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Tomorrow's Tech Today
CES Gadgets with Post-Production Applications
story and photos by Roger Cooper
 Panasonic's Life Wall is an interactive screen that covers an entire wall. |
The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held January 7-10 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, is not typically targeted towards the professional post-production community. However, amidst the myriad of digital cameras, car and home audio, TVs, cell phones and other assorted technophernalia, there were many products that have––or will have––an effect in our daily editing room lives. Following is a look at just a sampling of them.
One gadget increasingly finding its way into editing suites is the Intuos3 interactive pen tablet (www.wacom.com/ intuos/). The Wacom Company had many different varieties on hand. They make no less than five different sizes, ranging from four-by-six inches up to 12-by-18 inches. They are used instead of the mouse and reside on the desktop.
Wacom also makes an interactive pen display, called Cintiq (www.cintiq.com), which is part monitor and part pen pad. It combines the advantages of a LCD monitor with the natural feel of pen technology. The user applies the pen directly on the screen, which takes the place of the traditional monitor. There are 12-, 20-, and 21-inch sizes available (at least from Wacom). The largest version uses 1600x1200 resolution. Both the tablet and interactive display can be quite useful with a variety of creative programs.
Pinnacle (http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ publicsite/us/products/consumer+products/home+video/studio+family/), recently acquired by Avid, displayed its Studio version 11 family of products, which consists of low-end digital editing and capture software and hardware.
The one on display, the Studio Movie Box, has a small capture box with Firewire, S-video and composite inputs, and a firewire output. It will digitize material, but only using MPEG-2, MPEG-1, DV and MJPEG compression, not QuickTime. The Roxio (www.roxio.com/) easy media creator suite is a similar product.
 The wraparound DLP rear-projection monitor from Alienware. |
One of the weirder products at CES was the curved display from Alienware, a Dell (www.dell.com) company. This is a huge, wraparound DLP rear-projection monitor, which offers 2880x900 screen resolution. The dimensions are equivalent to two 24-inch monitors. At this point, it is targeted towards gamers, but it is interesting to think about its potential in a larger format scenario, with 3-D, IMAX, and other large format projects abounding. The device is in prototype form, and won’t be available until late 2008 at the earliest.
LG had on display a line of its Flatron computer monitors (www.flatron.com), all offering ultraquick response times. While most monitors have response times of 4-5 milliseconds (the time it takes for each pixel to recycle power), these LGs have times of 2 ms, making them ideal for programs with quick motion and heavy-duty graphics. In fact, the marquee above the monitors in the display even said “movie editor.”
 Panasonic's recordable Blu-ray disc |
Blu-ray and HD DVD are ubiquitous names in the world of electronics, and they were both prominent at the show. How many times have you had a QuickTime or some other huge file that was just slightly larger than the capacity of a DVD? Blu-ray comes to the rescue. Panasonic, one of the founders of the technology, was touting its SW-5582 Blu-ray computer DVD burner (www.blu-ray.com/drives/). The discs come in 50 Gb and 25 Gb sizes, and are available in writable and re-writable varieties––making them ideal for data backup. A 7.5 Gb mini-disc will soon be available. Many companies offer stand-alone Blu-ray recorders.
There were laptops galore in the CES house. Toshiba’s G45-AV680 Qosmio (www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/ebtext.to?page=qosmio_home) offers 1080p full HD with 1920x200 resolution on a 17-inch screen. They also come with HD DVD R or RW drives, depending on the model. This Cadillac of laptops also offers an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.50GHz Processor, 6 Mb L2 Cache, 800 MHz FSB and a 320 Gb hard drive.
Home cinema projectors are becoming more and more prevalent in editing and screening rooms, and there were plenty of those on hand. They are constantly improving by the use of better panels and processing. The Panasonic PT-AE2000U (www.panasonic.com/business/projectors/ae200) is a three-chip, LCD 1080p front projector, with a rating of 1500 lumens. While there is no need for a screen, it does produce a superior image if one is used. The projector has HDMI, VGA, composite, S-video and component inputs. And the projected image looked fantastic.
Two of the most intriguing products on display at CES were from Microsoft and Panasonic. Although not designed to make an immediate impact in a post-production scheme, I mention them because of the potential of the technology used.
There were hordes of people in Microsoft’s city-block size booth, mostly jostling to see the company’s Surface (http://www.microsoft.com/surface/) product. This is a 30-inch tabletop display, on which the user can manipulate digital content with hand gestures, touching the screen or using physical objects. It is essentially a Windows Vista PC in a housing with a clear, acrylic surface on top. At the show, Microsoft was demonstrating Surface’s effectiveness in downloading and manipulating photos from digital cameras, bill paying and cell phone synching––all wirelessly. The demonstrators were also doing some “painting,” using their hands to make contact with the surface. The rep there informed me that Microsoft is exploring a wide range of possibilities for this technology, including its use in all manner of creative applications.
Always a big-time player at CES, Panasonic unveiled a 103-inch 1080p plasma monitor in 2006; this year it displayed a 150-inch model! But they both pale in comparison to the company’s Life Wall (www.panasonic.com/cesshow/). This is an interactive, HD “screen” that basically covers an entire wall. The wall, in fact, is the screen. Like the Surface, it also holds a myriad of possibilities. It incorporates intuitive interface technology that can “recognize” the user, who can call up a screen that moves or adjusts by the wave of a hand.
The one used in the Panasonic exhibit was around 20-by-8 feet. Although very much still a prototype, it was quite amazing. Decorating the entire wall were faux windows, a fireplace, pictures and curtains. The actors performing the demonstrations were manipulating images on the wall using hand gestures. One could watch content on the wall, resizing the screen as small or as large as one likes, or simply display a permanent, customizable décor of the room in which it is kept.
The number of gadgets and technologies on display at CES 2008 was virtually endless; I’ve touched on but a few. It’s a great trade show for anyone who wants to keep up on the latest and greatest electronic device––or to keep an eye on future technologies, many of which have applications to the post-production world.
Roger Cooper is an Assistant Editor and a Guild member since 1990. He can be reached at splogcooper@roadrunner.com.
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