CEDIA - Day 4
Well that’s it. Day 4 ends up to be a waste for most people. You get to the show late because you’re packing your stuff and checking out of the hotel, and then they close the show early. If you are lucky and skip lunch, you can get about 3 hours on the show floor.
In summary, I took away the following observations.
Displays - 1080p seems to be the must have feature if you are making displays, however most of the content shown was 1080i. There was even some emphasis placed on how the displays and associated video processing equipment handles DVD content. In the Meridian/Faroudja demo the even made the point that there are over 500,000 DVD titles to date, and it is going to be a long time before we can say the same with the library of HD content, in whatever form it takes. So the message I see coming from the display folks is more diverse about other features such as contrast, color, upscaling, light output, not just resolution.
Control - Small handheld touchpanels are becoming more and more sophisticated, and growing outward towards control systems, rather than just the input device.
Distributed audio/video - Distributed digital audio is getting to be a popular product. The existing players have added many new features and capabilities with online services, and there are several new competitors in that space. No new breakthroughs on distributed digital video however. The technology is there and ready to go, but there are some uphill challenges roadblocks placed upon this industry by the video content owners.
Denver - CEDIA will be here for 2 more years. It’s a bigger venue where they can get almost everyone into one big hall. Downtown, the hotels, the airport, are all better suited to handle the 25,000 people that come every year. I think next year will be even better now that most have understood the lay of the land.
Thanks again for reading my 2006 CEDIA coverage. I don’t normally post everyday in this space, but if you subscribe to the RSS feed you can be alerted when anything comes up that I write about.
-Bill