The CES hangover

CES 2010 proved to be a knocking shop for home theatre televisions, small tablet computers and long press conferences with just not that much interesting new stuff to talk about.

In consumer electronics the big names put their weight behind 3D TVs. Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Toshiba, Sharp and the others all had numerous sets at their stands. Aside from a distinct lack of 3D material being available yet, there's the added bonus of trying to figure out how retailers will manage to show these tellys off at their local stores. Maybe they'll tie all the shutter glasses down with steel rope?

More impressive however were the super-thin televisions that most of the manufacturers had on their stands. Unless you have a thin-and-light notebook, chances are that your luggable is thicker than these units. With such thin bezels all of these units drew gasps from the attendees walking by. We imagine that before too long TVs will be a lot like posters that you can put in matte frames and stick on the wall.

Bringing software applications to your TV was another initiative pushed by many manufacturers, none more so than Samsung. Its walled garden SAPPs software ecosystem is the most mature of the lot and aims to have around 100 applications by the end of the year.

On the other end of the scale one has to wonder why Panasonic produced such a big song and dance about bringing an incomplete Skype experience to its televisions, something rivals like LG have already managed to provide without fuss and at cheaper cost. You can use any USB camera-microphone combo with its televisions rather than shell out over £100 for a Panny one.

One wonders how long it'll be before Android is found on television sets, too.

However it wasn't all about the telly. There were many ebook readers out there at the show with chip vendors using these little devices to show off what they can do. Marvell used its Armada 166E to power dual screen readers. Even familiar names decided to wax their lyrical with Samsung doubling its range by launching four ereader devices. Thankfully vendors have started to standardise on formats with most supporting Epub and PDF. We think it is vital that by the end of 2010 these ebook readers must become a lot more affordable, otherwise smarter devices might start to edge them out on functionality and price.

Slate computing was the relatively dismal highlight in Steve Ballmer's keynote on the first day and with Intel showing off Moorestown tablets it'll be interesting to see if these fill a void, if one exists, between smartphones, netbooks and notebooks. It's certainly getting mighty crowded in there and maybe that's why Dell would not commit to actually selling its own Android powered slate device, even after showing a working unit.

There was also the usual hodge-podge of stands with forgettable technology and, while the show did seem busier this year than last, one really has to wonder if the tech story that garnered the most column inches in the past week came out of CES.

Although the big names in consumer electronics were all showing bleeding edge premium tellys in the middle of a recession, it was hard to get terribly excited about something there's so little content for yet.

PC vendors want slate computing to be the next netbook and judging from the relatively low number of new netbook announcements it would seem that we have a new flavour of the month. Even Asus took the opportunity to showcase its latest netbook design goals with the high-end NX90 featuring speakers from the trustafarians' toy vendor Bang & Olufsen.

In recent years it's been all about ever more useful, compact and capable portable electronic devices at CES. This year the show seemed to be about as static and out of fresh technology ideas as a 50-inch wall mounted television. With 3D of course. µ