CES 2007: High-Definition Toys, Wireless Wonders

If past experience holds true, news from the 40th International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will range from the truly mundane to totally interesting to downright strange. Announcements will flow with the power of the mighty Mississippi River about PCs, networking products, cell phones, video players, high-def TV, home entertainment systems, and much, much else. For the enthusiasts and industry types alike, there is no more exciting (or grueling) show than this.

Starting unofficially on Saturday night and continuing through next week, the convention halls, hotel suites, and restaurants of Las Vegas will be filled with the latest tech products in the 40th iteration of this venerable gathering.

This year's event, officially open from January 8 to January 11, will feature about 2700 exhibitors and 150,000 attendees from 130 countries. Computing and electronics giants such as Sony, Microsoft, HP, and Intel will exhibit. So will start-up companies. Rock bands will sing, and notables like Bill Gates will speak. And PC World editors will roam the 1.6 million net square feet of floor space to bring you news about this year's (and next year's) hottest products.

PC World's coverage will be highlighted in a special Info Center on PC World.com.

Here's a quick preview of what we're expecting to see.

Hi-Def Domination

The fight for dominance between Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD is poised to get vicious. We hear rumors of a possible price cuts on Toshiba's HD DVD players, and we expect the Blu-ray camp to be busy showcasing newly shipping products--hopefully revealing when its long-awaited BD Live Internet connectivity will become a reality.

And this just in: LG Electronics says it will show the first high-definition disc player capable of handling both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats, and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies will show the first 1-terabyte hard drive.

News on the storage front will also include everything from HD DVD burners to multidisk hard drive arrays designed to safeguard your data. TDK will be showcasing its 200GB Blu-ray Disc--but don't get too excited: This ultracapacious disc is not yet part of the Blu-ray Disc specification.

On the HDTV front, expect tons of 1080p LCD and DLP sets, along with a smaller number of plasma sets (and these will be only in larger sizes, as 1080p remains a technological challenge for plasma). Vendors will also be showing the first sets and the first high-def video players to incorporate HDMI 1.3, the latest version of the industry-standard interface, with support for a wider color gamut and better audio, among other things. However HDMI 1.3's benefits won't be fully apparent until upgraded content appears, which may not be for quite a few years.

We'll be asking television manufacturers about new sets with CableCard slots. By March, all new TVs must have digital tuners instead of analog ones. By July, cable operators must use CableCards to decrypt the signals going to their set-top boxes (meaning, they can't build the decryption into the box). We hope to begin seeing TVs with two-way CableCards, which not only receive but send data needed for interactive features such as on-screen program guides and pay-per-view movies. I'm not holding my breath.

Wireless Gadgets

Most of the buzz about cell phones is back in San Francisco, where Apple may or may not be announcing its mythic cell phone at Macworld Expo. However, that doesn't mean that we won't see a slew of cell phone news at CES. We expect to see consumer-focused announcements such as mobile phones that can support video, TV, music, and other entertainment applications. We're also looking for phones with high-resolution cameras--think 3 megapixels and higher. And the trend towards superslim, stylish phones is certain to continue.

Another category that should be big at CES: Skype accessories and handsets similar to the Logitech Cordless Internet Handset, which we recently reviewed, as well as applications and accessories for taking your VoIP account on the road. Whether we'll see a practical handset that switches between cellular and Wi-Fi networks (for making cheap VoIP calls) is uncertain. In GPS-related products, we're looking for real-time traffic updates, text-to-speech driving directions, and the delivery of maps and navigation on cell phones.

Networking and Notebooks

Power-line networking products will be making more of a splash, particularly those based on the long-awaited HomePlug AV standard that promises bandwidth and quality-of-service features to enable streaming of high-def video throughout the home with more range and reliability than the fastest Wi-Fi products now offer. However, HomePlug AV has rivals, and this standards war is by no means over.

Nor is wireless networking by any means out of the running as a conduit for high-def media. Some consumer electronics vendors will be showing off prototypes of products that incorporate the new, superfast 802.11n Wi-Fi technology, in anticipation of a final standard being reached early this year. Another emerging wireless technology is Ultra Wideband (UWB), a cable-replacement technology that's also been plagued by a standards war. However Certified Wireless USB--the UWB variant backed by industry giants Intel, HP, Microsoft, and others--appears to be winning this one, and some of the first Certified Wireless USB products should be on display at the show.

Vista Notebooks and UMPCs

Desktops and particularly notebooks shown at CES will begin to incorporate Vista-designed components. These include hybrid hard disks, which enable Vista to launch applications quickly, and small external displays, which enable Vista SideShow to display contact, calendar, and other Microsoft Outlook information without your starting up the laptop. We'll also continue the hunt for Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs). One unusual offering: the ruggedized SwitchBack PC, which looks like a Hummer and, at $4500, is almost priced like one.

Bottom Line: The Real Experience

If you think that looking at the best and worst of upcoming technology is fun, it is. If you think looking at it is glamorous with 149,000 other folks in cavernous halls where the sound bounce is so vivid, you can almost feel it blow your hair back, well . . .

In the end, we expect to see lots of hipster types with Bluetooth knobs sticking out of their ears looking like Lieutenant Uhuru from Star Trek, only without the miniskirt. We expect to encounter a large number of people who are as wide as they are tall, moving at exactly 0.03 miles per hour through the main concourse of the Central Hall on Monday afternoon, the show's busiest day.

We know we'll hear the words "social (fill in the blank)" and "Web two dot oh apps" from vendors until we want to press our hands against their temples and squeeze their heads like a ripe casaba melon. And we expect that come next Thursday, we won't much care about anything but sleep. But you'll be well informed, so enjoy the coverage.

Yardena Arar, Liane Cassavoy, Dennis O'Reilly, Melissa Perenson, Alan Stafford, and Dan Tynan of PC World contributed to this report.