Viva Las Vegas

This year's Winter Consumer Electronics Show was held in Las Vegas, Nev., from January 8-11, and sprawled across the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Las Vegas Hilton, the Sands Expo Center, and Alexis Park. No video game companies were in sight; however, there was a bunch of new video game products, including peripherals, licensed products (like Mario cameras), and small TVs so you can take your game on the road.

But this year's Winter CES focused on high-end digital technology, including DVD, DSS, HDTV, DTV, Divx, and all those other hi-tech phrases you've probably already heard a little bit about. DVD, Digital Video Disc, or Digital Versatile Disc, depending on whom you talk to, was a dominant attraction at this year's show. Just about every hardware manufacturer had several new, sometimes cheaper models with additional bells and whistles tacked on for good measure. Panasonic's DVD-L10 was the most impressive of the new DVD products. It's a portable DVD video player with a 5.8-inch wide, 16:9/4:3 wide-screen display. Weighing less than two pounds, this is a pricey portable at US$1,299.95.

Meanwhile, Sharp and Circuit City took on heat from consumers as well as producers of DVD titles with their Divx format. Divx is an encoded DVD that will only play on Divx-compatible players (that also play standard DVD titles). You buy a Divx disc for $5 and can play it as much as you want for 48 hours. Then, your player will stop playing the encoded disc unless you pay for additional viewings through the Divx player. Designed to take out the rental niche, the "format" has been criticized because it could easily lead to unwanted Divx discs stacking up like unused America Online discs. The DVD format continues to strengthen, making it less certain that Divx will ever become a success, and no company showed a Divx player on the floor of CES this year.

High Definition Television (HDTV) was shown again at this year's show, and it finally looks as if it might be closer to consumers' living rooms. Satellite programming provider DirecTV was the first to demo a high-definition signal at the show. HDTV and DTV are both digital formats, resulting in a crisp, clear image at a high resolution. From what we saw at the show, the sets will be an expensive proposition, even though the quality is very high.

One of the other "watch the demo but don't bother asking about the price" products is plasma televisions. Unbelievably flat (less than six inches deep), Fujitsu's PlasmaVision and similar products from Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Philips JVC, and Hitachi were also the talk of the show. Thin enough to hang from a wall, it's expected that businesses will be the only ones capable of affording the over-$10,000 price tags of these new television sets.

Microsoft was in full force touting its new Palm PCs, running its Windows CE operating system. Windows CE was in other new electronic conveniences too, like cable boxes, car computers, and digital organizers. Of course, it's rumored that a version of CE will be used in Sega's next system, but that was nowhere to be found at the show.