CES 2008

filed under Gadgets by in5ane on January 8th, 2008 [blogs index]

The CES 2008 conference is under way in Las Vegas, and I'm all over the web looking at pictures of shiny new things. One problem for me is that it seems too close to Christmas to think about buying new stuff just yet (in fact I'm putting off buying an amBX system for a few months until my finances 'settle down'.)

However, there are a couple of things I've seen that I'm definitely interested in:

DirecTV's PC tuner- Useless to me as a DirectTV tuner, but with our Sky TV system using the same sort of hardware, and owned by the same company, a model for the UK market can't be too far behind. I'm a big fan of Media Center, and getting as much stuff through it as possible just makes it more convenient. I already do most normal TV viewing and recording thru the PC, as well as the obvious video and music stuff, but anything on a satellite only channel means switching systems. Having Sky on the PC would mean easier channel surfing, and finally a centralised place for all TV recordings. If this thing also works through media extenders (e.g. Xbox 360) then it could solve my problems of getting satellite TV around the house. At the moment we have some wireless video senders, but of course this doesn't handle HD stuff.

So in the meantime, I'm interested in the SlingCatcher. Making its début at last years CES, this time around it has much more chance of meeting the mid-year release date. I'm not sure if the intention is to use the SlingCatcher for local network use, but with the addition HD capabilities of the new Slingboxes, it would immediately solve my problems above, albeit in a slightly less elegant way.

Finally, while I was seduced last year with the idea of new-technology screens such as Sony's OLED TV, it seems Pioneer knew better. Their 9mm plasma proves there's nothing wrong with plasma technology for the time being. Even if this is labelled as prototype, their TV is closer to reality than any large screen OLED TV, with sizes in that technology only projected to go up to 32" in the next year or so.

Of course, I don't need a new TV at all, but I think I could get the fiancée on board simply by how good the Pioneer looks :)

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