This week was CES and I just Just got back from Las Vegas and the International Consumer Electronics Show. Here is my CES Report. It was good, saw a lot of new things, got some really great new ideas. Here are 4 of the hottest tech trends that will change your gear in the years to come.
4k TV Tech
Some of the big new trends that are coming is the advent of 4k TV Tech, basically 3840×2160 resolution. And yes they already have 4k TV’s with 3d, meaning that it is even double that resolution, one for each eye. OTV’s and computer monitors will be quickly going to this resolution. Within 2 years over half of all TV’s will have this. There was also some cool innovations in the usage of 3d Tv’s, one that actually makes me want to have them. For those that are not up on the tech a 3d TV basically is 2 TV’s meshed together, with half of the pixels polarized horizontally , and the other half polarized vertically. You then wear glasses with one eye with a lens that is polarized horizontally and the other lens polarized vertically, because of this polarization each eye only can see one of the signals, so each eye gets a different one. This is nice, but the new tech that is really cool is that now they sell glasses that have both eyes the same, and then another person would get both eyes the other way, so each person would only see the one meant for them, now you can watch two different shows on the same TV at the same time. You would need headphones to separate the sound, but can you imagine now your kids can watch their show while you watch yours, but still be in the room together. So far the main application has been for games, and there are already some games that will let two different gamers play on the same TV at the same time and only see their perspective. Basically all of this is to say that your new HDTV is now very obsolete. Most 4k TV’s will up-convert your old 1080p signal, but soon there will be a new standard to replace BlueRay, well that is if we still use optical disks much longer…that gets me to the next point. You will need 4k if the 110″ TV’s that a few people had really do catch on. Most of the new smart TV’s also have a built in webcam for all of your chatting needs.
The Optical is almost dead!
The next thing is that the Optical drive is soon DEAD, less than 10% of new laptop designs have an optical drive at all and under half of desktops, I have been telling people this for some time but for some reason many clients still think that a laptop lacking an optical drive is a netbook and sucks…a netbook sucks because it has a weak CPU, these don’t, many have quad core or better CPUs in a space much smaller than your standard laptop. Touch is close to being here, but I still think it is at least a year off, less than 15% of laptops shown at the show had touch. (BTW We carry the laptop pictured here)
New Screen Aspect Ratio Standard 21:9
I also saw many companies with 21:9 aspect ratio computer screens, YEP that is VERY wide, the typical very wide screen is 16:9 currently with normal wide screens being 16:10. The Traditional 3:4 ratio is long dead. Triple head Video Cards also have really become hot at this years CES. 21:9 is really good for movies buffs, as this is the standard that most cinemas use, (AKA Amamorphic, Panavision or 2.40:1) but most people usually watch on a 1920×1080 screen, so they crop this even if they don’t know they are doing so. (Bluerays are 1920×1080, 16:9) I am not sure how strongly this will catch on, but so many people, and many of my clients, use dual screens, this is a good solution instead. The 21:9 ratio is usually 1792×768 resolution on laptops and 2560×1080 on monitors. Read more about Aspect Ratios here.
Screens for Gauges in Cars
The last thing that I think was really cool, and very late to the party, is that most new cars shown there had computer screens for all the gauges. Some cars had this years ago, but every few of them, now the cost is right and it is now cheaper than the old way so will soon be everywhere. I thought they would have done that years ago but this is the year, and it is really nice. I was really impressed with the New Ford CMax car, huge headroom in a small car that is a hybrid, gets 47MPH, and is under 28k, and on the market today!
There were many other cool things that I saw and some great new ideas that I found out about, but these were the key ones that readers will enjoy.
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