According to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), some 122,422 people from 120 countries came to the oasis in the desert to see and showcase the latest and greatest in digital technology. The show was spread out over 1.2 million net square feet of exhibit space. That's a whole lot of walking, so much so that even with the four days I had I was unable to meet and see everyone on my list. But I think we made a good impression as a team, and covered a lot of ground at CES.
After quite a few press conferences with the majors such as Sony, Xtant, Pioneer, JBL, Kenwood, JVC, Coustic, and MTX it was time to go see what the satellite buzz was all about at both XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio. Their booths were filled with people who wanted to get the inside scoop. It was nice to see that "music" itself was the big ruckus of the show.
We love music and these two new services for content delivery are going to help supply the demand for the information and entertainment which are so limited on regular radio. The second big buzz was about MP3. With all the major head unit manufacturers developing technology to compete with early-bird companies like Rio/ empeg it is clear that compressed music is here to stay. Obviously there is a lot of money to be made, as well as a lot of room for development in this nascent area. As of this writing Rio plans to drop a 10 gig, single DIN in-dash head unit come April. I actually met someone at the show with the UK version. The UK cats are so ahead of us when it comes to this whole music/MP3/Internet thing.
What you will read in our coverage of CES that follows is a survey of sorts of what the CA&E troopers thought about the show, what was the hot new gear or car audio vehicle, and what we thought of the technology that is on the horizon. Last year we were the first car audio-related magazine to break the MP3 story, thanks to Tim Kelly; so of course we asked him to follow up with this year's findings. If you did not read my opening letter please go back and do so before you read my CES picks.
* Satellite Radio from XM & Sirius: The revolution will not be televised, the revolution is in the air!
* Blaupunkt "plastic" amp: compact and cool; keeping up with technology and fashion, it's a great new look for the car audio environment. I can't wait to try this new item!
* Kenwood's satellite/MP3 head unit Z828: hot-looking and first on the market to combine all of what I want.
* JBL Gti Subwoofers: 5,000 watts and sound quality integrity.
* Radar plate from BLINDER: anything to fight the system.
* Xtant octi'woofer: best new design; what a creative fashion move.
* Sony's world's smallest 6-disc player: it's all about making things more compact while improving quality.
* Sony's DJ bank: don't think turntables or CD mixers; this is a serious downloading machine.
* Alpine's E30 M3 demo car: absolutely pure; pure sound and pure performance all in one package.
* Pioneer's new DVD/Nav unit and advanced OEL screen: pioneers indeed.
* JVC KDSH99 heat unit: for the budget-minded with some real beef with all metal face. People need to recognize...
* Rainbow's Reference Line 260.30 / $7,000 separates: if I had Master P's money this would be it! Component speakers and crossover transported in a super deluxe aluminum carrying case with membership card; the sound has to be great with this much attention to detail!
* Garmin's Street Pilot III GPS unit - I used last year's model on a trip from Florida to California driving the Intrax rig. It works like any military tracking device. As you can see, I have not built a complete dream system or a budget system with all my picks, but these are a few major pieces that caught my attention. We will see how things go over the next few months. Review the directory well!
This year's Consumer Electronics Show was one of the best I can remember. There were a great deal of products and new ideas, as well as enthusiasm about the future. It was really good to see all this because I have been to a few shows where people were just plain glum.
For the last 18 months CA&E has been covering so many new emerging technologies and trends -- and the 2001 CES was hard proof that a great many of these products, services and concepts are going to be a reality.
Three things really struck me as innovative enough to really cause a stir or a shift in car audio as we know it.
1. Satellite Radio. It's finally here and it's every bit as good as we hyped it, maybe even better. By some time this summer, you will be able to sign up for satellite radio from one of the two companies, XM or Sirius. What seems to differentiate them is that XM is concentrating on creating a radio station feel with DJs, live bands and original content. XM has created a giant facility with over 80 studios to accomplish this. Sirius, on the other hand, is focused on content. Their 50 music channels will not have DJs interrupting the music and the other 50 variety channels will feature great stuff like Sci-Fi channel, Comedy World, even Speedvision (how they'll do that I don't know). It's going to be fun to listen to the radio again.
2. MP3. Actually I probably shouldn't use MP3 specifically -- more of a format that's compressed so you can get more songs in a smaller space. In 2000, only Kenwood and JVC sold CD players that would play CD-Rs with MP3 on them. At CES, I couldn't keep track of how many companies would be shipping decks to play MP3, CD-Rs or even memory cards (e.g. Sony's Memory Stick). The big news was at Sony and Pioneer. Both showed a CD player with a hard drive built-in. The good news is that they don't use MP3; they use Sony's new and improved ATRAC compression (used on MiniDisc). Sony now has it working so well that a single MiniDisc can now hold up to 5 hours of music versus the old 80 minutes. Both the prototype Sony and Pioneer units would rip music to the hard drive at high speed, letting you listen as it ripped or listen to the tuner instead. Sony claimed 100 CDs would fit in their unit; Pioneer, even more. Don't look for these units this year, but that these big players are even showing prototypes means that's where the market is headed.
3. Amplifier technology. Digital amps are finally here. At the 2000 CES it looked like there might be two competitors for a true voltage amp, Tripath and Texas Instruments. TI has decided to focus on smaller, low-powered devices and Tripath has truly excelled. Class T amps as they're called, work slightly different than TI's true voltage amp solution, but who cares when you can get over 75% efficiency and awesome sound quality. There were two prototypes at the show that really blew my mind. First was Blaupunkt's new plastic amp. We brought you the exclusive scoop on this amp in the January 2001 issue. Blaupunkt had the real thing at the show and it's going to be awesome. Next was in Tripath's booth, where they had modified an Alpine CD player by putting in their own Class T amps just to prove how much power you could get from a small chip. It was rated at 4 x 80 watts and was every bit of it. Powering top quality 6.5-inch speakers, the deck was easily bottoming the four cones and showed no sign of clipping.
I have to say that 2001 is going to be a great year for CA&E and for you the consumer, because so many new and cool things are going to be coming your way. To help keep you up to date and on the edge, I'll be covering a new technology or service every month starting with the June issue. You'll not only get an explanation of how it works, but, if possible, I'll be using it and relaying to you my first-hand experience. Get ready for some real car audio excitement!
Telematics
When asked to share my impressions of the many new things I saw at the 2001 CES, a single theme kept coming to mind. "Telematics," that new industry buzzword used to describe anything and everything having to do with communicating information to and from the vehicle.
As I wandered the exhibit halls that housed the booths of all the various mobile electronics manufacturers, I began to detect a recurring pattern developing. Several of the large mainstream vehicle security manufacturers were presenting, or are on the verge of presenting, some form of new telematics product. Many of the lesser known companies are following suit. Although the actual products being offered by each of these companies are different in appearance, they all share a single common denominator. They are all supported by a communication infrastructure provided by a new name on the scene, Televoke.
Televoke, based in San Francisco, California is an ASP, which stands for Application Service Provider. To employ a rather awkward analogy -- regardless of whatever head unit you may have you still need radio stations out there for you to be able to use your head unit. Similarly, Televoke has designed and built a telematics communication infrastructure (the radio station) through which these new telematics products can operate. With the Televoke infrastructure, it is possible to allow the user to send commands to a car, from a telephone or computer (e.g. such as unlock doors or arm the alarm system). If the telematics product employs a GPS capability, then the Televoke ASP can allow the user to request their car's location via any Internet connected computer, and receive a map on screen showing the car's location. These features and much more are possible with the Televoke ASP.
Some of the companies who have chosen to use Televoke as their ASP to support their new telematics products include: Audiovox; Omega Research & Development; Satronics; SecuraTrak; and Clarion/UNGO.
Hot Picks
It was a wild, exciting and adventure-filled CES. Some of it even took place at the pavilions. Kidding aside, the car audio side of the show featured literally tons of incredible cars. While all of them were spectacular, I thought the best overall install was by far the Nissan frontier in the Rockford booth. The overall colors and the way everything flowed together, the curves, the detail -- it was awesome. Big props out to Brian at Rockford. The second install that I thought was real cool was Steve Brown's BMW at the Alpine booth. The install was mind blowing; the detail in the trunk section was so trick I was really blown away.
My pick for the best booth has to be ARC Audio. They had some great cars (hot rods) and a really trick classic Chevy pickup with an an extended body.
In the product category I was impressed with the new amplifiers from Blaupunkt. It was featured in a previous issue of CA&E. If you read that or visited Blaupunkt at the show, then you know why we're high on it. Also I liked the new QSD line of separates from MB QUART. I guess you can't say enough about German engineering.
This show had it all and I'm glad I was able to be a part of it. The way things are going I expect next year to be even better.