CES 2006 - Day 3: Playstation 3, Quarter-size Hard Drives, SED and lots of TVs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on January 9, 2006 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
A Truly Wireless Tablet PC
A great idea in concept (and in science fiction TV shows/movies), the Tablet PC has just never taken off. A major cause is that the hardware has been too bulky to be used as a true paper tablet replacement, but thankfully some companies still haven't given up on the platform.
Toshiba demonstrated a notebook that allowed you to physically detach the monitor and carry it around with you, effectively using it as the tablet. The tablet received all screen data wirelessly over 802.11g from the base of the system (where the keyboard, CPU and HDD are located). The demonstration obviously worked, but we didn't get a feel for whether or not there was any perceivable lag when using the tablet.
The idea of a detachable monitor tablet makes a lot of sense as it addresses the form factor issue of tablet PCs.
Similar to the Seagate demo we saw earlier on at CES, Toshiba also had a Wireless USB/Ultra Wideband demo at their booth. The demo this time around was of a DV camera plugged into a base station rigged with a WUSB antenna. The DV camera then wirelessly streamed the video on its DV tape to a Toshiba notebook, also outfitted with a WUSB antenna.
Once again we have no idea what transfer rate was being achieved and although WUSB has a theoretical maximum of 480Mbps we would expect the real world transfer rate to be far slower in this case since it is streaming off of a DV tape.
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Sunbird - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
No problem for me here. IE6 on WinXP SP2.Aquila76 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Hmm... I wonder if my account is experiencing the 'y2k6 bug' that wiped out some of the lifers.semo - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
some lifers accounts got wiped out?y2k6 bug?
man i should stop living under this stupid rock. soooo much hilarity.
Aquila76 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
dwell, SampSon, buck and a few others got wiped out last week - all their posts got wiped too.ukDave - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Last word in 2nd last paragraph on pg14."comarpsion" should be "comparison".
Word.
Calin - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Why they compare the quality of digital TV seen on a shiny new digital TV to the quality on a 1980's analog TV? Why not compare to the latest analog only TV they built?Probably because the quality difference would be underwhelming?
Calin
psychobriggsy - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
If I read what that digital TV 'convertor' box did, then they have been available in the UK (and probably other European countries) for around 4 years already, initially as the ITV Digital boxes, and for the past couple of years as Freeview boxes.They usually have two SCART (Eurotel) outputs (what we have instead of S-Video outputs, ours can carry RGB signals as well as composite, but the connector is pig-large), one to the TV, another to a recorder, and an RF output in case the TV is old and doesn't have SCART inputs.
Cheap models (<£40) skimp of course, or 'specialise' in not having some of the features like RF output of digital signals. They also lose the 7 day program guide and only offer Now&Next, grrr.
Regardless, it should mean that these boxes will cost under $99 when they're released in the US, probably around $79. If they try it on with $199 then you know they're trying to rip you off, unless it downconverts terrestrial HD signals too.
semo - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
good point. how many ppl have tvs from the 1980s anymore (as far as the targeted audience of ces is concerned)Sc4freak - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Is it just me, or is the entire page completely screwed up?gsellis - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
I noticed that the index and pages were one off.