Highlights of CES 2010

PMG President Tommy Hadges has just returned from his annual visit to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas & here's Part 1 of his overview:

CES 2010 was, as usual, both crowded (120,000 attendees, compared to 113,000 last year) & loaded with many fascinating gadgets from the areas of electronics, mobile, computing & gaming. One of the major themes at this year's conversion was 3-D. In fact, by far, the most pervasive pieces of equipment were 3-D glasses, both the simpler "passive" glasses (used for projectors capable of displaying 2 separate images for left & right) with polarized lenses & the battery-powered "active" glasses (used for TV & computer displays, which alternately show left & right images) with shutters that allow each eye to only see one image at a time.

For those that haven't experienced the power of 3-D recently, the old-style paper 3-D glasses that were used many years ago in theaters and occasionally for 3-D TV specials. The newer active 3-D technology is a substantial improvement. These active glasses were required to view everything from realistic 3-D gaming (like Nvidia's display, based on the 3-D mega-hit theatrical "Avatar") to the many 3-D flat-panel displays with 1080p & 240Hz images capable of showing 3-D (which will be available in the next few months from a wide range of manufacturers, including Samsung, LG, Sony & Panasonic).