Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/2907



CES isn't like the tech tradeshows of the past decade. Shows like Comdex, Computex and IDF generally start on the first day of the show. CES instead offers a couple of days of press events before the actual show itself.

Today we had the first press conference of CES - ASUS, followed by a pre-show called CES Unveiled. A bunch of companies cram into a ballroom with science-fair style tables and booths to show a preview of what's to come at CES.

Seagate was the first on my stop around CES Unveiled. USB 3.0 is a hot topic simply because we finally have storage, both mechanical and solid state, that is severely limited by USB 2.0.

It's called the BlackArmor PS110 USB 3.0 portable external hard drive performance kit. Yep, a mouthful. With it you get an external 500GB 2.5" hard drive. But since no existing notebooks have USB 3.0 support you also get a USB 3.0 ExpressCard.

You would get higher performance if you had native USB 3.0 on your machine, since you're bound by ExpressCard's 2.5Gbps bandwidth limit. Even so Seagate promises as much as 3x the performance you'd get over USB 2.0.

The kit costs $179.99.



Getting Legal and Illegal Content onto your TV

While I'd expect to see a lot of USB 3.0 stuff at CES, expect to see a number of set-top boxes designed to stream content to your TVs.

Seagate had its FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player on display. Either slide in a Seagate external 2.5" USB HDD or connect any other NTFS or HFS+ formatted USB storage device and the media player will allow you to play any contents on your TV.

There's also ethernet support for wired networks and an optional wireless dongle. The set-top box will scour your network for movies in virtually any container format and let you play them on your TV. This generation of media players has no problems playing H.264 encoded content even in .mkv containers.

Enthusiast favorite Syabas Technology, makers of the Popcorn Hour, had their own set-top media player on display as well. It's a more content provider friendly device compared to the Popcorn Hour as it has no internal hard drive. It's called the Popbox and features much of the same hardware as the Popcorn Hour devices. It too can play virtually any video in nearly any container format. The Popbox lacks things like an integrated BitTorrent client to make it a bit more content-provider friendly (e.g. make it seem like not so much of a piratebox).

In a different approach we also have things like the Boxee Box by D-Link. Boxee is free software for your Mac, Apple TV, Windows or Linux PC that acts as an aggregator of online TV content. Nearly all TV networks allow you to access content online (with limitations), Boxee simply unifies access to all of that. Instead of going to five different websites to catch up on your shows, Boxee attempts to give you all of the TV content you want in a single 10-foot UI.

The Boxee Box by D-Link is a standalone set-top box that, when hooked up to the internet, gives you the same Boxee experience without a PC. This is yet another example of Moore's Law paving the way for low cost devices to do things that weren't possible just a few years ago.

The Boxee software will continue to be available free on the web. The Boxee Box is simply for those users who want a simpler solution. Even Hulu support is technically there as Boxee uses a Mozilla browser to go out and grab the content before playing it full screen.

The Boxee Box doesn't only play internet TV content, it can also play any non-DRM content you might have access to.

It's a neat interface and the box will sell for under $200, like most others in this category. Boxee plans on announcing additional hardware details later this week.

The Boxee remote is ridiculously cool. On one side you get an Apple-inspired simple pointer remote, and on the other side you get a full QWERTY keyboard for typing in search strings to find TV shows to watch:

Playing H.264 content on your TV is no longer an issue. I'd say that by 2011 we can expect to see commoditization of H.264 media streaming boxes, and it won't be much longer before we can see this functionality integrated into all TVs. The question is whether or not the TV folks will get the UI down right.

Until then, it looks like you'll have a number of options for getting your content around the house and streaming internet TV content to existing TVs. Prices are looking to be in the $100 - $200 range for this sort of functionality based on what we've seen thus far.



The Move to Micro-ATX

It was strange to see Inwin at the CES Unveiled event, but at least one item caught our eye. It's a micro ATX gaming chassis:

In Win had a Radeon HD 5970 mounted in the case to show that you can accommodate even the longest cards. Two of them would work if you wanted.

It's made possible by moving the HDD bays to the very bottom of the case. There's not much room for a ton of drives, but honestly these days it's not necessary given the capacity of 3.5" drives. There's a single 5.25" bay up top and two 3.5" bays at the bottom of the case.

Add GPS to your iPod Touch

Apple created a huge accessory market with the iPod and the trend continues with the iPod Touch. A company called Dual demonstrated a GPS cradle with GPS receiver and speaker to turn your iPod Touch into a portable nav device.

The software is NavAtlas from the iTunes App store and seemed to work well in person. It was snappy but the true test will be how this thing fares on the go.



CES 2010 - The eReader/Tablet Show?

Marvell and the rest of the SoC players are at CES this year, which makes sense given that all of this tech is powered by their chips. Marvell showed off the Armada 166E powered Entourage Edge. It's a dual screen eReader. On one side you have an e-ink display and on the other side you have a LCD display running Android. The self proclaimed "dualbook" is targeted at students who want to read books and browse the web at the same time.

Another Marvell-powered dual-screen eReader is Spring Design's Alex:

The top screen is a standard e-ink display, while the bottom screen runs Android. You can surf the web on the smaller screen and by pressing the button between the two screens you can transfer the data to the lower power e-ink display. It's neat, but definitely sluggish in actual use.

As with any new technology it's going to take a lot of missteps before someone perfects it. The devices we'll see at CES will definitely offer some unique features but I'm not sure we'll see anyone that "gets it" this early.

Marvell also had a ridiculously thin smartbook on display by an unnamed manufacturer. The smartbook ran Android:

The idea behind smartbooks is to deliver the smartphone experience on a more productive form factor. With tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of smartphone apps out in the wild now, we're bound to see manufacturers attempt to build devices that can use them. Perhaps even tablets...

Klipsch Offers Retrofittable In-ceiling LightSpeaker

Klipsch had its LightSpeaker on display:

Combine a 10W LED light with a 3" speaker in a can that works in existing 5-inch or 6-inch recessed lighting fixtures and you've got Klipsch's LightSpeaker. The speaker grill acts as a diffuser for the LED light so you get a wider light spread. Klipsch says the light output is equal to about what you'd get out of a 65W incandescent bulb.

The LightSpeaker screws in to any existing light socket in a recessed can. Sound is delivered wirelessly from the 2.4GHz base station to as many as 8 speakers in a system. The base station accepts both RCA and 1/8" stereo inputs.

The point of LightSpeaker is to enable in-ceiling speakers without having to do any additional wiring or putting any holes in your ceiling. The fact that it's also an LED light fixture is an added bonus. It's a neat if not pricey technology. Each LightSpeaker will set you back $250. A pair of LightSpeakers and the receiver are $599.

Tomorrow is the CES Press Day where you can expect to be bombarded with tons of press releases. We'll be back tomorrow with a summary of the day's events.

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