Another CES is in the bag…
The 42nd annual Consumer Electronics Show is officially over…and now we can sleep. Be sure to check out Sync’s extensive blog coverage, photo galleries and video highlights.
The 42nd annual Consumer Electronics Show is officially over…and now we can sleep. Be sure to check out Sync‘s extensive blog coverage, photo galleries and video highlights.
Nerdgasm: [nərd-gaz-uhm]; noun: An intense, blissful or paroxysmal climax among gadget geeks.
Frankly, there is no better word to describe what more than 100,000 tech lovers from more than 140 countries experience each January in Las Vegas while swarming the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the world’s largest trade conference devoted to the future of the high-tech industry.
Imagine, if you will, more than 1.8 million square feet of exhibit space – the equivalent of about 30 football fields – spread out between the Las Vegas Convention Center show floor and surrounding hotels and other facilities, jam-packed with high-definition televisions, computers, MP3 players, digital cameras, camcorders, cell phones and stereo receivers. Take a look at our photos and videos for a good taste of the action.
You might not be aware that over the past four decades, CES has been responsible for bowing our most prevalent electronic household items, including the VCR (1970), CD player and camcorder (1981), DVD (1996), HDTV (1998), PVR (1999), plasma TV (2001) and Blu-ray Disc (2003). (Where’s the iPhone, you ask? Apple holds its own San Francisco-based tech conference, Macworld, around the same time as CES each year, which is where the iconic smartphone debuted in 2007.)
For a guy like me who lives, breathes and bleeds gadgets (and if you’re reading this, I suspect you do, too), CES is simply nerdvana — especially considering most of the products on display among the roughly 2,700 exhibitors aren’t even available yet (the first CES show in 1967 only had 200 exhibitors by comparison). This window to the future, including smart homes complete with domestic robots, is enough to stiffen my, er, pocket protector; one moment you’re salivating over the world’s largest high-definition television, then a few moments later you’re body-surfing through the masses to another part of the showroom floor to lay your hands on a 12-megapixel camera phone or media player the size of a Tic Tac box that can store your entire music, photo and video library.
Personally, I don’t find it worthwhile to fight for a seat to hear self-serving keynote speeches from Microsoft executives but the floor-to-ceiling tech toys is another story altogether.
That said, CES isn’t all fun and games, of course. Between paying three times the usual price for a hotel room that week (if you can find one), waiting forever in line for a stale hotdog (or washroom or taxi), and with your feet pulsating in pain from trying to cover the entire floor in three days (followed by late night parties or casino excursions), it’s certainly a show you need to recover from. That, and the fact CES takes place right after the holidays and New Year’s Eve, so you barely have time to exhale before hopping on a plane to Sin City.
But while you’re hard-pressed to find women at this show – surprise, surprise – at least the AVN adult video awards takes place at the same time in Vegas, providing enough eye-candy for those who want to hit the strip. Talk about silicone meets silicon. Let’s just say you can tell who’s in town for CES and those attending the “Oscars of the porn industry.”
Once again, enjoy our coverage and let us hear what’s on your mind.