CES 2012 - WELCOME TO THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY

By Jon E.



Tech companies from across the world demonstrated their new and future products at the CES 2012, the world’s largest technology trade show. More than 2,700 companies debuted the next generation of innovative products across all sectors of the consumer electronics industry changing the way we live, do business, communicate, consume entertainment, take photos, wash our clothes - even strolling a baby will never be the same. More than 20,000 new products were announced.



Taking a look at some of the product announcements I would say the key theme of CES 2012 was TVs that increasingly blur the line between computers and televisions, while their remote controls increasingly resemble Smartphone’s (that is if you even need a remote anymore). Let’s start by taking a look at what directly affects us…entertainment consumption. Though hype over 3D televisions cooled quickly after the show last year, this year’s TVs trend taps into a movement that has become the watchword of the consumer electronics industry: convergence. Advancements this year have companies scrambling to be the one-stop shop for web, media consumption, social networking and gaming.



It’s a great dream, but somehow the smart TV industry as a whole has failed to break into the mainstream. Generally for this new Smart TV revolution to really takeoff,  it’s going to take multiple partnerships across multiple segments of the industry working toward the same goal. If we take out the chip makers it really comes down to three components for true smart TV to work: Delivery, Appearance and Content.



DELIVERY:

For companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Cable, Satellite or even Amazon, the road to the living room has been particularly rocky. But it is companies like these, along with new partnerships and products announced at CES with TV/Blu-ray disc player manufactures that could kick off a Smart TV revolution. Google (Android) for example has announced new partnerships with several of the world’s largest television/Blu-ray manufacturers LG, Samsung, Sony and Vizio, giving them their best shot at busting into the living room with Google TV. While Apple has yet to announce any plans on its highly rumored and anticipated iTV or Apple TV (OS operating system), when and if it does it will open up numerous avenues to the Apple Store. Amazon in its quest to become the Walmart of online, announced it’s putting its weight firmly behind Ultraviolet (UV), the DRM/authentication system along with Samsung’s new Blu-ray players perhaps throwing a lifeline to UV. Ultraviolet, in case you don’t know, gives users unlimited online access to movies once they’ve purchased a DVD. Although only 19 titles are available currently, there are plans for around 100 titles to be released during 2012. This becomes significant as a number of devices are emerging with support for the Ultraviolet locker this year. The Satellite companies want into the game too as Dish offers up its new “Hopper DVR,” offering 2,000 hours of storage and the ability to record all primetime TV shows for eight  days straight with the click of a button. DirecTV punched back with a boxless DVR allowing viewers to stream recorded programs from DirecTV DVRs to televisions in other rooms.



APPEARANCE (TVs):

The television is at the heart of our homes and is the central device that connects our family at the end of a long day. So CES brought us new TVs that recognize and respond to you and connect your family in and out of the home. They got bigger, skinnier, wider and sharper. They also had plenty of new content options and apps personalized to your lifestyle and needs and oh yes, more 3D technology. All the manufacturers offered up new 3D HDTVs promising cinema-quality 3D experiences with light-weight battery free glasses. Sharp even went big announcing an 80” 3DTV. Others like LG came in with a 84 inch LED and a 55 inch OLED. Going wider VIZIO’s new panoramic 21:9 aspect ratio HDTV expands the boundaries of conventional widescreen getting rid of the black bars at the top and bottom of your screen. Skinnier…how about Pioneer’s new 50” plasma at just 9 millimeter thick (that’s less than an iPod) but still not as skinny as Sony’s Lilliputian OLED (3mm thick) or LG‘s (5mm)OLED. Sony, LG and others showed off new 4K TV technology at CES, which has four times the resolution of current 1080p sets (basically HD on steroids). The problem with 4K technology is there just isn’t a lot of content available yet, but thanks to JVC that could be changing as they announced a 4K camera for around $5,000.



I could go on and on about all the new bells and whistles, but where I think the real meat and potatoes comes in is in the form of remotes or lack thereof. LG touted its “magic remote QWERTY,” incorporating a small keyboard and controls to operate Google TVs interface. Samsung took it one step further with its new vision for the way consumers interact with their TVs, debuting “Smart Interaction” that enables Smart TV owners to communicate with their TVs via Voice Control, Motion Control, and Face Recognition. Smart Interaction provides an alternative to using a remote control all together - just speak and wave your hands. If you’ve used the Xbox 360 Kinect, then you’ll understand the premise.



CONTENT:

The biggest stumbling block for TV manufacturers like LG, Sony, Visio, Samsung and others along with new TV/Internet based products is getting production studios and content creators to allow their movies and TV shows to be accessible. Take Google TV for example. Now that the user interface is based on Android, it’s more pleasant to use. But the fact remains: The strength of the platform is its ability to sort through all the TV programs available at the moment, and offer them up to the viewer. If studios won’t let their programs be accessible from Google TV, its power won’t be evident to anyone. Just ask Netflix if content is still king. With all this new innovation I think the thing that is not only going to dictate how the smart TV revolution pans out, or whether the Netflixes and the Redboxes of the world survive, is content. You can have all the bells and whistles you want but it’s all meaningless unless there is fresh new content to watch on it. That’s where we, as video retailers, come in. We can provide that hot new release on Blu-ray the day it comes out so families can enjoy the investment they made in their entertainment systems. The most important thing to watch and educate the customers on continually is what the studios are doing, not what new widgets LG, Sony, Visio, Samsung, Google or Apple have.



With the advancements of technology coming so fast and furious in this day and age, it can feel like you’ve been left behind or that you are out of touch. I know this is true every time my child starts talking to me about something like “Skype” and I have to ask him what’s that? Sometimes we just need to “Bee kind and Rewind” and remember that as long as we as retailers can offer the latest and greatest in movies and entertainment, and have access to the content at a reasonable cost, then we truly hold the keys to the living room. Whether it takes a tweek here and there, like adding new revenue streams, fluctuating pricing, adding specials, social media or something as simple as educating customers, as long as we have the ability to drive foot traffic into our stores and build relationships with our customers then I would expect rentailers to be around and apart of this industry for a long time to come. To keep track of new technology and industry news be sure to check out our competitor news portion of our website at www.videobuyersgroup.com.



Also, I thought the following would be appropriate to start the New Year.



From the Blog Maverick…

We all have the tendency to believe that we are living in a very advanced technological period. We get all excited about the new tech we got at Xmas and what we read about that will soon be available to us. In reality, everything we are excited about today is going to be incredibly old and boring much faster than we ever expect.



No matter what year you were born, by the time you finish(ed) high school, it’s (was) a completely different world. Today’s high school seniors were born prior to the World Wide Web, wireless Internet, smartphones, tablets, HDTVs and changes in world politics that were never imagined. Without question each of us can remember the things that were new and exciting to us when we were kids, that were unimaginable to our parents, but are now nothing more than old memories.



The rate of technological change is not slowing down. In fact, the argument could be made that it is speeding up. In our lifetimes, we will reach a point when we reflect back on the good old days of the Internet, Facebook, Twitter and other tech that is ubiquitous today. We might even look back at digital the way we currently look at analog. Things change.



Of course, this isn’t a problem. It’s a huge opportunity. There is that 12-year old that is imagining what we can’t. Another that is combining elements into something new we should have seen, but did not. It reminds me of one of my favorite sayings. “If you are looking where everyone else is for the next big thing, you are looking in the wrong place.” The reality is, None of us are born in to the world we live in.