The
International Consumer Electronics Show, known universally as CES, will be bigger than ever this year, expanding its Las Vegas footprint to 2.4 million square feet to swallow up 150,000 attendees for a glimpse into the future.
But unlike in many prior years, there's no single large overriding theme.
"It's actually hard to get excited about CES this year because there's no focus," said James McQuivey, analyst at Forrester.
"When you think back about some of the more legendary CES years — they were the years of the tablet like 2011, or the years of the e-reader, which was 2010 — those are years where everyone knew there was one big thing happening and you had to go see them. This year, there is no equivalent of that," he said.
Nevertheless, there are still some distinct themes this year: Products that highlight the Internet of Things (IoT), the connected home, autos and virtual reality all have a big presence.
Interesting things include.
Intel — which is aiming to be a big player in IoT — will officially kick off the event with a keynote from CEO Brian Krzanich on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. ET.
"Intel's innovations, which power tablets, wearables, PCs, smart cars, homes, appliances, cloud computing and so much more are serving as the foundation for the burgeoning Internet of Things," said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, which sponsors the event.
The big challenge companies face in this space will be selling consumers on the idea of the digital home. Each will try to differentiate its smart home offerings based on the seamless nature of the user experience and, increasingly, on security. Expect new partnerships to be announced with content creators, financial services companies and e-commerce players.
"We are reaching an inflection point in this whole journey in which the consumer experience, the digital technologies and the sensor technologies are all coming together," said PriceWaterhouseCoopers principal Shahid Ahmed.
Is there a big problem with your 'smart' home?
Many still don't think the market is ready for the average consumer. "I have seen the smart home advances at CES every year for the last five years and they are impressive, but here's what we're lacking in the smart home category specifically — it is a collection of innovations, it is not a single innovation that can catalyze the interest of the public."
"You want one app to rule your entire home, and right now you can't do that and even if you had an app to do it, the devices themselves don't work together in an intelligent way," said McQuivey.
This presents a real problem for the big brands behind the smartest homes on show at CES.
"It's a marketing problem but it's also a technology problem — one that Google is working on very aggressively as the owner of some of the biggest players in that category — Nest and Dropcam. Google is trying to create a single experience," said McQuivey. Nest does not have a booth at CES but its products will be featured throughout the show floor. (Dropcam is now part of Nest which is owned by Google's parent company Alphabet.)
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Appliance maker Bosch is also positioning itself aggressively in this category. The company is hosting a news conference on Tuesday at 11 a.m. ET and, along with real estate broker Coldwell Banker, co-sponsoring the inaugural Smart Home Marketplace. Other exhibitors within the marketplace include Honeywell, Lowes and Logitech.
Samsung — best known for its screens large and small — is already generating a lot of buzz around its smart home solutions. The company is expected to unveil new products at a news conference at 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday, the official press day for the conference.
Also on Tuesday, at 3 p.m. ET Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf will host the company's news conference. He's expected to unveil new products across several categories including IoT, smart home, mobile, health care and automotive.
even more
Automakers will also be out in force, with 7 out of the 10 biggest auto manufacturers at the show. The industry is taking over 25 percent more exhibit space than last year and executives are expected to unveil new connected car technology and driverless vehicles.
In a keynote on Tuesday at 11:30 p.m. ET, Volkswagen's Herbert Diess will unveil a new electric car and talk about the importance of electric mobility for the industry. On Wednesday at 4 p.m. ET, General Motors CEO Mary Barra will take the stage to share more on the company's next-generation pure electric vehicle, the Bolt EV, first announced at the Chicago auto show.
Although far from a mass market reality, autonomous vehicles are likely to create a lot of buzz. On Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET, Kia Motors will unveil its autonomous driving program and discuss the company's progress and innovation around the connected car experience, according to a press release.
On Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. ET, Mobileye's Amnon Shashua, the company's co-founder, chairman and CTO, will reveal technology it's developing for fully autonomous driving, according to a press release. Mobileye's products are integrated into a slew of vehicles from automakers including BMW, Ford and General Motors.
and more yet
Wearables will once again be center stage, with one big difference over prior years: Apple has entered the market.
"While Apple's Watch has had choppy success out of the gates it has helped spearhead a major paradigm shift in the acceptance/adoption of wearables technology along with a number of other players (e.g., Samsung, Microsoft, Fitbit, Jawbone, etc.) in the space," writes FBR analyst Daniel H. Ives.
FBR believes the wearables industry represents a $20 billion market opportunity over the next three years and that third-party apps will drive adoption.
"While it remains very early days, we believe wearables represent a major tangential growth opportunity in terms of the Internet of Things (IoT), which is expected to be the centerpiece of much technology innovation slated for 2016 with Apple, IBM, Google, Intel, Cisco, and Microsoft leading the IoT charge," writes Ives.
Still, 2016 is being called the year in which wearables "disappear," becoming more fashionable and less clunky. To that end, expect partnership announcements between tech companies and fashion brands looking to break out in 2016. One example: MasterCard. The company which will showcase the ways in which it is embedding payments into consumer products, enabling purchases with the tap of a ring or flip of the wrist, building on an announcement made back in October.
Some innovations may seem a little "out there," at least for nongeeks.
For example, Child Angel will demo a tracking bracelet for kids powered by Intel. The device provides location detection and sends biometric data to parents via an app. The partnership is part of the Intel IoT Platform and illustrative of a broader trend in which tech giants will seek to own the IoT ecosystem of devices.
Proving that no space is safe from tech's tentacles, start-up Variowell will show off its new patented smart foam, designed to turn a regular mattresses, chairs and car seats into smart devices. The foam reacts to data collected by an app on a wearable device to adjust firmness according to sleep phases.
Once again, McQuivey thinks much of this might be a bit too ahead of its time. "If you survey consumers and they say 'yep I want it, can't wait,' but what they mean by that is 'I am ready for someone to hand it to me ready formed and ready to go,' and none of these technologies are delivering that fully formed ready-to-go experience for the home, for the body and for the car — not yet."
That said, one category analysts agree will present some excitement is augmented and virtual reality.
"The big buzz heading into CES 2016 is around 'rolling out the red carpet' for virtual reality products/headsets/software," writes Ives.
McQuivey agrees. "The one area people immediately understand that this is gonna change their lives is the area of augmented and virtual reality."
Analysts expect the battle over VR to kick into high gear as new platforms hit the market in 2016. Facebook's Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Sony PlayStation VR are getting ready to release their platforms in the first half of the year, and the success, or failure, of those products could alter the landscape for years to come.
McQuivey likens the VR market today to the personal computing market in the 1990s. Everyone understands that the technology will be powerful and significant, but most households still cannot afford the real deal. That's likely to remain the case through 2016, he said.
"That doesn't mean you can't go buy Google Cardboard and put your phone in front of your eyes but that will actually make you sick. The really high-quality VR like Oculus, the really high-quality mixed reality like HoloLens, those things are immediately understandable from a consumer perspective ... it's just that we're not going to see very many of them during 2016," said McQuivey.
When VR gets to the point where it works flawlessly and is affordable, it will be "a life changer," he said.
The other hot hardware item this year is drones. Correspondingly, The Unmanned Systems Marketplace will expand its footprint by more than 200 percent this year.
"Consumer drones will also be a highlight of CES, as this technology makes the transition to consumer use with a number of innovative private technology players as well as GoPro (e.g. Karma) focused on this multibillion opportunity," according to Ives.
There's so much to take in at the CES these days, and watching the future come into reality is an eye opener for all of us living in what will one day be called the past.
Andrew
The tuning revolution began at TAS reviewer Tom Miiller's place.
The Absolute Sound review (Tom Miiller)
"Since rooms are not available for demonstration at your local audio emporium but, rather, are usually the one room in the house your spouse could care less about, we audiophiles usually accept the best of a bad lot and struggle on. I certainly have. For me, that meant poor low frequency support, slap echoes, and lopsided soundstaging. You can probably guess that (1) I'm in the basement, (2) the room is "L" shaped and (3) the drywall ceiling effectively mimics the drum…. For five years I fought the room and the room won. Now, my foot is on the room's throat, the tables forever turned. All thanks to an audio revolution called RoomTune.
RoomTune is a passive acoustic room treatment device and concept. No is not the first acoustic room treatment to hit the market. Before RoomTune there were egg crates, Sonex, Soundex, ASC Tube Traps and RPG diffusers (in escalating order of cost). RoomTune is a revolutionary product, however, because it conceptually diverges from the principles that have guided use of the previous products. RoomTune is a minimalist approach that applies acoustic control in the room's pressure zones. Most significantly, its guiding principles are that a live room is better, and that a room that is primarily absorptive is fundamentally flawed. Based upon my experiences over four months, I agree.
Before Green's arrival I had played with the RoomTunes and, I thought I had pretty much figured out how to use them. Within three hours of Green's arrival, I was reduced to abject embarrassment at my misunderstanding and misuse of the RoomTunes. Green started by removing the absorptive devices in the room. Step two was to pull the loudspeakers out much further into the room so that the listener was in closer proximity to the direct sound. Then we set up the RoomTunes. I had used all four RoomTunes placed in the corners with the absorptive sides turned out. Green reversed all of the 'Tunes so that the reflective sides were facing the listener. Then Green hauled out the first CornerTunes. The CornerTune is an equilateral triangular pillow one inch thick. Fiberglass, reflective foil on one side, absorptive (no foil) on the other, is covered with the same cloth as the RoomTunes. Placing the CornerTune at the ceiling corners of the room is intended to cancel the amplification of reflected energy at those points… Green installed the two CornerTunes behind the loudspeakers with reflective side out while the CornerTunes behind the listener were installed absorptive side out. It was time to listen and I was smugly sure that Mr. Green was about to discover the agonies of an "L" shaped room first hand.
Transformation! That’s the only adequate word for the effect of those first rough but informed alterations to my room. Transformation. There is so much to say about what has happened in my room and, from a scientific standpoint, I understand so little of it. So. please, bear with me as I share my observations as a music lover and High End listener. Those first 24 hours with Michael Green were only the beginning of what became a three month period of empirical effort leading to this moment when I am truly satisfied with the sound of my room, yet aware of the aspects that can be improved. One thing, however, of which I have become aware is that each room, system, and listener has a relatively small volume range that is satisfactorily balanced across the frequency range. The more absorptive or dead your room is, the lower the level at which room induced imbalance occurs… The first notable effect of proper RoomTune treatment is that the usable volume range of my room increased in both directions. The music became more involving at a lower volume than previously and the point at which the room "overloaded" was significantly raised. The second remarkable RoomTune effect I noticed was that, top to bottom, there was a significant increase in clarity and timbral accuracy. The level of clarity became more consistent and less frequency dependent. The unique timbral personality of each instrument was better separated from its fellow instruments in the orchestra and preserved as a separate entity. Previously, different areas in the frequency range suffered varying degrees of confusion. In case you think I've just had a really bad room, let me tell you that every other system I have heard to date suffers from this frequency dependent confusion.
The frequency range that experienced the greatest house cleaning was from the upper bass down. Plucked upright basses became much better focused, the pluck becoming clearly distinguishable from the string. Similarly, there was a marked improvement in the distinctions between different drums playing at the same time in the same general frequency range. The net improvement in this respect, without any change in equipment, was dumbfounding. I would. however, be remiss if I did not emphasize that the great improvements in clarity and timbral accuracy throughout the frequency range resulted in large part from the restoration of overtones lost in my previously overdamped room. I have become aware that most rooms are indeed overdamped and, consequently, sound closed in. This damping of the higher frequencies is, I find, most deleterious to the music because the higher frequency overtones are every bit as important to music as any other information. For instance, I heard one extraordinarily expensive system comprised of the finest pedigree equipment in a room that was so grotesquely overdamped that there was simply no life at all in the music. Unfortunately, conventional wisdom calls for us to dampen our rooms.
Soundstage is one other significant hi-fi improvement stemming from the RoomTune treatment. Soundstaging is simply transformed into higher art in a live room that is controlled with the RoomTune devices. I have heard two types of soundstage presentation. The first, which believe is most conventional and is typical in overly absorptive rooms, is what I call the "motion picture" soundstage. With the motion picture soundstage, it seems that a miniaturized replication of the recording venue is projected into the listening room, suspended behind the loudspeakers. The finest motion picture soundstage I have ever heard was during my early TAS days: the Sea Cliff reference system. The second type of soundstage is much fewer. This type imposes the recording environment over the listening room, displacing the listening environment in the area immediately in front, to the sides, and behind the loudspeakers. The effect is not complete because it only extends slightly in front of the loudspeakers… Now, I also hear the effect in my room, thanks to the RoomTune. Further, only the finest recordings will create such a soundstage: but, and I emphasize this, it is possible. And, when it happens, it is magical.
RoomTunes will not create bass where it ain't. For me, that meant the first step of room set-up was finding the proper listening position to provide full low frequency extension In my room. this place was only two and one half feet from the back wall. So there I sat. There was, however, a significant rise around 80 Hz that had to be tamed. Fortunately RoomTune has another product called - are you ready - the BassTune. When this, your work, is done, you will not only have significantly advanced your listening acuity, you will have established a more revealing environment in which to evaluate new components. I recently compared two products that sounded very similar. At home, with the advantage of familiarity, the products could not have sounded more dissimilar. For a reviewer, the education afforded by learning to use RoomTunes is invaluable.
The common complaint I have heard from people that have heard at least a cursory demonstration of the RoomTunes is that the comparison was invalid because Mr. Green moved the loudspeakers. Well, of course he moved the loudspeakers. The listening room, loudspeaker, and acoustic treatment device interaction is extremely complex and unique to each room, each loudspeaker, and each acoustic treatment. It takes time to discover the best configuration. For years, I worked with the damping approach. I have worked six months with the live approach and the sound quality is now tar beyond anything I experienced the old way. Whether anyone else chooses to believe or follow, I shall never go back. My ears have been opened and, having heard the light (RoomTune), can no longer accept the dark."
I had been to CES before, but as a dealer. To me, it looked like a music love fest with packed rooms. In "90" as a designer I realized it was indeed a fest. A musicfest with distinct (maybe discrete) sides, shapes and little rooms all having their hobby, industry, business as their homeroom mingling through and around the other parts with both the sense of community and obliviosity.
I could probably name 25 of these cell groups off the top of my head within the first few hours of the 1990 show. "what a weird universe" I thought as we setup over 80 rooms with RoomTune at our debut CES. I was told, this was a first for the high end audio as well, having a company of supportive products come in and blitz an audiophile trade show. Reviews came out at fever pitch after that showing and before I could turn around I was traveling the world, much like I did on music tours of my past life. I was amazed by two things. One was how hungry high end audio listeners were to tune, and two why wasn't this done before.
BTW just got off the phone with George Cardas. I told Harold to grab a picture of them for me.
Ok, back to my article.
Obviously I'm from the entertainment world. My whole life has been about creating and playing music, I've never thought about doing anything else. Listening is pretty much what I am. At first it didn't register with me, but by my third or forth CES, I started to pay attention to the different types of audiophiles coming to the CES. At first I thought it was a joke, someone handing out test CD's, cute. I thought, ok maybe it's a cool product that helps tell people where things are in a particular soundstage, you know, kind of a starting point for beginners. No kidding I watch some guys walked into rooms, asked to play this test CD, then leave without ever playing music. Did someone forget to tell these guys that all recordings are done differently? This was just one of many camps of audiophiles that now, as an insider, I kept my ear on.
below Gretchen Wilson and Michael Green (2006)
From 1990-1997 I was at almost every high end audio trade show you could think of, and certainly never missed a CES. But in "97" I saw something that shook me to the core of my musical soul. 1997 was the first year since I started going to the CES where over half the show rooms were (can you believe this) static. 1997 was the year high end audio started it's slow decline. For the high end audiophile it was the day the music died. By 1999 over 80% of all audio salons were belly up. As well 70% of audio companies 3 years or younger disappeared.
J Gordon? gone Harry? gone. I moved to Vegas in 2004 thinking I could do something to raise the dead, not a chance. Richard gave it his best shot (THE SHOW). But something was missing and you could see the clouds rolling in to finish off high end in Vegas. All those great shows and memories flushed without even a thank you or goodbye.
Then, like in the movies where there is no hope, the strangest thing happens. And this is what I want to show you next.
The key to the survival of high end audio has never been about the big expessive audiophile products. Of cource they play a role and are enjoyed by the few. The key to survival, return and growth of the high end audio is the entry through mid level products along with the strong connection to music, affordable walk with the talk.
below Teac and Michael Green Audio
High end audio has always been it's strongest when the audiophile cheapskate is alive and well and shown at the CES as so. When the meld of the main CES convention halls and the specialty displays intermingle the audiophile marketplace is able to expand, making the hobby of "audiophile" listening in vogue. When the high end audio promoted itself as above the common man it pushed itself toward extinction. Not only did the dealer network collapse, but the numbers of enthusiast dwindled to a handful of older followers.
I can remember saying the high end is "killing itself", but at the next turn, the new hobby will be born. The oldman said digital will end quality listening and I said "not true" we just need to learn how to embrace and use it. In the past CES I have been asked what the most important electronic component was to the high end audio hobby? My answer back in those days, and still is now, the receiver. You cut the receiver out of the picture and watch the high end audio part of the audiophile experience come to an end. I was back in 1997 laughed at of course, but kept my smile as I waited for the snobs to learn their lesson. They have and now we can resume where we left off. Who knows maybe the industry will cover their butts by calling this New World "all in one" or evolve to some other name. Doesn't really matter, the truth is still the same and the desire for quality listening will never really disappear from CES, it has always just needed to grow up a little at a time enough to watch desires replace egos.
Oh, and the circle from above.
Well that really never stops changing as the new evolves from the remembered.
You did good guys, you did real good!
Michael
The newly named CTA™ (Consumer Technology Association, formerly the Consumer Electronics Association or CEA) will hold the newly named CES® 2016 show (Consumer Electronics Show, formerly International CES) this week. Here’s what to expect.
Things You Can Talk To
If you’re not a lover of the QWERTY keyboard (designed in 1868 by Christopher Sholes, the inventor of the typewriter, with the specific intention of slowing you down so that the letter strikers were less likely to jam), rejoice! It may be nearing the end of days. “Hey Siri,” “OK Google,” “Alexa,” “Cortana” — we are getting close to a time where voice recognition will be really useful. Expect to see enhanced and extended voice command capabilities in practically every device that might need them. We’ll be talking to a lot of inanimate objects this year. It should be fun.
Man/Machine Partnerships
From wooden spears to stone axes, our partnerships with tools predate history. At CES 2016 we’re going to see man/machine partnerships taken to a new level. We’re already partnered with services like Google search, IMDB and Wolfram Alpha to outsource our memory. We’re partnered with services like Google Maps and WAZE to outsource our way-finding. Now we’re going to partner with our cars to outsource part of our driving. Semi-autonomous tools such as lane assist, self-parking and adaptive cruise control are just the beginning. By 2020 the big car makers will have fully autonomous vehicles ready to go.
There’s more to man/machine partnerships than self-driving cars. We’ll see conventional robots for manufacturing, anthropomorphic robots for companionship and game-play and much better versions for housekeeping and other chores. Roomba has a robo-vacuum that not only cleans your floor, it can create an invariant map of your floor plan. Is that data set the “price” of a clean house? Let’s hope not. I don’t want my robovac ratting me out to the local zoning authorities because my bathroom hallway isn’t up to current building codes.
Everything That Can Be Connected Will Be Connected
If you can put a sensor in it, it will have a sensor. If you can computerize it, it will be computerized. If it would benefit from the ability to transmit and receive, it will have two-way communication capabilities. This is “the” story of CES 2016. Absolutely everything that can be connected will be connected. Therefore, we are going to drown in data. Nothing can stop it. The velocity of data is increasing and will always increase. There’s no other way to think about it.
Data, Data and More Data
By 2019 analysts predict that only 49 percent of data in the cloud will be from PCs, and the biggest drivers of the shift will be smartphones and IoT.
Analysts expect the Industrial Internet (another name for IoT, the Internet of Things) to generate over 500 zettabytes in 2019 — 49 times current cloud traffic. Of course, consumer cloud usage will grow as well.
You’re wondering what a zettabyte is. OK, let’s do it. One bit or binary digital is the smallest (and largest) unit of computer data. Bits are generally arranged and stored in eight-bit multiples called bytes. One thousand bytes equals a kilobyte or KB. One million bytes equals a megabyte or MB. One billion bytes equals a gigabyte or GB. One trillion bytes equals a terabyte or TB.
We all know about how much we can store on a one-terabyte drive, so let’s do the rest of the ordinals related to the number of terabytes — it will be easier to deal with.
A petabyte or one PB is equal to 1,000 terabytes. An exabyte or EB is equal to a million terabytes and a zettabyte or ZB, the size of the number we are trying to understand, is equal to one billion terabytes. If that’s how much data we’ll store in the cloud by 2019, you might as well know that 500 zettabytes is equal to half a yottabyte, and a yottabyte or YB is equal to one trillion terabytes. Now, that’s a yotta data — sorry, I couldn’t resist.
TVs Will Be Better and Cheaper
Get ready for super-thin, super-cheap, super-awesome 4K TVs. If you’re buying a TV today, you don’t really need a 4K set, but if you’re going to buy a set when these new models become available (in about a year or two), you will enjoy amazing color space, incredible dynamic range (whiter whites and blacker blacks), astounding resolution and unnoticeable refresh rates. We’re even going to see flexible screens on display which, when productized, will usher in a true paradigm shift.
VR and AR
VR (virtual reality) is all anyone is going to talk about at CES this year. Someday, it will find its place. It’s the 3D TV of CES 2016 (Please don’t send me hate mail — I know VR is going to be big and awesome someday. The day is not today, the year is not this year. Over time, VR will evolve into what it’s going to be. Today, it represents a parlor trick, not a paradigm shift.) The hype machine is working overtime. In practice, it is very, very, very early days.
It is also early days for AR (augmented reality), but you can expect this technology to find fast adoption in both industrial and consumer uses. Its capabilities are tied to cloud computing power and network capabilities, which can both be calculated on well-understood industry power curves.
Drones for Everyone
Delivery drones, camera drones, tiny drones, spy drones, follow-me drones, smart drones — there’s a drone for everyone. If you are considering any type of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), you’ll find some version of it at CES. I’m a particular fan of camera drones that follow the action and have obstacle avoidance built in. I’m also a fan of super-tiny indoor drones — they’re just fun!
It’s Important to Be Important
One undeclared, but in-your-face, battle at CES will be for the right to be the center of your personal communications universe. Today, and for the foreseeable future, this honor is bestowed on your smartphone. But what single app will win the day? Samsung wants to “own” you. So does Apple. In fact, almost anyone with a hope of winning this battle is doing everything it can to get a prime spot on the lower right-hand side of your smartphone screen — just under your right thumb (left for lefties). What technology at CES will be important enough for you to give it your thumb? It’s a good filter to use as you walk the show.
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Wed Dec 23, 2015 10:54 am
