Full Report
CES Main Conference

South Hall Part 2
January 8th-11th, 2007

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The South Hall keeps descending every mile or so, it seems, which gives us a chance to take advantage of the ability to see over the top of the first rank of exhibits.

These perfectly rectangular areas where someone didn't show up... or the space was just never allocated... are nice little people-free zones where you can step up the speed of walking and actually get somewhere. Actually, there are occasional isles where there is not much traffic as well - either where two or more booths back up to each other with solid, relatively featureless walls, or where, sad to say, a sequence or area of booths are just not attracting much attention.

I like Vutec's slogan "The more you know about screens the better we look!" Mostly because it relies directly on the weakness of the modern human to replace common sense, and the other 5 senses, not to mention wisdom, with what passes for knowledge. Perfect.

Ah ha, some more LCD screen mounting hardware on the right there.

Looks like Vutec is also making frames for wall-hung LCD screens. Cool.

It was impossible to get close enough to get a shot of the actual D-BOX chairs. A very popular exhibit.

Wireworld shows at CEDIA as well.

HiVi makes visually attractive speakers.

OK. Yanni? Deduct 1000 points. I think any exhibitor who puts out a chair for people to sit in will attract enough people to fill the chairs. But these people seem to be enjoying themselves. The sound quality however....

See? They make a lot of speakers. But they are really competing with the junk found at Circuit City et. al., not with high-end home audio per se.

The Dynaudio booth, which we have covered somewhat at CEDIA.

The Straight Wire exhibit. Most of the high-end cable manufacturers chose to exhibit at the High Performance Audio part of CES.

Cables To Go.

That Gennum screen is very large. As you can see with those people up there on the second floor. The pixels are actually quite visible if you stand right below it. It is projected from somewhere and not at a very high resolution. But it is a good idea and attracted my attention several times with this kind of billboard in the sky effect.

The plants make a statement, don't they? Oh yeah, I'll guess I'll point out that we have found ourselves in another LCD mounting hardware booth.

The Meridian booth. No pictures of the goodies - we got some photos at CEDIA, and I was still spooked by the security threatening the taking away of my camera. Without a backup camera I felt exposed. With one I would feel more inclined to argue my case: First that they should just watch me erase any pictures I took of their precious secret whatever they are, by the way, showing to 150,000 other people. Second that they could just take the memory card, not the camera. Third, they take the camera and I find someone to sue who, if they win, can keep the camera - it is the principal of the thing at that point.

Maybe I should go as press next year.

EarthQuake! Yes, loud repetitive booming was heard coming from this location.

Definitive Technology, what I think of as a popular mid-fi loudspeaker.

Yes, another one. I mean, truly, this is kind of boring if the theme of this show is wall-mounting hardware for flat screens

Optoma, the makes of the best large scale front projection screen we have ever seen, at CEDIA. If the projector wasn't so loud - and we had the room here....

The 5th Element. Picture is better on my 26" Sony XBR LCD. But it is only 26".... so this is pretty good close-up and should be excellent at a reasonable distance.

Someone with a microphone who is giving away free stuff... Can't get better than that at this show.

THX bought themselves a BMW.

A nice BMW. Doesn't that look almost computer generated out of Tron or something? Anybody else watch Tron?

The imagination put into these exhibits! An amazing comment on the brilliance and shallowness of the human spirit.

OK, here we have a 'booth babe' in our report. A woman sitting on a, well, this is America, so it is probably a Harley, spinning around and around. Wearing black leather. With crowds of men, and women, and me, taking photos of her. I think they want to draw attention to those little devices in the pill-like enclosures. But I am not sure.

AudioQuest with their CinemaQuest line of cables.

There is that super-sized Gennum screen in the sky again.

We are getting closer to the end of the hall, where the more questionable exhibits are hidden. I did not get a photo of the butt-scrubber [my name] toilets next to the Zalman booth... but you get my drift. You try and be prepared for anything at these shows...