ces2011

CES: LG's M50D monitor/TV

LAS VEGAS--Monitor TVs seem to be growing in popularity at a pretty fast clip--not really surprising, as most consumers see them as an opportunity to get both a monitor and a smallish TV at a reasonable price.

LG continues to support these consumers with the M50D, a monitor/TV combo that sports a stylish design and the ability to play media through its USB port without requiring a PC.

Incoming specs:

1,920x1,080 resolution 250 cd/M2 brightness VGA, DVI, HDMI connections Component, VGA, HDMI, Audio in/out

Built-in speakers

Look for more info in the coming months.

CES: LG's LED monitor/TV

LAS VEGAS--Monitor TVs are nothing new, but it'll take manufacturers some continued innovating to keep me excited. LG shows that it understands this with its latest monitor/TV, the M80D.

The M80D is LG's first monitor/TV to use an LED backlight. The design is sleek and stylish and looks to be wall mountable.

Incoming specs:

1,920x1,080 resolution 250 cd/M2 brightness 5ms response time VGA, DVI, HDMI connections Component, VGA, HDMI, Audio in/out

Built-in speakers with 2.1-channel sound

Look for more info in the coming months.

CES: Steve Perlman is 'OnLive' (podcast)

At the ShowStoppers press event at CES 2011, CNET's Larry Magid sat down with OnLive founder Steve Perlman to talk about the company and its new products and look back at some of Steve's previous accomplishments, including WebTV and Android.

OnLive, which brings cloud-based gaming to consumers, used CES to announce that it would soon bring cloud gaming not only to PCs and Macs but also to iPads, Android devices, and even Vizio TVs.  A video from CNET's Rich Brown from the Vizo booth at CES demonstrates the TV/online gaming integration.

Perlman said it's … Read more

CES: Software and apps wrap-up

LAS VEGAS--Although hardware took the spotlight at CES 2011, there was plenty to see on the software and service side as well, particularly in conjunction with said hardware. For one, the vast majority of the latest and greatest TVs at the show were Internet-capable devices with some type of app integration. Several manufacturers of both televisions and set-top boxes will run the Google TV operating system, while others plan to offer their own proprietary apps as well.

Another hot topic from the show: Honeycomb, the upcoming Android OS designed specifically for tablets. In fact, the new platform contributed to the … Read more

Networking and storage at CES 2011: Faster, more connected

Knowing I was going to Las Vegas for CES, my friends said, "Have fun!" The truth is, friends, fun, whether or not the kind that stays in Las Vegas, is not the first thing one can expect from covering CES. It's always a lot of work.

I did have fun seeing my colleagues all in one place, however, especially those from the East Coast, whom I don't get to see very often. Now that we've all returned home or are on the way back, here are the things in the networking and storage categories that are sticking with me from the show.

In the networking department, faster is the main theme, and this is true for both wireless and powerline networking. Powerline networking is now pumped up to support 500Mbps by adhering to the latest IEEE 1901 standard  (up from the 200Mbps of the HomePlug AV standard). There were several 500Mbps powerline products announced at CES this year, such as the Trendnet TPL 401E and Netgear's XAVB5004.

Networking vendors also introduced the first hybrid wireless routers that have built-in support for powerline technology, such as the WNXR200 from Netgear.

Wireless networking this year is seeing many vendors moving to the three-stream standard that offers a throughput speed of up to 450Mbps (as opposed to the 300Mbps of the popularly used dual-stream standard). Examples of these are Netgear with the WNDR4000, Trendnet with the TEW-692GR, and D-Link with its HD Media routers.

On the client side, the three-stream wireless standard is supported by Intel's Centrino N-5300 and Centrino N-6300 Wi-Fi adapters. These two Wi-Fi chipsets, also known as Intel's Ultimate N Wi-Fi Link family, can handle all standards of Wi-Fi, including the three-stream standard. Trendnet also released the first 450Mbps gaming adapter. In the future, networking vendors will also release USB adapters that support this higher speed.

D-Link's HD Media routers, by the way, are the first that sport an SD card reader, and some of them are also the first with built-in USB 3.0 to support faster network storage performance.

Speaking of USB 3.0, most storage vendors have now moved to this standard for their external drives. This is a natural move, as USB 3.0 offers a speed that's easily 10 times that of USB 2.0 and is backward-compatible with all previous versions of USB standards. External drives are now also getting tinier, and many of them now are also based on solid-state drives. Examples of these are the GoFlex Slim from Seagate, Verbatim's Titan XS, and the i-Disk Rex 100 from Pretec.… Read more

Loving the Motorola laptop dock

LAS VEGAS--With its Best of CES Xoom tablet and an impressive selection of 4G Android smartphones, Motorola had a very good CES. Its Atrix handset won CNET's top award for the cell phone category, the Droid Bionic also packed a dual-core processor, and the Cliq 2 gave us a design twist we hadn't seen before. But even with that show of force, Moto really delivered with its laptop dock. Though it doesn't make calls and it can't do anything by itself, it shows some innovation and creativity that none of Moto's wireless rivals brought to … Read more

CES: Camcorder wrap-up

I was really hoping to start this show wrap-up with a look at the good and/or interesting things to come out of CES 2011. But as I was assembling my thoughts to work on it, I was assaulted anew by the continuation of a consumer-hostile trend which initially started--or at least which I first noticed--with the Canon HF R series launched last year. The trend: marketing camcorders that have an effective sensor resolution of less than 2.07 megapixels (1,920 x 1,080) as "Full HD" models. This is the equivalent of marketing your 3G network as 4G. … Read more

CES: Digital camera wrap-up

When it comes to digital camera announcements, CES generally isn't a big show. There is usually a handful of headline grabbers, but for the most part it's just announcements of budget and style lines.

Probably the biggest splash was made by Casio with its Tryx camera. Its shooting features aren't necessarily extraordinary (it does do some cool stuff, though), but its design makes it special. Most of the camera is a 3-inch touch-screen LCD that pops out of a frame and rotates around with its f2.8 21mm-equivalent ultrawide-angle lens 360 degrees. The screen itself swivels 270 … Read more

Fuel cell portable charger works, still needs more work

LAS VEGAS--I had some hands-on experience with the Mobion Fuel Cell Generator in December and decided to bring it with me to CES 2011 with the intention of using it as the only charger for my iPhone 4 and seeing how this green technology would work out.

In case you're anxious, it worked out OK, though not perfectly.

Prior to the trip, MTI Micro, the device's maker, told me that while the generator itself would pose no problem, the fuel cell cartridge, which contains the fuel liquid, has not been approved to be included with carry-on luggage so … Read more