Well, here we go, CEA bungled big time this year. Instead of having the Unveiling at The Venetian like the last decade, they moved it to Mandalay Bay Convention Centre. Literally at the other end of the strip. That’s not too bad if there is any form of transportation. There was no shuttle bus, monorail stops only up to MGM (and it’s still a fair walk from MGM to Mandalay Bay Convention Centre) so the only option is taxi. At $20 per ride, I’m not a happy camper. The same sentiment was expressed by literally hundreds of other journalists on location. We were a grumpy bunch!
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CES 2013 Unveiling: Lots of goodies and excitement. Most are evolutionary, some are rehashes, but I don’t seem to see anything that is revolutionary. Yet so many of them received “Innovation Award” from the Consumer Electronics Association.
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QAT Music Server
It’s an audiophile-grade music server with 2TB internal HDD that can play WAV files upwards to 24 bit 192 kHz resolution. It comes with built in CD player / ripper so it can playback and/or rip your CD in pure WAV form to… its internal HDD while getting the CDs information, including the album cover photos from CDDB via a free app created for Android and iOS. Controlling the the QAT MS5 Music Server is also a breeze and I find it to be more intuitive than using iTunes. The only drawback is its $5,990 price tag.
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Last year I laughed at Velodyne for getting into the headphone business. The joke is on me. Velodyne gave me a pair of their earphones (in pink, nevertheless!!) and when I tried it last night in my hotel room playing back WAV files of my reference rcordings from my iPod Touch… WOW! I never liked earphones but these earphones are just that WOW. They are still not reference quality but the quality is pretty high up there!
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Matrix Audio, a Toronto based portable audio company released an all aluminum cube speakers in black, silver and red. They are not revolutionary in sound but revolutionary in design. Such simplicity and clarity from a tiny unit. Plug it in to any of your portable device, and off you go!
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House of Marley, nothing truly new here. Essentially everything from last year is being rehashed but this time with Airplay and Bluetooth connections. However, the materials used by House of Marley are of Furniture-Grade wood. So even if you don’t like the bombastic sound from their lineup, at the very least they look good.
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Of course no Unveiling will be complete without the LG 4K display, MSRP at $20,000 US pictured here with the LG show rep for size comparison. I never thought I’ll ever uttered these words… “it’s 4K goodness from LG“. What the world is coming to?