CES show was just more of the same

LOOKING BACK at the CES show last week, there were three things that stood out. The first, and most depressing is the lack of anything new under the sun. The next up is the incessant need to make everything wireless, with reason or not. Lastly is the quality of this mostly dull garbage. Happy shiny things yes, new no.

The lack of new was the thing that made me the most depressed. There were some minor things new, the only one that springs to mind was the TDK CD case speakers. Other than that, you had bigger, faster, lower power, and styled differently. Is there any difference between a 70 inch and a 76 inch plasma screen? Is DDR500 all that much worse than DDR533?

The lack of any new technologies was such a downer I was bored to tears. While thinking about the CES overview article, nothing leaped to mind. Evolution yes, revolution, nowhere to be found.

Wireless was more confounding. Everything was 802.11, or had an option to be. There were obvious things, wireless cameras, wireless speaker, and dozens and dozens of rack mounted media players. If seemed if there was a headphone jack on it, you could plug a wireless card into it as well. Be still my beating heart.

One thing that thankfully went away, or at least went into hibernation is video over 802.11b. At IDF, they were all the rage, in fact there was even a keynote and a pavilion dedicated to them. All the vendors assured me that I would never see any quality degradation in the compressed signal, but any demo proved them quite wrong. The humorous part was that most seemed genuinely hurt when I pointed out that the demo looked like crap.

At CES, they all went away. It seems that someone actually looked at what they were offering. The enthusiasm all turned to audio only. You had things to move sound to your car from the house, to your speakers from your computer, or to your dog from your cat. I couldn't spit without hitting a booth that had wireless audio of some sort. At least saner heads have prevailed in the video arena, but I am pretty sure we will see a reprise at the next show, hopefully with 802.11g, that is a bit closer to reality.

The only good part was the quality of machines on the show floor. IT struck me when I was getting a tour of the Velocity Micro booth at the Cyber X Games. I noticed the workmanship of the window in one of their computers, and once attuned, noticed it everywhere. The pieces fit together with less gaps between the panels, the panels were shaped better, and the bezels line up right.

Was I crazy, or was the quality better? The cXg participants' cases were obviously of lesser quality than the new ones, so maybe I wasn't dreaming. Discounting the ‘show' computers, everything on the floor was notably higher quality than at the shows six months ago. Even the little widgets were put together well.

Paint quality was also way up. Instead of the orange peel beige paint applied by a drunken monkey, you had bright vibrant colors. The paint itself looked several layers deep, and had a ‘wet' quality to it. Some of them looked like they wouldn't be out of place in an exotic car.

CES was bright, shiny and dull. Big screen TVs lose their lustre soon after you see your 483rd one in an afternoon. There was little else that caught my eye at the show. Hopefully at the next one, there will be genuine innovation, this low level evolution is not doing much for me. I would take one of the 76 inch plasma screens though, but I wouldn't be too happy with it, honest. µ