CES - Home theater

Graphics chipmaker Nvidia, eager to hasten the arrival of the 3D graphics era and spur demand for new 3D hardware, today unveiled a site for content called 3DVisionLive.

At the site, people can share their own 3D photos and see more from professional photographers; watch short videos, trailers, and sports; and rate the content they see. The site supports Nvidia's 3D Vision technology and old-school anaglyph technology with the blue and red glasses.

3D is a theme at CES this year--and not for the first time. Moving the industry is a massive undertaking that involves content creation, content distribution, … Read more

Streaming Web content to TVs is one theme we expect to see lots of at CES. In early December, we took an advance look at Snapstick, a new company that streams Web content on your TV using your mobile phone as the remote control. Today, the start-up is announcing that potential partner D-Link will begin trials that incorporate Snapstick's Web-to-TV "SplitMedia" technology.

If trials go well, D-Link and Snapstick may ink a more permanent deal. Snapstick isn't seeking to manufacture hardware itself (at least not at this stage in its life cycle), but it does hope … Read more

LAS VEGAS--You want to connect your desktop computer to a big-screen TV so your gaming can go big, literally? Now you can do that, and more, wirelessly.

Amimon, a prominent member of the Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI) consortium, together with Asus today announced the WAVI 3D wireless PC-to-TV package. This kit is the first of its kind to enable consumers to wirelessly connect a desktop PC to a TV with support for 3D content.

This means you now can enjoy 3D PC video games as well as 3D movies on any 3D-capable HDTV, using the PC as the player.… Read more

Samsung and 3D specialist RealD announced a plan today to jointly develop a technology called RDZ that they say will mean brighter 3D TVs that work with 3D glasses used in RealD-equipped movie theaters.

RDZ, integrated into an LCD display, works through a synchronized switching of the display between left-eye and right-eye views. The companies argue that it's better than "patterned retarder" 3D technology, which devotes half a screen's pixels to each eye by masking alternating lines. That approach works with passive 3D glasses, which typically separate the right-eye and left-eye views with polarized light, but … Read more

Netflix will become more prominent and easier to use with the arrival of a button this spring on remote controls that connects directly to the company's widely used video-streaming service.

A big, red button with the company name will appear on multiple remote controls for Blu-ray players, TVs, and set-top boxes, the company announced today just before the Consumer Electronics Show gets under way in Las Vegas.

The announced partners are notable, though it's not immediately clear yet how broadly the button will propagate through product lines.

Netflix said its buttons will appear on remote controls for "… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Just a month ago, Trendnet debuted the first 500Mbps power-line adapter kit, the TPL-401E2K, and earlier than that, Netgear introduced the first 200Mbps power-line kit to incorporate a wireless access point, the AV 200 Wireless-N Extender Kit XAVNB2001.

Now, as predicted, it seems we will soon have the first product that combines both of these: Trendnet announced today the 500Mbps Powerline AV Wireless-N Access Point, model TPL-410AP. It's a 500Mbps power-line adapter that can also work as a Wi-Fi extender.

Similar to Netgear's XAVNB2001 kit, the TPL-410AP combines a high-performance 500Mbps power-line adapter with a 300Mbps Wireless-N … Read more

Pico projectors haven't really taken off like some people thought they would, but this new one from Optoma looks interesting. That's because Optoma has combined an iPod/iPhone sound dock with a "tabletop" projector, which seems like the way to go with these sort of projectors.

Though the Neo-i, which was supposed to ship in mid-December, isn't cheap at $449, its specs are better than your typical pico projector. The company says the Neo-i is a 50 ANSI lumen DLP projector that offers WVGA (854x480 pixels) resolution in 16:9 format, with a "full-bodied&… Read more

2010 has ended with a flurry of activity in the streaming video space, with Apple TV, Google TV, Boxee, Roku, and others introducing new or updated products. We expect that CES 2011 will continue the move toward streaming video content, with a few other new trends.

Streaming video take center stage Not that we ever doubted it, but streaming video is the future of home theater. Blu-ray will always be available for videophiles, but services like Netflix, Vudu, Amazon VOD, Hulu Plus, and iTunes are more affordable and extremely convenient. While Netflix is already available on nearly every device, we'… Read more

Let's face it: CES is often about hype. New products, new promises, and a lot of very thick carpeting greets us every year, and as we sort out what impressed us most about the show, we can only hope that some of these gadgets actually deliver.

With CES 2011 just around the corner, it's a perfect time to take a look back at the year that was, and see how the biggest stories of CES 2010 fared. Some of them did remarkably well, including our best-of-show winner, the Panasonic TC-PVT25 Others, not so much (remember the Motorola Backflip?). … Read more