Covering CES, the world's largest assemblage of consumer toys, single-handed is not for the faint-hearted. With 2700 exhibitors spread over four cavernous halls (the size of 30 football fields), two hotels, and the front lawn of the convention center itself, I and the rest the 143,000 CES attendees engaged in a five-day death march across the neon-encrusted canyons of Las Vegas. The event seems to exist in another dimension, separated from what we consider ordinary reality by a veil of pure marketing hype that's so dense it could be cut into chunks and used to fertilize the barren Las Vegas desert. Since the CES size and sheer weirdness assured that there was not even the slightest hope of covering a measurable fraction of the show, I'll just post a few of the more interesting sights, sounds, and encounters I stumbled across in my wanderings through the meeting rooms and show floors.
Weirdness Abounds
The surreal nature of Las Vegas itself became apparent even before I hit the CES show floor. Just after getting on to the hotel shuttle from the airport, I struck up a conversation with a guy who ran a high-end audio-video store in Sacramento that turned out to be the fellow who had sold the Cold War-era Atlas Missile silo I'd seen up for auction on eBay a while back. The details are too long and sordid to go into here (maybe in another column) but the long chain of events includes trying to recover a $100 k pair of speakers he had sold to the silo's original owner who got busted for using the complex as a combination luxury hideaway and drug lab.
But I digress. There is more than enough weirdness at CES to keep you amused for the remainder of this column.
Holy Flashback Batman!
Speaking of weirdness, it did not take long after setting foot into the Convention Center's North Hall to forget all about Atlas Missiles when I stumbled upon another great icon of the 1960's - the Batmobile, and its creator, George Barris. Parked amid several acres of hulking monster trucks and tricked-out rice box drift racers that were being used to display thousand-watt audio systems, the Batmobile's dark, brutal, angular profile stood out like the Bat Signal on a moonless night. 
Sitting in between the Batmobile and the other, equally-outrageous Monkeemobile sat the King Of Kustom himself, Mr. Barris, as he signed autographs and shook hands with his fans. It was a real pleasure to meet one of my boyhood heroes and thank him for the many other creations like the Munster Coach and the twin-engined Invader which inspired many of my youthful dreams.
The Connected Home: This Year's Holy Grail
Moving out of the automotive section, things got even more interesting. Depending on which hall you were in, you'd find a show floor awash with oceans of electronic games, iPod wannabes, or smart phones that look like they are straight out of Mission Impossible. But the one common theme that floated to the top of the frothy high-def frenzy was the Connected Home. Going one step beyond the Digital Living Rooms of years past, electronics manufacturers now want to sell you a digital domicile where video, audio, and any other media is seamlessly delivered to wherever you happen to be.
Whether or not the public is actually buying the concept, the theme has infected every semiconductor maker, service provider, or equipment manufacturer I visited. Consequently, every interview centered around the host company's vision of a Connected Home, complete with a half-dozen Godzilla-sized flat-panel TVs and digital audio systems tied together with some sort of a set-top box/DVR/media server unit. Every chip maker had their own version of a Connected House with their electronics at the center of the media management system, but the slickest ones I saw were exhibited by Broadcom, NXP (formerly Philips), Samsung, and STMicro.
Of course the carriers also got into the Connected Home act, with Verizon rolling out a home-sized demo of its new FiOS quad-play passive optical network inside CES's oversized press area. I have a few qualms about FiOS because the system is mostly designed to drive you to use its own content, but even a cynic like me had to admit that the demo was great. Media distribution is handled from a nicely-designed main menu system that catalogs every song, video, or photo you make available on your network and makes it available anywhere in your home. The FiOS demo was also one of the first times I got to see the MOCA home networking standard in action. MOCA, which re-uses the co-ax cable available in most US homes as a broadband data medium was used as a multimedia backbone for up to three hi-def video streams, several audio channels, and multi-line VoIP service. .I'll be curious to see how MOCA fares in a more typical setting where poor quality cable, imperfect installations and ambient electrical noise could degrade service but it seemed to do a great job in this best-case mockup.
Stay tuned for Part 2 where Lee explores green consumer electronics, mobile computing, digital audio, and the wild world of $100 laptops.
Comments? Questions? Care to share your own desired favored toy of the future? Write me at: lgoldberg@green-electronics.com
