Everything HDTV and 3DTV Too
                 
CES 2010 gets underway this week. We think it's going to be a big show for HDTV and everything to do with home entertainment including Blu-ray players, streaming services, speakers, mounting equipment and more. We also expect to see a lot of activity around 3DTV as competing technologies from Sony, Panasonic, LG and others vie for attention.

CES Might Look More like Comdex
           
With a slew of new processors and chips from Intel, Nvidia, and Broadcom running everything from all-in-one-PCs to all kinds of mobile devices, we expect to see a lot of attention paid to computers, chip sets, and operating systems.

Apple Might Steal the Show Again
Two years ago Apple stole the buzz at CES all the way from San Francisco when it announced the iPhone. There may be more Apple buzz this year with the latest rumor indicating a tablet announcement could come as early as January 26th. Apple may also capture a lot of show buzz with a very prominent iPhone app area.


Will Kindle Get Some Competition?

                                 
Amazon must have been pleased to watch Barnes and Noble and Sony struggle to  deliver the Nook and the Daily Edition this season but we expect to see lots of e-Reader activity at CES. Plastic Logic has been promoting their large screen e-Reader for a year and has promised to have something to show at this year's show. Spring Design will be showing their Alex e-Reader that looks very similar to the Nook. One e-Reader we're anxious to see is a rumored 2 page color reader from Asus.


What to Expect in TVs at CES
Every year the talk of the show is about the biggest and thinnest TV set. Of course we'll see the 100 inch plus TVs, the millimeter thick TVs, and bigger OLED TVs but we also expect this to be the debut of many new "connected" TVs. Between streaming services from Netflix, Amazon and others and the popularity of watching YouTube videos on the living room TV, it's only natural that consumers will want to connect their TVs to their broadband connection.
                           
The Vizio VF552XVT was announced at last year's CES but could be the standard by which other connected TVs are judged. The VF552XVT is a 55-inch LED backlit LCD TV with built-in WiFi and a QWERTY remote that has a list price of $2,199.

Toshiba Cell Regza
                
The Toshiba Regza 55X1 is another cutting edge TV that just became available in Japan for about $11,000. We've read their Cell platform and 3GB of storage give this TV (and companion box)  the  ability to store up to 26 hours of high definition programming from up to eight channels at once.

Will We See Any 4KTVs?

Courtesy HDMI Licensing, LLC
What are the odds your new HDTV will it be obsolete anytime soon? Will Ultra High Definition (UHD) TVs start to appear on the scene at CES this year? A 4K TV will display 4 times the resolution of HDTV. We thought we might see a 4K Toshiba Regza TV that upconverts HD video to 4K but so far it's been a no show. We'll be keeping a look out for 4K resolution TVs at this year's show.

3DTV Format War Looming?
             
With the popularity of recent 3D movies like "Up" and "Avatar," we expect to see a lot of activity around 3DTV at this year's show. The standard for putting 3D programming on Blu-ray has just been finalized but the glasses and display standards remain to be settled. So far it looks like a race between the active shutter glasses championed by Panasonic and passive glasses backed by others. Let's hope it doesn't end up creating as much turmoil as the high definition DVD format war.

Aside from the new Blu-ray 3D standard other standards are falling into place like the new HDMI 1.4 standard which will adds support for 3D to HDMI. We also read that DirecTV is going to introduce a 3D HDTV channel sometime in 2010.


Mobile TV
The new digital TV transmissions are good for stationary antennas but what about watching your favorite show on the go? A new ATSC variation called ATSC M/H (mobile/handheld) can work in mobile environments. Another mobile TV solution comes out of the popular European DVB standard which Qualcomm's FLO TV is based on. We'll be looking for products like AircastTV's iPhone mobile TV accessory and other mobile TV products for handheld devices and in the car TV.


Laptops, Netbooks and All-In-One PCs
                         
                           

Intel Inside the Convention Center
Intel is going to be a behind the scenes star of this years CES. The new Pineview processors running on the new Pine Trail platform will feature prominently in a host of laptops, netbooks, and other mobile devices. The Pine Trail platform includes new Atom processors with on-chip graphics like the 1.66GHz Atom N450, dual-core 1.66GHz Atom D510 and Atom D410.  Intel's new CULV chips which can potentially produce very long run times between battery charges will be powering many new laptops and laptop convertibles (tablets). Intel will also be showing off its new 32nm cores.

Broadcom is Inside Too
Broadcom has recently announced a batch of new chips, some of which may feature in products mentioned at thus year's show. The BCM7632 is a single chip Blu-ray controller that not only supports streaming services like Netflix, Pandora, and Vudu but will also support the new 3D Blu-ray movie spec. Their BCM2763 mobile phone chip supports 1080p video recording and playback, and 20 megapixel images while  BCM70015 Crystal HD chip will help make Atom-based netbooks able to play HD videos.

And Nvidia is Inside Too
Netbooks equipped with the new Intel processors and Nvidia's Ion graphics chip will also be able to play HD video.  The Ion platform should also make for some fast gaming a claim Nvidia says Broadcom chips can't make.


Windows 7 Multi-Touch Brings it All Together
Microsoft doesn't appear to have a lot to offer at this year's CES. The Xbox 360 doesn't have a built-in Blu-ray player, the Zune HD isn't hurting iPod Touch sales, the Windows Mobile phone OS is losing ground and who knows when Media Servers are going to finally catch on?

Meanwhile, Microsoft does have this cool gesture-based interface called Natal as well as a multi-touch interface built into Windows 7. We expect to see more laptops and all-in-one computers showing off all the cool things you can do with a multi-touch display.

More Questions…
We'll be looking to see what's happening with Micro Four Thirds cameras like the popular Panasonic GF1. Will Canon or Nikon finally jump in and legitimize the category?

How many devices will be running Android? Yes, there's the Archos tablet but will we see netbooks and other mobile internet devices creating more opportunities for Android app developers?

Will any new smartphone grab as much attention as the Palm Pre or the iPhone did? Is Nokia going to show anything with its new Maemo phone OS?

Will we start to see products with next generation high speed wireless like LTE of Wimax?

What's Not Going to Be Hot at CES 
We don't expect to see much action in the MP3 category as the iPod Touch appears to be running away with the market. We would like to see the new Sony Walkman that is available in Japan but don't think we will see it at this year's show.

Cameras have their own trade show but aside from some novel features like Nikon's built-in pico projector, we haven't heard anything sensational coming to CES in the way of cameras this year. Same goes for camcorders.

GPS is not going to be the hot category that is was in past years. The more interesting aspect on GPS will be to see which gadgets get GPS features like geo-tagging cameras or social media savvy smartphones.