Las Vegas — Yours truly always complains during International CES to anyone who will listen about how I’m too busy to make booth appointments or to take a look at the show floor. That’s because of all the commitments we have at TWICE involving the TWICE CES Daily (the official daily of the show), www.TWICE.com, www.TWICE.com/ces2008, producing videos for our site, being interviewed by the media — and actually trying to cover some of the news of the show.
As the pictures illustrate, my absence from the show floor is not completely accurate. Here are some of the things I saw on my tour of the show floor.
Hisense, one of the leading TV makers in China, made its presence known at this mammoth CES booth.
Pioneer displayed its advanced design concept Kuro flat screen at its booth for all to see.
Hitachi’s Ultra-Thin 1.5-inch thick LCD TVs snapped to attention at the company’s booth.
Panasonic not only showed its 150-inch plasma but these 50-inch plasma prototypes, which are the “lightest and thinnest” plasmas in the world. They are no more than 1-inch thick, weigh about half of existing plasmas of that size and reduce power use by half. The innovations in these displays will gradually be incorporated throughout its line.
So what if Panasonic was showing its 150-inch plasma? Sharp was still proud of its 108-inch LCD. A couple of years ago an LCD of that size would have been considered unheard of.
Sony’s OLED TV created plenty of CES buzz. This side view of a large-screen prototype shows how thin OLED is.
Toshiba didn’t just have HD DVD at CES. This shot shows the other brands and product categories it had on display.
For some reason Dolby Labs had this gigantic robot outside its booth … to guard against some stealing company secrets? Plenty of attendees visited anyway.
Speaking of attendees, there were unofficially 130,000 at CES bouncing back and forth from the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Sands and Venetian exhibits. The bus lines outside of the LVCC were long but moved efficiently during the show.
Samsung featured a prototype 3D plasma TV at its CES exhibit.
Content companies and media were ubiquitous at CES. Sony’s booth (more like a building) featured all of its various divisions, including movie and TV production. NBC Universal was here broadcasting live, the official broadcaster of the show. Programs shot during CES included the “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.”
We are not above self-promotion here at TWICE. Here’s one of our banners near our booth at the entrance in the North Hall during the show.
