- SAN FRANCISCO/LOS ANGELES
(Reuters) - The living room, once the most technologically simple part
of the average home, is a high-tech battleground today as the consumer
electronics industry seeks to digitize home entertainment and make it available
anywhere, anytime.
-
- The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) starting on Thursday
in Las Vegas will set the agenda of what's in store in 2005 for the digital
home-owner -- from ultra-high-definition television screens to music and
video recorders and other networked appliances.
-
- The four-day conference, the high-tech industry's largest
annual gathering in the United States, will draw 120,000 technologists
and retailers for a vast display of devices, from 102-inch-wide flat-panel
TVs -- the world's biggest -- to postage-stamp-size hard-disks for music
players or phones.
-
- "The big trends are home improvement, in-your-pocket-entertainment
and personal video choice," said Richard Dougherty of Envisioneering
Group in Seaford, New York.
-
- Home improvement refers to the increasingly affordable
home-theater systems that combine flat panel displays, surround-sound audio
and personal video recorders.
-
- "Home theaters have gone from luxury status to,
'Hey, I can afford this in my apartment!' status," Dougherty said.
-
- COMING SOON
-
- In recent years, the Consumer Electronics Show has seen
an explosion of innovation from computerized wristwatches to satellite
radios and Internet-enabled ovens to digital frying pans.
-
- Not everything that makes a splash at CES actually makes
it to store shelves, though. One notable example: Intel Corp.'s much-hyped
announcement last year that it would enter the television display business,
only to cancel the project a few months later.
-
- But for every failure there are many successes, and fueling
demand for all these nifty gadgets, even once-costly flat-panel television
screens, has been a steady decline in prices.
-
- Flat-panel TVs with 32-inch screens are selling for under
$1,500, putting pressure on name-brand TV makers who still sell similar
models for $3,000 or more, said industry analyst Ross Young.
-
- At CES, Samsung, Toshiba and RCA will be among those
showing the first true, 1086-pixel high-definition flat-panel TV screens,
he said. These crunch more picture elements closer together to create sharper
resolution images.
-
- At stake here is a chunk of the flat-panel television
market, which is expected to grow to $15 billion in 2005 from $10 billion,
according to DisplaySearch estimates.
-
- VHS VS. BETAMAX, ROUND TWO?
-
- Stephen Baker, of research firm NPD in Port Washington,
New York, said rival camps of manufacturers will square off at the show
over the next-generation DVD video standard -- a replay of the Betamax
vs. VHS videocassette wars of the 1970s. At stake is the future of the
home video industry, increasingly crucial to Hollywood's bottom line.
-
- Young, president of industry forecaster DisplaySearch
of Austin, Texas, said that with major Hollywood studios taking sides,
consumers face having to choose between one of two incompatible next-generation
DVD formats.
-
- Consumers also face potential confusion as new home entertainment
appliances incorporate features that once were sold as separate devices.
-
- Flat panel displays may include a personal video recorder,
or come with an insertable access card for cable television, instead of
a cable converter set-top box, reducing living room clutter.
-
- While the focus remains in the living room, also on display
will be hot mobile gadgets aimed at the car, air travel and pretty much
anywhere a plug is not readily available.
-
- Absent from the event, however, will be the creators
of the electronics industry's biggest hit product -- the iPod music player
and Apple Computer Inc., which holds its own annual conference in San Francisco
the following week.
-
- Scores of companies at CES will seek to chip away at
the franchise Apple has created with its sleek hard drives, which can store
photos and act as a voice recorder, in addition to being a music player.
-
- © Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
|
