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Today's Show:
Five Technology Trends to Watch

Every year the Consumer Electronics Association compiles Five Technology Trends to Watch. The full document is about 25 pages long, but it has some great information in it, so we went through it to pull out the highlights. The CEA claims that the "topics chosen this year by CEA market analysts cover a wide range of digital technologies that will impact the world." While they may not end world hunger or and end to war, we do agree that they are interesting trends that we all will want to keep an eye on. We'll give the HT Guys Digest version, but please read the whole article if we pique your interest.

1. Control Freaks? Technologies Changing How We Interact with CE

This topic covers all of the advances we expect to see in how to control your home theater and your home, from advanced remote controls to whole house automation. The topics covered include: Touch Screens, Haptics and Force Feedback, Motion Sensing and Gesture Recognition, Voice Activation and Speech Recognition, and Mind Control. Some of those are pretty tame, but let's look at a few in detail.

Motion Sensing and Gesture Recognition

"This arena of command and control is one of the most visible and talked-about in the CE universe, thanks to a confluence of R&D and market forces. Development efforts in motion sensing and gesture recognition are moving as fast as the gesticulations they endeavor to capture. Interestingly enough, the line between these approaches is beginning to blur and eventually these two control methods could merge."

"Most gesture recognition systems employ cameras to watch and respond to a user's movements. Some of these cameras simply look for signals like an open palm or a thumbs-up. Other camera arrays bounce infrared light off the user's hands to gauge distance from the screen and record hand positions in 3-D space. This approach, for instance, allows a user to tap the air to click an on-screen icon. More sophisticated systems in development add electronic gloves to the mix to further define and refine control inputs."

Hold That Thought?

"Imagine a PC that knows what you're thinking. Seem like science fiction? Believe it or not three companies are deploying products enabling control of certain PC commands and functions just by thinking them."

"OCZ Technologies, Neurosky, and Emotiv offer headset devices that read electrical brain impulses - a process called electroencephalography (EEG) - and translate them into commands wirelessly transmitted to a user's computer. The command and control capabilities of neural headsets are somewhat simplistic at this stage and are not intended to supplant the mouse and keyboard, but enhance the computing experience. A recent Forbes article cites Emotiv's chief executive Nam Do as describing the technology as 'another layer' of control that can integrate mental responses into other kinds of interfaces. Emotiv's product, called the EPOC, is expected to hit stores this fall for a price of $299."

In a recent CEA study, when asked what technology people would prefer to use to control a PC in the next 5 to 10 years, men responded:
Keyboard and Mouse: 77%
Touch Screen: 78%
Voice: 69%
Hand Gestures: 33%
Thought: 43%


2. Ingredients for the Kitchen of Tomorrow: Power - Connectivity - Control

Next up is the fully connected and automated kitchen. Now this really sounds cool, and actually quite useful in many cases. "For those who think kitchen technology is food processors and coffee makers, think again. The technology for the kitchen of 'the future' is available today, with everything from flatpanel displays and Internet connectivity on refrigerators to appliances that can tell you, or decide for you, when to run. In fact, the kitchen has the potential to become the hub for the connected home and address one of the most critical issues facing today's households - the consumption and management of energy."

"The kitchen is poised to become the front line for coordination of activities, home automation and control, and information. With wireless connectivity, the kitchen now can be the information hub for the home in addition to being the nutritional hub. Consumer electronics are pushing the envelope, enabling power management, quick and easy sharing of schedules, information organizing, entertainment and instructions. Consumers want access to information and control. However, which activities will drive them to incorporate this technology in their home?"

3. Displays: A Look at the Next Wave of Innovation

Trend #1: Greater Focus on Energy Efficiency and Green Designs

"Beyond maximizing the energy efficiency of existing technologies such as LCD or plasma, several manufacturers hope to “disrupt the market with new approaches. The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) is a technology utilizing thin films of organic molecules that create light when hit with an electric current. In contrast to LCDs, OLED s do not require a source of backlighting and therefore according to OLED manufacturers, the technology consumes significantly less power (Sony claims a reduction of 40 percent power consumption on its 11-inch model)."

Trend #2: Further Enhancements to the Viewing Experience and Product Design

Manufacturers are constantly battling to improve picture quality, but "Would nearly 50 percent of U.S. households own an HDTV if the only upgrade was picture quality? Probably not. For many buyers, the upgrade to a sleek flat-panel display was equally as important as the picture upgrade. Will further reductions in the thickness of a television further entice the “small footprint segment of consumers? Some manufacturers certainly hope so. As mentioned previously, OLED is banking on energy efficiency, but its value proposition also includes an appeal to picture quality and thinness. For example, Sony's 11-inch OLED display measures a mere three millimeters thick."

Trend #3: Displays Move Beyond the Living Room

This section is all about putting displays in areas where you never would have expected them, the backyard, subways and subway cars, grocery check-out lines, gas pumps, etc. There are all places where 10 years ago the idea of placing a TV there would have been crazy, but now we don't even notice them.

Trend #4: Connectivity Completes the 360-Degree Experience

"During the past two International CES tradeshows, several firms unveiled televisions with built-in or add-on modules to enable Internet connectivity. These models work by interacting with the home's broadband modem or wireless network, tapping into online video offering. For the experimental types, this provides access to niche content, but it's far from the mainstream experience that many will expect. Several firms, such as Boxee, Sezmi, or Wherever TV , seek to provide a “TV 2.0 experience as seamless as changing the channel on today's television. These firms, and surely others, will incorporate interactive or social networking capabilities into their platforms, offering the possibility of transforming the passive television experience into a communal affair. While the DVR has transformed the television experience for nearly 4 in 10 consumers, the time-shifting technology stops short of providing a true on-demand viewing experience. The Sezmi set-top box, which boasts 1 terabyte of storage, markets itself as “optimized for on-demand viewing, a clear leap over DVR functionality. True, comprehensive on-demand viewing may be some years off, yet the pieces are slowly falling into place for this to become a reality."

4. The Future has Already Arrived: The Localization of the Internet

"Joe Modern pulls into the parking garage-after using his in-dash GPS unit to guide him- and enters the shopping mall. He is catching a matinee of the movie his friend recommended, e-mailing the review to his smartphone. He pulls up the movie theater website to confirm the starting time of the film, and receives a text message with a menu and coupon for one of the restaurants in the food court. He accepts the text, and suddenly there are several more offers, with coupons, advertising other appealing options. Before he knows it, he has so many enticing offers that he is not even sure he still wants to see the movie!"

5. The Contextual Web

"In this next era of the Internet, devices will do much of the sorting, filtering, contextualizing and connecting of data currently done by individuals. Presently, most of our technology experiences require significant user involvement. We tell the Web browser where to go then are subsequently required to parse the abundance of information retrieved. We segment and isolate content across software applications - from calendars and photo-sharing services to social networks and music subscriptions."