Was CES 2020 boring, should CES close?

Well, CES was on us again, and this year I didn't even bother to look until it was over.

There didn't seem much innovative or great this year in what I saw, it was disapionting. While stuck in the muds would have us believe in the past that 2020 must see full rec2020 colour space displays (please, that's like expecting me to be a good wagon builder because my name is Wayne. How silly) and 8k explosion or whatever else they said, but very little new much improved TV display tech was there, or even the Panasonic 8k consumer stills camera. The Sharp 8k wasn't released, again. Was there any native resolution 8k projected flooding the market at a reasonable price, or 8k optical disc format replacement for Bluray? No, the claimed hold off to 2020 of advanced specs into the consumer space largerly didn't happen. Some new 8k TV's again, but mostly old hat technology performance driving them. What really happened is that the industry has once again held off advanced spec improvements to expect us to spend up buting products with mediocre improvements, again. They have been doing thus a lot since the global economic crises over 13 years ago, trying to milk us like that scene from starwars (yes, you, oh, I didn't up big on the latest minor TV update, people). They cut back because people weren't buying which equalled reduced profit, just when they needed more innovation to motivate people to buy. Look at BM.
They made inroads in a recession by offering people products they were motivated to buy. This conspiracy continues. I argued that 3D TV, 4k, and Rec2020 were not enough. They really needed to add them altogether at once to motivate people to spend, then move to fullfilling HDR 12 bit and REC2020 performance, and going to 8k, 8k consumer cameras for the TV's, and 12 bit plus. They instead sell us "new" technology many years after they are ready, but when they can manufacture them cheaper. The market has stagnated a lot, spurred on by Chinese manufactures breaking step. Looking at ambarella sure, I did not see 8k printed on even the years old chipset that first supported it. What is going on. Now, 4k+ is fine for us, but for consumer cameras, downscaling 8k to 4k might help things, and wide angled action cams and drones can take full advantage of 16k+ and extract 8k windows out of it to show on normal TV's. So, they have a long way to go past 8k.

Maybe CES should close down? It is a bad time of year for it, just after new years in the consumer electronics manufactures holiday period, with snow storms hamper flights and the like. Manufactures have to instead, spend holiday time scrambling together product fur CES. Manufacturers might show products, but then not release them to just before the Christmas season. Very compromising to show an unfinished product in advance that might turn out unviable by release time. If they release then, their product might be outdated by the Christmas season, where many sales happen (like the one just before CES, which didn't benefit from what gets released weeks latter at CES). If they show advanced technology, it gives the competition heads up to try to match or beat it by the time it comes out for the Christmas season, enough to send a company bankrupt.

We should instead, have a Consumer Innovation Show that covers all innovation product areas, just before the Christmas season (end of summer/start of northern autumn maybe) open to the public, with Christmas preorders delivered and serviced through local outlets. With the industry Consumer Innovation Show alongside it, that performs like CES does, not open to the public. The consumers can attend product releases segregated venues, or by televised teleconference from a second venue, which allows industry people see their reaction in the first venue without them crowding in in the industry representatives. Just an idea.

So, what are done of the more interesting things that I have found:

Yes it's an 8k foldable drone (yet no 8k consumer cameras):


https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news ... xel-stills

Would I look silly if I folded this up and walked around using it as an 8k camera, it doesn't have any handheld stabiliser function? I suppose I could their it in the air to film interviews!

The next is the modular action camera I mentioned last month. The innovation in the software side of this is interesting. Performance wise it's not spectacular Pro wise, but nice picture and 1 inch module. Note, there were people around here that argued about how detrimental it would be for BM to make a module camera, but if even an action Cam can do it?

You should have a look at the sample video in the second link:



https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news ... ble-lenses
https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news ... ion-camera

$500 foldable phone (Not finished. To be released sometime):


https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news ... and-huawei

So, $500 versus much much more for the first Samsung. All it is, is a hinge and price of plastic display on a phone. A $30 flip phone has a hinge, would adding a piece of plastic display make that worth $1030? We should have had $500 folding mid range phones from the start.

An 8TB SanDisk SSD:

https://www.digitalcameraworl d.com/news/sandisk-breaks-the-record-for-the-worlds-highest-capacity-portable-ssd

8TB. A little innovation.

So, not much from CES this year. Not even the Foveon based Sigma L-Mount camera by the look of it.

Nothing really caught my eye this year, either.

But then again, I'm at the point where I don't think we'll ever get what I'm hoping to see.

Which is Jim?

The L.mount Foveon got cancelled and they have gone back to the drawing board on it. There was mention of revisiting sensor development. 2021 is the new target.

Which is Jim?

1. 3D 4K with HDR would be awesome!

2. 3D streaming would be awesome!

3. I'd love to see a new across-the-board CIH standard. (Constant Image Height)

New DCI specs, new cameras, new projectors (both Cinema and Home Theater), new TV's, a new physical media format, new broadcast specs, new streaming specs, etc.

2000 lines would be sufficient, I think.

And all measurements would be on the vertical. A 6' screen is 6' high. A 32" TV is 32" high. A 1/2" chip is 1/2" high. Width would depend on the aspect.

A real revolution that should have occurred with HD and DCI the first time.


None are very likely, though.

3D

Unfortunately, not even Red seems to be pursuing their multipoint Camera array technology at the moment. They are incremental for now. The introduction of the phone without 4+ cameras or real processing sensor and at that price wasn't that serious. How they could water balloon it again. It was a great 3D opportunity, now all those who neurotically blindly went along with it are wet. Years of their lives wasted. Cameras matter more than part baked ideas. It was evident that the product wasn't, as much as it fantastically could be marketably, from the start. Technology matters less than What you sell.

So, who is going make 3D great again? Maybe Light will have something useful. If only they spent those tens of millions on custom ASIC for desktop post production? A strategy of array chips that can be cut to various sizes off the sane die, would save them. Cutting a bigger array off of the mobile chip wafer would be cheap (I imagine the eyeballs of some Red engineers are bulging at the moment). But this requires special technique, as binding pads to pins normally requires large spaces, unless you use a flip chip with carrier or other scheme like drill through signalling, allowing contacts in the opposite side of the chip, which might be still expensive. But, it would allow a mobile ASIC PCI card to be fine cheaply. But I found that will happen, as they did a deal with Sony to provide the sensor modules, which means they would likely be integrating the ASIC design on Sony chips and sensors. Which would mean their immediate mobile strategy would be baked in. Currently 5D cinema has an artiical on a camera release not happening to free up manufacturing space for the PlayStation 5 release, further restricting manufacturing capacity for an indepent post processing chip capacity. This means an independent strategy of custom ASIC on a GPU/card for video editing is the next strategy, unless an mass market GPU can do it. That wouldn't be cheap. Giving the way things are. A pro light camera might require a $2000 card.