by the movement of the phone or tablet. Foam Fighters go on sale in April. A pack of two, with a stand, will cost $10.
Who's it for: AppGear is aiming at kids, ages 8 to 12, but it could appeal to frustrated fighter pilots of all ages.
- HAIER BRAIN WAVE. The Chinese appliance company brought this wireless mind-reading headset to the show, and demonstrated how it could be used to control a TV set. It holds one sensing pad to the wearer's forehead and another that clips onto an earlobe. The big limitation is that the mind-reading capability (actually just measurement of brain waves) is crude. The set can only be used to sense if the user wants something to go up or down. For any other direction, you need the remote. In a demonstration of a simple maze-like game, the wearer guided a figure up or down with his mind, and right and left with the remote. Haier said it's developing something that lets the wearer change channels by thinking about it.
Haier is selling the set in China, but has no plans to bring it to market in the U.S.
Who's it for: No one outside of China, yet. Eventually, this could be a dream come true for the laziest of couch potatoes.
- EYE ASTEROIDS - Continuing on the theme of controlling electronics without moving, Swedish company Tobii brought its eye-controlled arcade game to the show. To play, you stand in front of it and look at a screen, where asteroids hurtle toward your battle station. It shoots laser beams at the asteroids you look at, destroying them. So yes, looks can kill.
The game cabinet contains cameras that track your gaze. The arcade game is really just a technology demonstration. What Tobii really wants is to have these gaze-tracking cameras built into laptops and other computers, so we can dispense with the mouse. But it does sell the game for $15,000.
Who's it for: Arcade owners who want the latest.
- SIGNA POWERTREKK - This New York company showed off an alternative to batteries: a fuel cell the size of a big sandwich, powered by small, light "pucks" of a silicon-based material that produces hydrogen when water is added. The fuel cell is expensive, at $200, but the pucks are cheap, at $12 for three. Each puck will produce the equivalent of six AA batteries of electricity. That means it can charge an iPhone twice, through the included cables.
SiGNa will be selling the cell through outdoor retailer REI this spring.
Who's it for: Campers, hermits and others who need to go a long time without electricity.
...Sorry that Reel 2 Reel was delayed. Yahoo was having trouble. So I had to post it directly to Topica. One there, everything mailed as planned. Don't forget to enter the subscriber contest.
- Paul
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