The International CES Show opened this week in Las Vegas with over 2,700 exhibitors selling all the digital gear that makes up the entertainment economy. This year's show -- the 40th annual CES -- doesn't seem to have a lot of really new products, There are dozens of me-too plasma and LCD HDTVs, lots of mobile phones, video games, laptops and digital cameras, and the latest installment in the ludicrous high definition DVD war between Blu-Ray and HD DVD. We're getting used to watching TV on our PC screens, but one new category of products transfers video from your desktop PC to the conventional HDTV set in the living room. Three new products take three different approaches.
Sandisk has introduced a sneakernet approach to porting web video to a TV set. Carry the files from your PC on a Sandisk USB stick (at left) that plugs into a TV cradle on the set-top. Using a new standard called USB TV, the cradle runs software that converts web files formats to a standard television signal and even supports a remote control clicker.
Sony debuted an add-on link called the Bravia Internet Video Link that connects some of its television sets directly to the Internet, The new module takes an Cat5 Ethernet plug and streams video directly to the TV screen, controlled by the set's remote control and program guide software, No separate PC is needed to prepare the video. (View the short CNET video report from the show.)
NetGear takes a third-party approach, offering its Digital Entertainer HD (left) as a $349 add-on to any home TV. The Netgear device discovers all the video files available on the home net -- including HD files, if any -- and converts them on the fly to conventional TV format from most multimedia formats: MP3, WAV, WMA, FLAC, M4A, AAC, AC3, MPEG1/2/4, WMV, XviD and H.264. The unit supports multiple TVs in the same home; a "follow me" feature will stop a video on one TV, shut off the set and pickup watching on another TV.
Finally, I wrote about the excellent SlingBox placeshifting system last week, pointing out however the bad idea of live mobile video. At CES, Sling has introduced a "reverse Slingbox" that uses a different approach; its software SlingProjector puts any PCs display onto your TV. You can watch YouTube videos but you can also display web pages, play MP3s even run Powerpoint presentations, if you're so inclined. It's not as seamless an Internet-to-TV approach as the Sony, but it gives users the most control over the moving images they zap to the living room.
The Sony bult-in Internet appliance seems the most integrated option: every high end TV should have built-in Web video by decade's end. But there's also a place for sneakernet and for projecting a PC's display tot he living room. It's reasonable to imagine that each of these alternatives will co-exist in the home of the future.
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