CES 2007 Part I: Convergence Happened and the Most Impressive Demo of CES

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by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/11/2007 6:53:27 PM
Posted in Displays

Bravia Internet Video Link, and PS3 UI for LCDs

One of many examples of convergence devices was the Bravia Internet Video Link on display at the Sony booth. The Internet Video Link will interface with all redesigned 2007 Bravia TVs (currently not announced/available) and will stream content from a handful of sources to your TV.

The Internet Video Link connects via HDMI to your TV and via Ethernet to the Internet. Once connected, it can stream content from a number of web portals - currently only limited to AOL, Yahoo Video, Grouper and Sony. The Internet Video Link also offers RSS support for things like traffic and weather data.

While it would be far better if you could stream content from any source, and something like Youtube integration would be much more useful than being able to stream from AOL and Yahoo video, the real story behind the Bravia Internet Video Link is the TV it was demonstrated on.

An unreleased 2007 model Bravia TV was the demo platform, and the big feature to talk about is its use of a very PSP/PS3-like UI. Called the Crossbar menu, it’s a reasonably quick UI that is among the best we’ve seen on a TV. While it’s not as fast as on a PS3, it is still reasonably fast and not too cluttered. Expect to see this UI on all 2007 model Sony Bravia displays.

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complaint about the Industry Brains ads by artifex on Monday, January 15, 2007

I'm getting offers in the ads from companies who claim to offer "free" stuff provided you join a lot of trial offers and buy a bunch of stuff and sucker your friends into joining, also.

Does Anandtech approve of these ads? Don't say you have no control over them, because you do. You can complain to your provider, IndustryBrains, or switch if they continue to show these things.

The suckier the ads are, the less credibility you have among people who see them, and the more likely everyone will use adblockers, which will kill your revenue.

artifex

g-force versus geforce by artifex on Monday, January 15, 2007

You guys must be too young to remember G-Force, the anime. :)
When Nvidia announced their first GeForce product, I thought they might get sued, themselves. But of course, g-force is a term that predates either.

artifex

SED *grumble grumble grumble* by Houdani on Friday, January 12, 2007

<--- that's me being grumpy about Toshiba & Canon not displaying the SED TVs at CES'07 due to legal wranglings with Nano-Proprietary. This, of course, is only pushing out their availability that much farther, further closing the window on this tech. Hrmph!

Houdani

ageia by semo on Friday, January 12, 2007

quote:
Performance of a game with PhysX enabled must not be lower than with it disabled - you should no longer have the problem of better physics but lower performance. This is a big step forward for Ageia, as it is difficult to justify spending money on getting better physics if you end up reducing overall game performance as a trade off.

why is that such an issue? what is performance? some numbers you couldn't care less when playing assuming the fps stay above a certain number. you expect performance to drop when enabling other eye candy, but when it comes to realism everyone seems to complain.

this makes me think, are ppl buying better video cards for the increased "performance" or for the more immersive experience.

semo

RE: ageia by Houdani on Friday, January 12, 2007

Physics doesn't necessarily have to mean that more polygons are pushed to the screen (such as when things go boom). When this happens, then it taxes the video card more and has a subsequent impact on performance. I think this relationship is understood and accepted.

However, if the physics don't add more polygons but instead cause objects to interact more realistically then we're at the spot where we don't want overall performance to slow down. This is where Ageia needs to flex their strength and not disappoint their audience.

In *software* we already have the ability to have great physics, but at a loss to performance. For Ageia to excel, they necessarily have to remove that hindrance and give us the physics without the performance hit -- otherwise they've provided us with little or no benefit, really.

Houdani

RE: ageia by semo on Friday, January 12, 2007

that makes sense. how much of a performance hit are talking here anyway. and how much of the physics calculations are outsourced to the ppu (and are there any big overheads as a result)

semo

eBook Reader... by LoneWolf15 on Friday, January 12, 2007

quote:
The unit itself is extremely light and honestly is one of the first devices of this type that we could actually see being a reasonable replacement to carrying around tons of books. While the demonstration centered around reading novels, what we’d really like to see is this technology used to store textbooks for schools. Rather than having to carry around multiple books each composed of hundreds of pages, a single e-Ink based Reader like this would be a much better experience.

It would be, if you can make sure this product is extremely difficult to damage.

I've seen way too many students that don't care how they treat something a school gives them --after all, it's (in their minds) not like they bought and paid for it with their own money (the concept that their parents' taxes did is irrelevant in their minds in those cases).

I agree that the concept is brilliant on paper, and it should be perfect for higher education. In the K-12 evnironment though, unless there's a way of accountability that works without making parents upset, or a way of making them durable enough that this is not an issue, this could be an idea that falls one tiny step short of a great finish.

LoneWolf15

Interesting by bokep on Friday, January 12, 2007

I've been following OLEDs since I first learned about it over half a decade ago. Nice to see it working that well and should be coming out within the next few years.

bokep

nice work Anand and co by CSMR on Thursday, January 11, 2007

Great reviews, thanks for keeping the world updated!

CSMR

OLED sure seems great, but.... by archcommus on Thursday, January 11, 2007

...let's be serious here, LCD is surely getting the job done just fine.

archcommus

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