I just received a notice that the 2016 CES show is two months away and it asked … am I prepared? I must admit, yes. I’ve had the CES adrenalin rush since well before August. I even had a mentally “must take” list before then. If you’ve read a particular earlier blog here, you’d note that it’s a “big deal” for me and an extensive list is a “geek must.”
But as usual, I need to keep things in perspective and absolutely nothing will do that like looking back to the previous show of 10 years ago. Briefly, here is the scoop on what was hot waaaay back then.
Samsung was introducing their first Bluray player for $1000. It’s notable that the superior HD DVD player from Toshiba was half that cost. AND, it allowed ripping to any type of player you owned. That of course, was the kiss of death as all consumers are thieves in the eyes of Sony. The momentum moved Sony’s way as “under the table” deals spelled the end for the better format. Notably, I still own a HD DVD, and yes it still looks and sounds better than any Bluray player I’ve ever run across.
Digital cameras were peaking at about 8 megapixels and InfoTrends (a marketing research group) claimed that digital camera sales had peaked. And as usual, these types of groups were wrong. That didn’t happen until well after 2010 … and that was only primarily due to the dominance of the smart phone with the built-in camera.
The biggest thing by far at the show was the change to 1080 over the half-as-sharp 720 sets. TV’s with the higher resolution were everywhere. They averaged about a grand more than the 720 sets. Recently I bought a Sams’s Club 26” Hitachi 1080 set for my kitchen for $149. In a very simplistic comparison, the top of the line Sony projector in 2006 was $30K. And an absolute top-of-the-line 57’ Sharp LCD was $16K.
Sony was showing its new 1080 sets like everyone else, and true to form, thumbed their noses at the U.S and had already released a 4K set in Japan, memorably called the X series KDL-40X1000.
The iPad accessory market was hot also, but no one had any idea how vast the accessory market would be until June of 2007 with the original iPhone release. But, that’s a story for the 10 year reflection for the 2017 CES.