us watch_us watch 25/02/2016 18:25 Page 1
Back to the future
’ve been going to the
annual Consumer
Electronics Show, held
each January in Las Vegas
for almost 20 years now
and will admit up front that
it is getting harder and
harder to not become a bit
jaded. There is a finite limit
to the number of different
cases for an iPhone that I
can realistically compare
and many of them come in
colours that do not exist in
nature.
I still remember with growing
nostalgia CES 1999 when both
TiVo and ReplayTV
demonstrated the first digital
video recorders and the latter
won ‘Best of Show’. On-demand
video streaming has nearly made
the DVR obsolete but it taught a
generation of television viewers
that they were no longer slaves
to a TV schedule and introduced
the concept of binge viewing that
Netflix has adroitly turned into
one of their key selling points.
A few years later, I remember
fighting the mob around
Samsung’s OLED prototype
display, then
only as large as
sheet of paper
but still
marvelling at
the deep blacks
and contrast
levels. And I got
too enthusiastic
about the
introduction of 3D TV sets, the
failure of which will become a
classic Harvard Business School
case study on how to screw up a
major innovation in TV medium
(could be combined with
analysing how the format war
between HD-Video and Blu-ray
accelerated the decline of the
DVD window).
So what does this brief stroll
down memory lane have to do
with CES 2016? Almost
I
Larry Gerbrandt paid his annual visit
to CES, and was struck as much by
what he didn’t see there as what new
technology was on display.
everything seemed like just an
incremental improvement rather
than a breakthrough. LG’s 77
inch curved OLED 4K was
observe which displays are the
most crowded and this year any
vehicle that incorporated
driving-assist sensors, Wi-Fi
impressive but I don’t plan on
upgrading until the new HDR
video standards are
implemented across TV set
makers,
UHD/4K Bluray disc
players and
content
delivery
platforms in a
consistent
fashion (see
3D and HDDVD/Blu-ray case study
reference in prior paragraph).
The closest thing to a ‘must
have’ innovation was the Pro
Trailer Backup Assist installed in
a Ford F-150 pickup truck.
Billions of US dollars have been
invested in autonomous driving
technology over the last decade
and it has finally gotten to the
point where they are useful,
reliable and even affordable.
One useful guide at CES is to
hubs or battery power were the
clear winners. The fact that GM
used CES to debut the 2017
Chevy Bolt all-electric car (with
a US$30K price point) is an
indicator of where future CE
innovation may have the
greatest impact. Americans
spend almost as much time in
their cars