CEATEC Conference Showcases Gadgets in Japan
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If you’re stuck in the US, you have to wait until January 2007 for the next Consumer Electronics Show. Meanwhile, we’ll have to content ourselves with reports coming in from CEATEC, Japan’s equivalent show in Tokyo. It started October 3, ran through October 7, and gave eager convention attendees a glimpse at what will be coming onto the market in the next month or the next year.
I wasn’t one of those eager attendees, but it’s impossible not to lap up stories about the conference. To judge from the show, the Japanese if anything are even more gadget-crazy than we are. There were cell phones that were powered by fuel cells and expected to make it to market by 2007. Nissan had a concept car on display that featured recliners and a variety of entertainment options, including Internet connections. One company, for some unfathomable reason, had a robot riding a bicycle as part of its exhibit. I could easily go on and on.
Sony had its PS3 on display, of course, about a month ahead of its release. The company has been criticized for the boxy retro look of its console; some observers have commented that it might be a pain to keep clean, acting as a magnet for fingerprints and dust. The remote also fails to impress; honestly, it looks about like any other universal remote controller. Of course, it’s not the way the hardware looks that matters as much as the gaming experience it delivers. That’s something, sadly, for which I couldn’t find any pictures.
Most of the stories I saw about the show barely mentioned the PS3. It looks as if there will be two major battlegrounds in consumer electronics over the next year: TV and storage. These areas will overlap significantly for certain technologies (such as next-generation DVD players and recorders). The worst part of it is that we have to wait before we see this cool technology, and some of it we might not even see at all here in the US.
Next: DVD recorders, but not for us >>
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