Quick Takes on Consumer Electronics

Consumer electronics remains a vibrant and ebullient industry. This year’s 2008 Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show was jam-packed as always. As an armchair participant, I won’t try to compete with all of the pundits who have already voiced their opinions about the most exciting technologies being introduced this year. What I notice are the patterns:

1. High-definition video is driving the appetite for large screens and HD downloads.

2. GPS and navigation technology has made in-car electronics a must-have for most families; not content with digital navigation devices, in-car electronics also include audio, video, radio, games, etc. You can travel the world in your electronic cocoon.

3. Smaller, thinner, cheaper, brighter, fewer moving parts, less energy consumed... the world’s designers are getting pretty good at designing and evolving nifty gadgets that take advantage of pervasive computing.

For one of the better summaries of the CES show. I recommend The New York Times’ David Pogue’s dispassionate highlights (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/technology/personaltech/10pogue.html?pagewanted=1&WT.mc_id=%20NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-0116-L8&WT.mc_ev=click&ei=5087&en=7d78ee4fc4704a57&ex=1216011600&excamp=NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-0116-L8). 

MacWorld was a bit disappointing this year. I was intrigued, but not wow’ed. The MacBook Air was Steve’s piece de resistance. Its evolutionary innovation is its thinness. Designed for the fashion-conscious, the MacBook Air has a couple of flaws that Apple fans picked up on quickly, the 5-hour life battery can’t be replaced by the user, so you can’t carry a spare battery for long flights or treks away from power. It also skimps on the number of USB and other ports. But, hey, it’s thin enough to fit into an interoffice mail envelope, highly functional (built-in video, WiFi, all of the Mac apps) and definitely elegant. It will sell well to the hip non-road-warrior/non-hacker crowd.

The other big news at MacWorld is Apple’s agreement with all the major studios in the movie industry to offer downloadable first-run HD movie rentals on MacTV. But Apple’s 24-hour movie rental option is not going to make it in the long run. The “you have to watch this movie within 24 hours before it disappears” caveat that the movie studios insisted upon will not fly with most consumers. The fact that Apple has arranged to offer first-run movies (within a month of their availability on DVD), and to include HD versions for an additional fee, is appealing, but there are many other options for online movie downloads that are gaining traction.

Netflix, which reinvented the movie rental business model with its “no return deadline” subscription, made a pre-emptive announcement the day before MacWorld, upgrading its existing customers to unlimited downloads of movies for their same monthly movie rental fee. Any Netflix customer who subscribes to 3 or more return-when-you’re ready movies per month will now get unlimited hours of downloadable movie viewing time from Netflix. People who are on the 1 or 2 movie-per-month plan will still be able to download up to 14 hours worth of movies per month. Unlike Apple’s movies, they won’t disappear in 24 hours!

OF INTEREST TO INNOVATORS: Scott Jordan, one of our pioneers, found this nifty “Do It Yourself” build-your-own-consumer-electronics kit from Bug Labs and forwarded a link, http://buglabs.net/products. If you’ve got an idea about a cool device you’d like to have, you can quickly snap it together out of these pre-built components—camera keyboard, sensors, display, etc, program it, and voila!, your own custom-built consumer electronics.

Comments

[Car Electronics]

This is very important for college going students about the use of Car Electronicsincludes audio, video, radio, games etc. . GPS and navigation technology has made in-car electronics a must-have for most families. So, you can travel the world in your electronic cocoon.