CES 2008: CES Unveiled
I kicked off CES today by attending the “CES Unveiled” event. This is a press only event, which showcases a limited number of companies as a preview to the overall Consumer Electronics Show.
One of the best things about the CES unveiled event is the free food and open bar. I had some dinner, grabbed some drinks and then headed around the show floor in an attempt to find some optical storage related displays.
Unfortunately, there were no HD DVD or Blu-ray products on display at the Unveiled event, but I did find a few home theater and home video products that were interesting.
SE2 Labs ITC One
SE2 Labs ITC One received a Design & Engineering Showcase award. This pre-assembled ultimate home theater monster starts at $25,000, includes a Microsoft Xbox 360, a Nintendo Wii, an Apple Ipod, integrated surround sound and much, much more. We have previously covered the ITC One in detail here. So feel free to check out our previous article for a more thorough rundown.
Pinnacle “Video Transfer”
Pinnacle was showing off their new “Video Transfer” product, among other things. This Video Transfer hardware allows you to capture analog video without a computer. Supported inputs include standard RCA cables as well as S-Video. The product captures video and stores it to almost any external storage device, such as the Sony PSP, an Ipod, USB flash drives, an external hard drive and more. The resulting video files can be stored in 480p resolution utilizing H.264 as an MPEG 4 file.
This bad boy retails for $129.99 and should be hitting the market within the next 30 days. We also learned that the prelaunch code name for this product was “Stimpy”. Hey, I like that codename and anything sounds better than the generic product name of “video transfer”.
Much more CES news coming up!
CES officially starts on Monday and we will be sure to bring you more high definition, Blu-ray, HD DVD and optical storage news once the show is in progress. Tomorrow, I’ll be attending some more company parties and “side-show” events, so stay tuned for more 2008 tech updates.
wow ultimate home theater monster doesn’t look like its worth 25 grand. the design looks like something from the 80s I wouldn’t spend that much on something like that so far the features you mention don’t make it worth that much
I definitely did an article on that SE2 Labs piece after CEDIA.