CES 2008 Day 4

Hey folks Valkor here and I’m rounding out with the final day of my CES report. By this time I’m beat as hell with the parties and all the walking, but day 4 is the easiest day of the bunch as most everyone just wanted to beat it the hell outta there, but that’s better for me because now I can hit the companies I missed. And believe me there isn’t a rotten apple in this bunch, most you’ll see featured on the pages of TOV. So let’s not hold things up any further ya?

Blu-Ray (Called it!!)

The folks over at the Blu-Ray booth had everything to smile about. Just before going into the show Warner bros announced they were going Blu-Ray exclusive. That gives thet BR camp 70% of the market and literally turns the tide in their favor as being the format of choice. On hand was an interesting player by Panasonic which can capture your image and include it in a game extra. What was tested was Alien Vs Predator 2 and what you can do is hook up the player by Ethernet and play against a friend shooting it out with real blood damage. It was a lot of cheesy fun and its something you can play along with the movie. Me not being big on extras, well I see the potential, buuuuut looks like a waste of time. Then again I would never by AVP 2… UGH!!!

SoundCast

We’ve played with numerous sound products here at TOV; Some good and some not so good. But at CES the best would have to go to SoundCast and their cylinder based speaker the OutCast. This is a wireless outdoor speaker (but you can use it indoors as well) that hooks up to multiple interfaces such as PC, television, video game and even your IPod. I give it props just on design but the sound quality is amazing. It has a range of up to 350 at 2.4 ghz. This means you can have your music setup, upstairs while you have a party rockin downstairs or in your backyard. SoundCast also has another impressive speaker set called the SpeakerCast, which is also a wireless speaker with amazing sound. Also included is an IPod dock that can transmit up to 150 feet. Not bad, but the OutCast is the showstopper.

NIKKO

Next to the 150” plasma over at Panasonic, you cannot leave CES without heading over to NIKKO’s booth and checking out the R2D2 projector. The little guy stands 3 – 4 feet high and looks to project an high def image at about 50 feet. Could be more, but their area wasn’t that big. Image quality was not what I thought it could be, but it wasn’t that bad either. If anything it makes a great chatter piece or if you’re an Uber Star Wars geek, then this is a must have for your collection. What’s even cooler is the Millenium Falcon remote control. Now that’s something I’d love to own. Also on hand was an R2D2 wireless webcam. This little guy can walk around your desk, but never fall off (edge detection, gotta love it), and also has remote access so you can check on things when your away no matter where you are. It comes with a light saber base/receiver which also doubles as a Skype phone. Can you dig it? I knew you could.

PolkAudio

I fell in love with a lot of sound products at the big show, but most impressive goes out to PolkAudio and their SoundBar 360 DVD theater. The SoundBar 360 gives you 5.1 surround sound in just one speaker bar, without having to hook up multiple speakers everywhere. On the show floor the SB 360 sounds great even in such a wide open space as the convention center. The DVD player upconverts to 1080i (with HDMI), bringing your standard DVDs into full hi-def glory. I love these soundbars and look forward to seeing more in the future. But stay tuned to TOV as we’ll give the SB 360 a full on Val-Cave review.

SimulScribe

We all know that having to stop and check voicemail get be a burden sometime. You gotta stop what you’re doing, dial up, and sift through message after message. Not only that but you waste minutes having to sit through messages, or you start going crazy trying to capture the callback number and you have to repeat the message over and over. Well with SimulScribe you don’t have to do that anymore. If you have en email enabled phone, SimulScribe will convert your voicemail into text so that you can read your voicemail rather then having. Think about it, you’re in a meeting, but the wife/husband/lover etc calls and leaves you a message but you don’t know just how important it is. It could be “come home for a nooner” or “I just totaled the Mercedes”. If you have a Blackberry, Treo, or any phone with email you can read your voicemail and take down any important information necessary. Not only that but SimulScribe will also send your transcribe voicemail to your regular email box, so you can wait until you get to a PC to check your voicemail. Finally a voice copy of the voicemail will be attached to the email so you can listen and read your message. There are other features and the price to try out this system isn’t so bad either, starting at 9.95 a month. Definitely worth checking out.

See ya next year at CES 2009