From Vista to Viiv in Vegas HD Hijinks and High-Speed Hardware Eric Grevstad
High-Def Hijinks
Reporter's Notebook: The ability to stream video from the PC that recorded it to other venues might lighten some of the digital-rights-management and copy-protection baggage. The prospect of physically moving video, however, or burning high-definition DVDs of anything other than your own HD camcorder movies, remains murky.
But that hasn't stopped the addition of HDTV tuners to the NTSC analog gear of Media Center PCs — although shoppers will need to look closely, with some tuners and systems limited to over-the-air, instead of satellite and cable HD, programming.
AMD revived the ATI TV Wonder brand for what it calls the first DTV receiver for Windows Vista Media Center, a CableLabs-certified digital cable tuner promised to arrive at the end of this month in a variety of desktops and notebooks. An OEM instead of retail product, the TV Wonder lets users watch live or record HD broadcasts to add to a programming library or stream to an Xbox 360, if content providers permit it.
AMD also promoted its Live counterpart to Intel's Viiv label for home-entertainment PCs, displaying both Athlon 64 X2-based home cinema and Turion 64 X2-powered notebook reference designs, as well as working with HP on the latter's MediaSmart Server.
Sony calls its Vaio TP1 living-room PC a spherical (actually, a stubby cylindrical) variation on the Media Center theme; the WiFi-equipped, Core 2 Duo-powered PC will ship in March with a 300GB hard disk and wireless keyboard and mouse for $1,600.
A more powerful, stereo-receiver-lookalike Vaio XL3 ($3,300) features a Blu-ray disc burner and liquid cooling for near-silent operation, as well as CableCard support to serve as an HD digital video recorder.
Speaking of Blu-ray, the war between that 25GB/50GB disc format and its 15GB/30GB rival HD-DVD saw the same expressions of vendor frustration as CES 2006 — for example, Acer's announcement of one notebook PC with an HD-DVD reader and another with a Blu-ray drive.
One potential solution came from Warner Brothers, which hopes the entertainment industry will adopt its Total Hi Def disc — a combo platter with HD-DVD on one side and Blu-ray on the other.
LG Electronics went further, unveiling two products expected to reach retailers next month under the Super Multi Blue brand. The BH-100 is a dual-format HD DVD/Blu-ray home-theater player, while the GGW-H10N is a PC drive capable of recording Blu-ray as well as reading both Blu-ray and HD DVD media. Each will cost approximately $1,200.
Toshiba also promised a version of its 17-inch-screened Qosmio Media Center laptop with an HD-DVD burner, as well as the current model G35-AV660's playback capability.
And if you think the 10.3-pound Qosmio is something, HP subsidiary VoodooPC's Envy HW:201 gaming notebook flaunted a 20-inch display and available Nvidia SLI graphics with dual 512MB GeForce Go 7950 cards. Outfitted with AMD's Turion 64 X2 TL-60, 4GB of DDR-2, and twin 160GB hard drives, the luggable is $7,734. It's also a colossal 17 pounds.
High-Speed Hardware
The Envy wasn't the only hardcore gaming PC at the show, with VoodooPC, Dell subsidiary Alienware, and Dell itself displaying quad-core, overclocked monster desktops.
CoolIT Systems showed off its MTEC liquid-cooling technology, which combines a dual-thermal-plate heatsink with multiple ceramic heat pumps to keep overclocked CPUs and component-packed PC cases from getting heat stroke, in both Dell's XPS 710 H2C Edition and Shuttle's SDXi small-form-factor gaming systems.
Microsoft also got in on the gaming action, following its first team-up with fast-twitch specialist Razer USA — last summer's Rabu first-person-shooter mouse — with the Reclusa gaming keyboard.
Slated to ship this spring for $70, the Reclusa features ambient blue backlighting, ultra-low-latency key response, two 360-degree jog dials, six programmable hot keys, and gold-plated USB ports.
As an alternative to hot-rod processors, another performance-boosting technology appeared simultaneously in two coat-pocket portables: New versions of Samsung's Q1P UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC) and Sony's Vaio UX Micro PC feature 32MB Flash drives instead of conventional hard disks.
The solid-state storage means faster bootup and program and data access, plus lower-power consumption to boost battery life. The 1.3-pound Samsung is $1,999 with a 1GHz Pentium M ULV processor and 7-inch, 800 by 480-pixel touch screen, while the 1.2-pound Vaio UX is $2,500 with 1.2GHz Core Solo U1400 power and a 4.5-inch, 1,024 by 600 display.
Finally, robots may not yet be fixtures in every home, but they're perennial crowd-pleasers at CES.
At one extreme, Honda showed a new version of its famed ASIMO humanoid robot capable of not only walking and climbing stairs but running at up to four miles per hour, pushing a cart, and accepting or handing off an object such as a tray.
At the other extreme, iRobot — makers of the floor-roaming Roomba vacuum cleaner as well as remote-controlled explorers and bomb handlers aiding our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan — introduced a Roomba variant designed for students and aspiring robotics engineers.
The $130 iRobot Create is a programmable, mobile platform with sensor and actuator interfaces to give innovators a head start on new applications. A popular sample was a robot that can find a refrigerator, open the door, grab a beverage can, and return to its starting location.
Eric Grevstad is executive editor of the Personal Technology channel of JupiterWeb.
