TechRadar offers an interesting snapshot of the 10 gadgets their staff is most looking forward to in 2012, some of which we should expect to see at CES next month.
“Where once we were waiting on the influx of dual-core tablets, now we’re looking at a quad-core revolution on the horizon,” explains the post. “We were looking forward to Android 3.0 and Google’s Chrome OS, but now we’re clamouring for Android 4.0 and Windows 8. Gaming also looks set to have a bumper year, with new consoles and technologies coming, and this is all before we get the usual raft of awesome announcements at CES 2012 in January.”
The following comprise the 10 picks that the TechRadar staff are most excited about: 1) New video streaming options and other content for the Amazon Kindle Fire — “perhaps the best gadget bargain of this era;” 2) Wii U with 1080p output, 3D support and a new controller; 3) Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime — the first Nvidia Tegra 3 tablet; 4) Windows 8 tablets with Metro interface and support for ARM processors; 5) Apple’s 2012 tablet (iPad 3 with retina display?); 6) PlayStation Vita with quad-core graphics processor; 7) Asus Padfone with Android 4.0 and Nvidia’s Tegra 3 quad-core CPU; 8) Sony PlayStation 3D display — “a brilliant way to get into 3D gaming without totally breaking the bank;” 9) Android 4.0 tablets with varieties of apps and widgets; and 10) Ultrabooks “that get it right.”
As consumers continue to expect ubiquitous, easy and immediate ways to access media content, Hollywood’s release windows strategy has become “the root cause of piracy,” suggest The Hill.
Research at Carnegie Mellon University shows that every week customers have to wait before they can buy a DVD leads to 1.8 percent lower DVD sales. Moreover, as pirated versions are available 14 weeks before legal versions, the result is a 70 percent increase in pirated movie downloads.
The article suggests that Hollywood needs to adjust its current windowing strategy by looking at selling content in theaters, on DVD and through digital services “around the same time, perhaps at different price points.”
When VCRs were first introduced, they were viewed by the industry as a potentially dangerous piracy tool. However, VCRs eventually became a highly lucrative mechanism for the home video rental business.
The Hill concludes, “technology required the industry to adapt then, and it requires the same now. If Hollywood and publishers can do so, they stand a much better chance of thriving in a global digital marketplace.”
Researchers have developed a new form of light-emitting crystals, known as quantum dots, that will be used to create thinner, flexible displays.
“The tiny crystals, which are 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, can be printed onto flexible plastic sheets to produce a paper-thin display that can be easily carried around, or even onto wallpaper to create giant room-size screens,” reports The Telegraph.
The first commercial products to use the technology are expected to be flat-screen TVs with improved color and thinner displays, available by the end of next year. The flexible versions should take at least three years to become commercially available, although the technology may appear on small personal devices earlier.
“Something else we are looking at is reels of wallpaper or curtains made out of a material that has quantum dots printed on it,” explains Michael Edelman, chief executive of Nanoco,a company set up by the scientists behind the technology at Manchester University. “You can imagine displaying scenes of the sun rising over a beach as you wake up in the morning.”
According to Edelman, Nanoco is currently working with major Asian electronics companies on flat-screen TVs that incorporate the quantum dot technology.
Mitsubishi has been named a CES Innovations 2012 Design and Engineering Awards Honoree for its 92-inch 3D DLP Home Cinema TV.
According to the press release: “Mitsubishi’s 92-inch TV includes a 16-speaker, fully immersive Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound system; new Clear Contrast Screen; Perfect Color; Perfect Tint; and the same 3D DLP technology used by 90 percent of 3D movie theaters.”
The company claims its $6,000 3D DLP model (WD-92840) is “the largest mass-produced TV on the market, covering a surface area greater than four standard 46-inch TVs combined.”
More details are expected during January’s CES in Las Vegas.
Intel announced that smartphones and tablets powered by the company’s Medfield Atom processor and running Google’s Android 4.0 OS could hit the market next year.
Intel has been working with manufacturers to ensure compatibility of its chipsets with several versions of Android.
“We’ll see products next year on Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich and Honeycomb,” said Alec Gefrides, head of the Google Program Office at Intel. “Every OEM has to put a stake in the ground to get a product delivered.”
In a related post from Product Reviews, rumors suggest we may see some unannounced Ice Cream Sandwich handsets at CES in January.
Samsung may be unveiling an ICS device for the Sprint network that is powered by Intel.
Intel is reportedly choosing a manufacturer to produce its device, which would run Android 4.0 ICS on Intel’s Atom processor.
“Could Intel be the brand new player in 2012 that is set to give NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 chip a run for its money?” asks Product Reviews. “It certainly seems that way based on these rumors and more choice in the market is obviously a great thing from a consumers perspective.”
UltraViolet’s Web channels are now live and will be going global, with launches planned in the UK for the end of December, Canada in 2012 and additional locations in 2013.
“Sony, Universal and Warner began shipping UV-enabled Blu-ray and DVD titles to U.S. shelves in October,” reports paidContent. “In the last few days, the first three online exponents — SonyPictures.com, UniversalHiDef.com and Flixster.com — went live, allowing owners of the new discs to also stream the same movie on those sites for free.”
In the UK, Tesco’s Blinkbox VOD service will launch an individual version of the same concept, but “Blinkbox will also be plugging in to UltraViolet in 2012.”
“Against a backdrop of piracy and the rise of subscription access services like Netflix and Spotify, UltraViolet is a defensive ploy to build online value around the same model entertainment has known for decades — ownership,” suggests the article.
There’s a new rumor making the rounds that Microsoft may resurrect a file-sharing technology it first introduced with the Zune in 2006, which failed to gain traction initially due to the device’s lack of adoption.
“Beaming” is reportedly based on Zune’s “squirting” concept (sharing music with other Zunes over Wi-Fi). Microsoft is believed to be working on the beaming feature for its Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 “Apollo” and Xbox platforms.
Beaming will utilize NFC, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi direct pairing. The feature may be used to beam users’ Windows 8 profiles, for example, or possibly even stream movies from an Xbox console.
“As always, take this rumor with a grain of salt, but to some degree, it fits within Microsoft’s vision of a unified experience across the three screens: PC/tablet, smartphone and console,” reports tech blog Tom’s Hardware. “Perhaps we’ll hear more about Beaming next month during CES 2012.”
The post includes a video showing a user “beaming” a presentation from his phone to an HDTV and a document from his phone to a tablet.
We should expect to see a major push regarding Google TV in the coming months, according to Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt.
“By the summer of 2012… the majority of the televisions you see in television stores will have Google TV embedded in them,” he predicted while addressing a crowd at the LeWeb conference in Paris.
While Logitech has stepped away from the project, PC Pro reports that LG and Samsung are rumored to be debuting Google TV products at CES in January.
However, The Guardian warns that “Google TV is going to face an uphill battle: it may well be installed in lots of TV sets sitting on the shelves, but people may well be keeping their hands in their pockets; few people need to buy a new television. The market is saturated. TV sales look set for a dramatic slowdown in 2012.”
The Guardian agrees that Schmidt’s contention may be accurate, but adds: “…there’s a long way from that to people buying them, and taking them home, and engaging the Internet capability, and enjoying the experience more than they do through some other channel such as their laptop, tablet, or games console. Let’s check back in a year.”
Westinghouse Digital announced it will showcase new television products, including its new 70-inch LED HDTV, at CES in January.
The 70-inch UW70T9VZ touts 1080p full HD, a 120Hz refresh rate and 8ms response time.
The company will also showcase smaller screens such as the 46-inch “ultra-slim” LED HDTV “that’s so slender, it probably disappears if you look at it side-on,” jokes Engadget.
Additionally, Westinghouse will demo its first ever Bluetooth Soundbar. “The WSB-N20BW Series Soundbar with Wireless Bluetooth will feature powerful sound and a sleek, clean design, offering 2×12 watts, a class D amplifier, and a frequency response of 85Hz – 20Khz, with enhanced bass, reports HotHardware.
Google’s Eric Schmidt said that Android would soon be bigger than Apple iOS.
Schmidt’s belief stems from the fact that Android’s market runs on an open model, which he believes will attract developers.
Addressing a crowd at the LeWeb conference in Paris, Google’s chairman and former CEO “added that Ice Cream Sandwich would redress Android’s device fragmentation and the sheer number of hardware makers would ensure that 2012 would be Google’s year,” reports Engadget.
“Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume, and volume is favored by the open approach Google is taking. There are so many manufacturers working to deliver Android phones globally,” Schmidt said. “Whether you like Android or not, you will support that platform, and maybe you’ll even deliver it first.”
Android’s success is central to Google’s plans, reports CNET in a related article, and “serves as a mechanism for the company to get its services into peoples’ hands in the hot mobile-technology realm.” Those services include Gmail, Google Apps, Google+, Google Music and Google Maps.
“All the interesting new applications are going to be some combination of social, mobile, and local,” Schmidt said. “Social, local, mobile has been true for humans for at least 10,000 years, so I don’t think it’s going to go away any time soon.”
Fabless semiconductor company Legend Silicon will demonstrate its new automobile-based TV reception system for legacy ATSC A/53 signals called SuperTV at January’s CES in Las Vegas.
“According to Legend Silicon COO and VP of product marketing Raj Karamchedu, the CES showing will use an FPGA-based version of SuperTV technology using four car antennas that makes possible reception of legacy ATSC from a moving vehicle,” Broadcast Engineering reports.
The SuperTV chip will start production in six or seven months. Beyond automobiles, the company sees the technology being deployed in the U.S. “for stationary and portable DTVs, laptop computers, tablet devices and mobile phones.”
The article points out that SuperTV may face some skepticism from the broadcast engineering community. “The mobile environment, in the presence of lots of signal multipath, is inherently very hostile to legacy ATSC reception,” said Charles Cooper, broadcast engineer with du Treil, Lundin & Rackley. “So any new antenna technology will have to overcome very high technical hurdles to make legacy ATSC a reliable mobile service.”
PC World reports that while tablets and smartphones may be all the rage right now, we should expect to see some impressive laptops next year that “promise to be thinner, lighter, and faster” and feature “longer-lasting batteries.”
The article suggests that holding off until CES before making a new laptop purchase may be worthwhile.
Some 30-50 ultrabooks are expected to be announced at January’s show; we should expect better graphics and longer battery life with Intel’s next-gen Ivy Bridge chips; and Windows 8 is anticipated to be the biggest change of any Microsoft release since Windows 95.
“The category will kick into high gear when Intel’s next-generation CPUs, code-named Ivy Bridge, hit the market. Ivy Bridge’s power utilization and performance, together with steadily falling prices on solid-state drives, should make these superthin laptops more affordable and appealing,” predicts the article. “By the end of the year, we may even see ultrabooks with screens that rotate and fold down to transform into a tablet. The emphasis on touch interfaces in Windows 8, together with the thinner and lighter design of ultrabooks, could make this new generation of convertible laptops more desirable than the convertibles of the past few years.”
We may finally see some new OLED TVs in Las Vegas…
“Reportedly, both Samsung and LG Display will showcase new 55-inch sets at CES in January, with the hope of getting to market before the new TV-buying spree during the run-up to the 2012 Olympics,” reports The Verge.
LG Display’s CEO Kwon Young-soo announced over the summer that the company saw no point in continuing with unprofitable small and medium-sized OLED (organic light-emitting diode) displays, and would be focusing on larger units, including a 55-inch OLED TV expected to ship by the second half of 2012.
No prices have been announced, but it’s worth noting that LG’s 2010 15-inch panel retailed in the $2500 range.
OLED demos have not been confirmed for January’s CES. “This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve been burned however, having been teased for years with beautiful large-panel prototypes at trade shows,” warns the post.
Apple, Google, Microsoft, Roku and Boxee are just some of the companies working on ways to re-imagine the TV experience.
“But nobody seems to be able to answer the big question: what exactly is so broken about TV anyway?” writes Matt Rosoff in a commentary for CNN, part of a series designed to “debunk commonly held perceptions about technology.”
Rosoff acknowledges that channel guides are inefficient… “But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most TV viewers simply won’t care enough about any of this stuff to shell out $1,500 for a new Apple TV, or spend a few hundred bucks and countless hours fiddling around adding a new box to their TV set and figuring out how it works.”
He notes that while the tech industry wants to optimize the television experience, it is important to remember that TV is passive. We don’t want to work at it. It’s not too difficult to turn the set on, find your channel and you’re done. Even Steve Jobs sometimes just wanted to watch TV and vegetate.
“That’s why we love TV just the way it is,” writes Rosoff. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Verizon is planning to launch a standalone video streaming service for 2012 that would offer movies and TV shows via the Web, according to several people close to the plan.
“The phone company is talking with prospective programming partners about the service, which would be introduced outside of markets where it currently offers its broadband and TV package, known as FiOS, these people said,” reports Reuters. “That would make it available to some 85 million U.S. households.”
Verizon may be concerned about cord cutters and competition from Netflix, Amazon and Google.
“Verizon has been back and forth with programmers over the last two years exploring the possibility,” suggests the article. “While a lot of the discussion has been around fees, the programmers have also been concerned about the possibility of hurting their existing — and lucrative — relationships with the cable operators.”
Having its own streaming service would allow Verizon to grow its customer base and thereby lower its programming costs.
“News of the service will have added controversy in the wake of sister company Verizon Wireless’s plans to resell cable TV service for Comcast Corp, Time Warner Cable Inc and Bright House Networks,” points out Reuters. “Under that deal, announced last week, Verizon Wireless will pay $3.6 billion for valuable spectrum from the cable companies.”
