Shows and launches

The van is unpacked, the stand is built and we're running the final tests on our demonstration room here at ExCel as we gear up for the start of the What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision Show at 10am this morning.

So what do we have in store? Well, we've assembled some of the finest home cinema kit on the planet, including the brand-new Avielo by projectiondesign DLP, 1080p projector, Denon's superb DVD-2500BT Blu-ray transport, our reference Classé multichannel processor and power amps and a whole stack of B&W CT800 Series speakers.

The system produces breathtaking high-definition sound and vision, with 1080p Blu-ray pictures in all their glory and uncompressed multichannel sound that'll blast you out of your seat.

Demos will be run regularly throughout the day on the What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision stand, so make sure you don't miss one of the highlights of the show.

There'll be lots of new product launches to check out too, and we'll be reporting live from the show on whathifi.com throughout the weekend.

And don't forget, we'll be giving away many of our 2008 Products of the Year in our exclusive show competition. Prizes lined up so far include two Sky+ HD boxes, Roksan's Kandy K2 stereo amplifier (£750), KEF's KHT3005SE surrround speakers (£1000), NAD's Viso 5 home cinema system (£900), Klipsch's Image in-ear headphones (£200), a Tannoy Revolution 5.1 speaker package (£2300), Denon's D-M37 micro system (£300), Cyrus's CD6SE CD player (£800), two of Pure's Evoke Flow DAB/internet radios (£150) and Yamaha's YSP-40D soundbar (£800).

You can only enter the competiton at the show, so if you haven't already booked your tickets, call the ticket hotline now on 0870 040 0383 or check the show website for more details. See you there!

Anything for anyone seems to be the motto here at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair - whether you want to launch your own brand of TVs,  get into the iPod dock business or make it big in batteries, there's a supplier here ready to offer an off-the-peg or tailor-made solution.

If it plugs in or lights up, it's at the show.

For example, take a look at the well-known brands made by Grande,

 

while Starlite willdeliver you TVs and other equipment in all shapes or sizes, whether your taste is Cars

High School Musical

or even a Hannah Montana karaoke unit.

The same's true in speakers, whether you want a budget pair of standmounters, complete with piano gloss real wood finish, to add to your budget range

or something rather more iconic.

The miniature B&W Nautilus lookalike caught my eye, so here's another angle:

it comes in a choice of black and white from the appropriately named Forgings speaker company of Taipei, Taiwan.

Neater, but sharing a theme, are these little pod-shaped speakers from S&W International, designed for either shelf-mounted or wall/ceiling attachment, and sounding more than halfway decent with a bit of subwoofer assistance.

Then there's the product you never knew you wanted until you saw it: the guitar CD player, available in a huge range of finishes from Hong Kong company Ngai Luen.

And if guitars don't do it for you, the company can also do systems in the shape of Coke bottles, racing helmets, and footballs of both the American and British varieties.

In another hall is this neat all-white separates system from Bobolink.

The company name may not be familiar, but it makes products for Sansui among others, and also builds the Brennan JB7 jukebox, recently reviewed on this site.

Mobile phones are everywhere at the show, with a strong emphasis on TV on the move. This is the stand of the marvellously-named Egoman

which is promoting its mobile TV handsets.

Meanwhile Shenzen company Pulid is taking a leaf out of the current Japanese mobile phone trend book with its A51 clamshell, complete with a display able to be rotated to give a 3in 16:9 TV screen.

Even more wild and wonderful is this Pulid music phone complete with an LED light show within its translucent case.

The company's sales manager told me this model is very popular with students, but they also do a more subtle version for businessmen. That one has the same flashing lights, but behind smoked casework!

And for the magnate who has everything, how about this phone from KPI, complete with solid brass keys and a natural sandalwood case?

The manufacturer says it's as much about the scent of the wood as the feel of the thing - it's yours for a trade price of around S2000

Talking of phones, Thomson is showing another of its unusual designs here in Hong Kong.

-

Symbio is a combined cordless phone, internet phone and internet radio, complete with built-in stereo speakers, and compatibility with both landlines, via its DECT transmission, and internet radio via an ADSL or cable modem. Oh, and it also has a built -in alarm clock - of course!

On the TV accessories front there's this one-in-three-out HDMI splitter from accessory company Babo, which could solve a lot of problems,

as well as this wireless HDMI transmission system from Zinwell.

The system claims 1080p quality over a 10m range, but unfortunately the company says it could only manage to carry a 720p set from base in Taiwan, and is very reluctant to show any real movies through the system, claiming licence and copyright restrictions.

The brief trailer I did see looked a bit 'one frame after another', and I have a feeling that the 10m limit, plus a price likely to be in the region of £1000, might count against the system.

Also of interest is a 1080p memory card-reader, designed to put your digital stills on your HD TV.

Made by PIE United, it supports 12 formats of memory card, also has a USB input for hard drives and the like, and provides an HDMI pass-through so another component can be daisy-chained.

But this is a show with just about everything, from MP3-playing nightlight alarm clocks

 

to huge halls full of domestic appliances.

The air-conditioning stands come in handy in a very warm show, but the heat is increased by the cookery demonstrations, complete with imported chefs.

This one is doing his culinary thang for 'Dutch design' appliance company Princess...

As I said at the start of these reports, just about everything that plugs in is here at the show, from the hi-tech to the most basic appliances.

And combining hi-tech and basic needs brings me to the bottom of this story, and my very last show picture...

If you can connect it to an iPod, or stick an iPod in it, chances are there's a factory making it out here, and showing it at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair.

And that's quite apart from the endless new generation iPod nano and Shuffle lookalikes already on sale on street corners and on the stalls in the infamous Chungking Mansions - how many weeks have the fakers had since the big Apple announcement?

Meanwhile, back in the land of the legit, you can find these neat doughnut speakers, available either in an iPod version or as generic MP3 devices, at the show.

Or if your taste runs more to the conventional, how about this range of clock radios from Ozaki? There's a colour there for everyone, but then the company goes and spoils it all by throwing in a couple of fluffy variations.

Gennex is much more serious, with this tube-powered dock, using ECC83s for the preamp stage, which also has a line input, and EL84s to deliver a towering 3W per channel output.

It's a hefty old beast at 7.2kg, with that output transformer playing a major part in the all-up fighting weight, but the wood finish looks classy, and matching speakers are, of course, available.

Dorchase, based in Hong Kong, offers a range of 2.1-channel active speakers including these two.

The one with the vertical drum-shaped subwoofer sounded particularly promising.

Meanwhile a familiar name to WHFSV readers, Lars + Ivan, has new speakers, now using a metal alloy cone for the main driver as part of its Samba system.

MD Lawrence Cheung also showed me this neat new dock system, which for obvious reasons the company calls the iSofa. Compact, remote-controllable and available in black and white, the iSofa is designed tobe used with either the Bolero Mini or Samba speakers, and comes complete with a subwoofer output.

Not quite so tasteful are these piano-string speakers from Shenzen-based CJC, which is in partnership with Hyundai. Mind you, if you don't like them the company has dozens more designs to choose from, including these

They're also available in yellow. Or black. Or presumably any colour you like provided you're after a containerload...

I was also rather taken with this iPod mixer from Taiwan company Sergio, not least because the people on the stand were having a ball mixing and flanging and reverbing like good 'uns. It's called the iSpin+ - what else could they call it?

Finally, amidst all the silicon skin cases, screen protectors and the like, I spotted this power case for the 3G iPhone, from another Shenzen company, Anytone.

Complete with a built-in rechargeable battery, it's just the thing for the serious user, giving up to 250 hours of standby time, eight hours of talk, or 24 hours of audio playback.

Form an orderly queue at booth R3B32...

The Hong Kong Electronics Fair, which opened yesterday at the waterfront Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, is big.

Very big.

This is only one of the two Fairs held here each year - it's the Autumn Edition, with the Spring version due in April - and yet there are well over 3000 exhibitors here spread over many halls and even more conference rooms and event spaces.

And a select group finds itself in the Hall of Fame, a showcase for the leading companies at the event. The stand being shared by NXT and Revo (above), though by no means the largest in this area, is typical, with products on display at showfloor level, plus a more secluded area of meeting rooms and rather more confidential products hidden away.

In this case the real business is done up a small spiral staircase on the top deck, but other stands have similar areas behind closed doors.

On the upper deck of the NXT stand I met up with Vian Li, the designer of those metal-cased speakers I'd enjoyed during the demonstrations at the NXT offices the other day.

He was keen for me to have another listen, as he'd done some more tuning over the weekend, to bring the image height a little more above the speakers. And it's worked, though I was keen to know how he'd done it.

Simple, he said - he just loaded some new DSP software via the unit's infrared remote control port. Welcome to the world of 21st century speaker design...

This is a very much a trade show, which is why most of the brands exhibiting will mean nothing to most consumers. It's where everyone from distributors to mass-market retailers come to buy products which will eventually appear under their own label.

That's one reason why some of the products on display here look familiar: could be you've seen that DAB radio or iPod dock under a British brand name already...

It also explains why people get a bit jumpy about products being photographed. There's a blanket 'no cameras' ban at the show, although it seems widely ignored, despite the efforts of ever-present security guards.

It seems like every time I take a picture I am challenged, and have to show my press badge before I'm grudgingly allowed to continue. Other visitors resort to more covert tactics.

Quite a lot of what you'll see in these reports isn't about new products you'll be able to buy immediately - rather it'll give you some ideas how the companies behind the famous brands are thinking, and the kind of products those buyers from all over the world will be looking at and bargaining over during the next few days.

If, that is, they haven't already placed their orders - apparently a lot of the biggest buyers came out here a couple of weeks ago, just to get a jump on their rivals.

Dominating one entrance to the show is the large Skyworth stand.

Skyworth is one of the leading TV brands in this part of the world, and  judging from the sets on display here, has the wherewithal to take on the familiar names in export markets, too. Though it has to be said that in common with TV displays everywhere, the subject matter of choice is HD, slow-moving, and brightly-hued.

But then there are TVs everywhere at the show, and all from brands you've never heard of: the flatscreen is ubiquitous, although at least one brand, iTach Vision, reckons there's still a place for good ol' CRTs.

Talking of unfamiliar names, Panashiba, anyone?

 Or Treefrog in-car audio?

But there are also names with  echoes of the past. I spotted this turntable hidden away in a corner of the Lenco stand, bringing back memories of Goldring Lencos of the past,

but most of the products the company was showing were of the digital variety, including CD clock radios, the inevitable iPod docks and of course DVD portables such as this rather neat unit.

 

I'll be covering all things iPoddy and dockular in a later blog, so for the moment I'll round up with a very neat miniature three-channel speaker bar from Kinyo

which looks like just the thing to use under that computer monitor or portable TV. The volume control is neatly incorporated into the end-cap of the tube on the right.

Oh, and this from Maxcable - a system designed for long-run transmission of TV signals, converting HDMI into five coaxial cables.

As the banner says, it's good for runs of up to 100m, is fully HDCP compliant, and it carries picture resolutions of up to 1440p at 120Hz,  and digital audio up to HD resuolution.

And just in case you doubted it, the stand runs the signal through these massive coils of cable - talk about making life difficult for yourself - before it emerges into the monitor and sound system.

It looks impressive, but that cable's pretty chunky, and the stand-lady on the right seems to have her doubts.

 More from the show later - I'm off to do some more halls now...

Three things strike you about the International Audio Show, held each year in Tokyo: one is the venue, the second is that it's free, and the third is the fanaticism of the attendees.

It used to be called the Import Audio Show, but in recent times it's changed a little, not least because some Japanese manufacturers are also distributors for overseas brands.

 

It's held in just a small part of the amazing Tokyo International Forum, with its huge glass atrium, and just a five minute walk from the main Tokyo railway station. The show itself occupies a series of solidly-built meeting rooms along the galleries to the right. The rooms are a good size, and have heavy, quiet-closing doors to avoid any sound crossing over from one demonstration to the next.

And demonstrations are mainly what you get, this one featuring the Tannoy Canterbury speakers driven by some heavyweight electronics, and sounding really rather good.

The demonstrations are run either by the importer/distributor running the room, or by hi-fi reviewers hired in for the occasion to give their pearls of wisdom about the merits of particular brands

And the music? Let's just say if I hear Georgia On My Mind ever again it'll be too soon, and in one room I witnessed the painful spectacle of jazz singer Keiko Lee doing bodily harm to Paul McCartney's My Love through a pair of otherwise excellent JBL speakers..

It's mainly all high-end stuff, such as this array of Linn equipment. but there is the occasional surprise.

One of the most appealing sounds at the show was coming from the small, and very affordable, Classic 1 speakers from 'British sound, German engineering' company ALR Jordan. with designer Karl-Heinz Fink credited prominently on the leaflets in the room.

It's definitely a speaker design I think would do well in the UK.

And the visitors take the equipment at the show very seriously indeed. I saw one chap rocking the disc-loader on the Nagra player atop this stack from side to side really violently, presumably to check out that legendary Swiss build-quality.

Maybe that's why the Thorens distributor had the less expensive models in reach, and kept the more expensive ones out of harm's way - though he was bemoaning the fact he hadn't been able to get the massive Jubilee model for the show.

But in general this is a show with a dedicated, fanatical audience. They like to look closely...

very closely...

 

and even get up close and personal with the products.

And when finally find yourself face to face with a particularly fascinating piece of Linn casework, what better than to make sure you have a picture as a souvenir...?

 

 

My day at the show rounded up with a panel discussion on Blu-ray, and how it sits in the Japanese and world markets right now.

Well, I say a panel discussion - most of the time was taken up with a lengthy diatribe by reviewer Reiji Asakura about how Blu-ray changed his life.

Asakura describes himself with due modesty as 'Master of Picture Quality', spent most of his speech talking about how recordable Blu-ray simplified his task of testing broadcast TV programmes - not sure why, since one would assume that unless the reader had recorded the same programme they wouldn't have much chance to watch it after reading the review.

Anyway, Blu-ray recording makes all this 'Air check' reviewing much simpler than it used to be with VHS tape, apparently.

Blown away
We saw his viewing room, and the piles of discs everywhere, we saw images of his favourite discs - the import ones, of course. not the ones the people in the audience would buy - and we heard how famous people had been blown away by the picture quality he achieved on his 150in screen in his room.

We even saw the notes they had written to him, though of course the ones from consumer electronics company employees saying how Sensei Reiji's presentation had opened their eyes to what Blu-ray could truly do were, of course, anonymous.

Oh, and we got extensive insights into Sensei Reiji's views on a broadcast documentary about the composition of the Roberta Flack hit Killing Me Softly. In fact, we watched enraptured as a couple of paragraphs of this review were typed, character by character, on the huge screen above the panel, to these eyes proving only that the Master of Picture Quality types very slowly indeed.

All this followed brief presentations from some industry luminaries, and took up a good half of the hour allocated for the session.

No wonder the chap in the front row of the huge meeting room nodded off.

Why Blu-ray is greener
Anyway – and despite the contribution of anime director Shumei Morita, who told us that Blu-ray was great because it allowed us to see all the space in his new movie where a little boy goes to the moon, that it was greener because it was all digital and so animators didn’t waste so much paper making lots of drawings, and that with Blu-ray Disc you could ‘enjoy the realism of computer animation’ – there was some meat on the bones of the session.

Takayuki Tsukakoshi, CEO of Walt Disney Home Entertainment Japan, and the chairman of the newly formed Digital Entertainment Group Japan, spoke about the impact of the format on the market so far.  But I sincerely hope the simultaneous translator in my earpiece got it wrong when it was said that 170,000 discs were sold in Japan in January to August last year and. with the format war long behind us, that figure should have increased three-fold for the same period this year.

For a country with a population over twice that of the UK, and a reputation as early adopters of any new technology, a little over half a million discs sold doesn’t sound a lot to me. Maybe all those Japanese Blu-ray Disc buyers really are just using it ro record from the TV.

There are now 534 titles on sale in Japan, and the number is growing fast, we were told. The Digital Entertainment Group brings together hardware manufacturers and software companies to inform and educate consumers about the technology, but based on this session I’d say it had its work cut out.

China Blu
Panasonic’s Masayuki Ozuka spoke about the growth of the format, with particular reference to how the Blu-ray Disc Association was promoting it in China, where both hardware and software manufacturing is being ramped up. Over 60 companies from all the major Asian consumer electronics manufacturing countries either have or are planning Blu-ray Disc hardware, it was revealed.

Ozuka and his counterpart from Sony, Yokota Kazuki, waited patiently through the fulsome praise heaped on their companies by the moderator, while the reviewer from Japanese home cinema magazine HiVi looked a bit no-plussed as no-on seemed to speak to him.

And the anime director sort of agreed with the suggestion from the chair that anime fans would lead the Japanese market deeper into Blu-ray, which they love as it lets them see all the detail of the animation technique.

Finally it fell to Masami Takahashi, Marketing Executive Director of Walt Disney Home Entertainment Japan, to tell us his view on what would make Blu-ray fly here.

Content, going forward
He almost lost me when he started talking about content, rather than movies,  and used the term 'going forward' within his first couple of sentences, but he went on to say that what gets him all excited is the range of extra features available on BD-Live, which by the way on his slides stood for Blu-ray Disney Live.

We’re not just talking director’s commentaries and featurettes, but 3D versions of the films, the ability to download portable versions to your phone, and more. How about interactive movie quizzes? Movie Mail, so you can send email to other people watching the film?

Or even live Movie Chat, so you can hook-up with others as you watch the same scene at the same time?

Add in a points club system – they love points clubs in Japan – allowing discounts off merchandise, live events and so on, and you have the complete package.

All this is apparently coming with US releases very soon, and will hit Japan next year, as will 3D versions of classics such as Toy Story.

And what’s going to crack Blu-ray for Disney in Japan? Takahashi’s eyes twinkled behind his vaguely Gok Wan designer marketing glasses. “For now, movies such as Pirates of the Caribbean have been popular, but now we want more family use – so Sleeping Beauty or Snow White could be a turning point.”

You read it here first...

Just in case you thought I'd been at the Yebisu a bit too enthusiastically before wittering on about the au by KDDI 1Gbps internet access plan in the news section, here's the proof of it in action.

OK, so it's not delivering the full speed of which it's capable, but even in the admittedly less than perfect circumstances of a busy show-floor - the enemy of all things internet, not to mention wi-fi or cellular - the company is still measuring upload and download speeds most of us here in the UK can only dream about.

For now I'll just be carrying on with my 100Mbps hotel room connection, which just tested at a 62Mbps download speed.

The guy on the left is searching for visible means of support, but finding none - this is Toshiba's prototype Regza Wall TV, designed to be used free-standing, without either stand or wall-bracket.

With its over-square upright shape it's not going to suit every room, and that reflective surface could prove distracting, but it gives you an idea of how companies here at CEATEC are thinking of new ways of differentiating their products amidst a sea of flatscreens.

Alongside the familiar Japanese names, there are some unfamiliar ones, too, as more companies move into the TV business. The Chinese, for example, have some appealling-looking displays here - although the Korean giants, LG and Samsung, aren't exhibiting.

As a result, the major Japanese companies are going for the technology high ground to set their TVs apart, as well as coming up with innovative designs such as Toshiba's.

Meanwhile if you just can't get enough of your media, here's Toshiba's Cell TV, powered by the same image processor you'll find at the heart of the PlayStation3.

48 channels on a single screen enough for you?

I have in my hand what appears to be the most desirable object here at CEATEC, and this is it.

 

Allow me to explain, with apologies to those who splutter into their cornflakes that some content on this site has nothing to do with hi-fi or home cinema. The following has absolutely nothing to do with either of those subjects, but a lot to do with mass hysteria.

Drawn, as ever, to any stand appearing to pull a crowd, I found myself in a throng this afternoon at the stage on the side of the Murata booth. Something Big was obviously about to happen, judging from the second-by-second counrdown blasting from speakers and screen.

There must have been about 300 people there by the time the numbers were running down from ten, and then the Something Big happened. Or rather something small, in the form of Seisaku-kun.

 

Also known as Murata-boy, this is the company's 50cm-tall cycling robot - he balances, he responds to outside stimuli, he fortunately doesn't talk. He even has his own web-page, here, where we learn his life-goal is to ride his bike around the world, and his philiosophy is that when you fall off your bicycle, you just get right back on.

Which, given his slightly wobbly progress on the stage, is probably not a bad maxim.

Actually, it's all pretty impressive - using gyro stablisation,  Seisaku-kun rides his bike well, and the team behind him is clearly pretty pleased with itself.

So pleased, in fact, that the backroom crew decided getting a robot to ride a bike wasn't tricky enough. So they had a crack at unicycling, with its much greater potential for falling over in any direction. Or, to stick with the cute legend of the website, they realised Murata-boy was getting a bit lonely, so they came up with Murata-girl, or Seiko-chan, as a travelling companion.

A girlfriend? No, she's his cousin on his father's side, and all she wants to do is travel the world with him.

All together now - sweeet. Or to use the local vernacular, kawaiiiiiiii.

Here she is, making her first slightly unsteady progress aided by a Man in a White Coat, who helps her get her initial balance.

By now the crowd was enraptured, and still growing, as the show reached its climax with the two showing some elementary tricks, most of which involved going forwards. Then backwards. Then forwards again.

500 people, staring and photographing tiny robots right on the limit of digital zoom and image stablisation.

And then it all went horribly wrong.

The show ended, and voices in the crowd called out 'We have pens'. At which point a total heaving mob mentality took over, geriatric visitors, charcoal-suited salarymen, young women and camera-toting geeks pushing and fighting and crushing to grab one of the precious gifts. Caught in the throng, I felt the air being squeezed from me, and claustrophobia and panic beginning to set in.

If the women with the baskets of pens were paid stand-staff, they earned every yen of their salary, and must dread the 'We have pens' moment every half an hour. If, as my wife suggested, they're disgraced Murata employees faced with the stark choice of dismissal or handing out pens, I hope they had good body-armour on.

And this was what it was all about. In the land of kawai - or cute - a little charm, or rather two little charms, clearly go a long way.

Meanwhile, over on the Nissan stand, the biomimetic robots looked on with disdain.

Using technology derived from the way the eye of the bumblebee works, these two-foot high droids are designed to avoid collisions, and always retain a small amount of personal space around them. That's what they do - just that.

I so wanted to put one of them in the middle of the Murata mob, and shout 'We have pens'...

 

 

This is Panaonic's vision of the future, forming the centrepiece of its stand here at CEATEC in Japan. And it reckons this is how we'll be living in the next three to five years.

The whole home, owned by a bright, dressed in white young couple - let's call them Ma and Pa Nasonic - is connected wirelessly, from the floor to celing window, able to turn into an environmental display, to the plasma TV, which glides through the home as you move around.

The TV is at the heart of the home, as you might expect, showing the family photographs, playing Blu-ray Disc movies, and even keeping an eye on the security and energy consumption, while controlling the fuel cell in the back yard.

Ma Nasonic checks her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, which doubles as a gesture-controlled display. It can check out her health, suggest exercises  and even display the workout routines - all she needs to do is match her reflection to the image on the screen.

And after the exercise it can make calorie-counted recipe suggestions, checking what's in the fridge and setting the oven to the right temperature to cook the meal.

Our happy couple go to eat, noting that the TV has moved to the dining area, the sound is coming from flat-panel wireless speakers in the ceiling, and the lights have set themselves to create the mood.

They ignore the woman in the headset who seems to be addressing an imaginary audience - she came with the house and they don't seem to be able to get rid of her. Ma Nasonic sometimes finds herself thinking 'There were three of us in the marriage...'

Fast--forward a few more years and it's 2015.  The TV has expanded to take over an entire wall of the home, and is now called a Life Wall.

Its You-Know-Me-TV functionality allows it to recognise the viewer, and provide suitable content, from pictures to TV to communications to internet, and the Stay-With-Me-TV system lets the image follow the viewer as they move around the room, even increasing and decreasing the image size as the diatnce between you and the screen changes.

The whole family uses the Life Wall for everything from entertainment to online shopping, and from education to interacting with friends. When they call up, Ma Nasonic's friends appear full-size on the wall, just like they were in the room.

Pa Nasonic says this is one of the big benefits of the Life Wall - they no longer have to go out and visit friends. He says 'Think of how good that is for the environment now we don't have to drive or get the train'.

His wife isn't so sure. She misses lunch with the girls, but she's taking cello lessons - her teacher appears on the Life Wall and they play together.

She's learning the Elgar Cello Concerto. The dark, sombre mood appeals to her...

 

It's raining here in Makuhari, just outside Tokyo, where the annual CEATEC consumer electronics show opened this morning, and we're told there may be a typhoon on the way.

But despite the weather and the global economic situation, the exhibiting companies - which include all of the big consumer electronics names - are putting a brave face on the shape of the market, and contunuing to launch innovative technologies targeted at the needs of the current market.

Everywhere you look at the massive show, there are power meters on display next to flatscreen TVs, showing how the new models consume much less electricity than the old ones, and there's a lot of talk about sustainability and recycling.

But those TVs keep on getting slimmer, with Sony showing a massive display of TVs just under a centimetre thick, not to mention a new, much larger OLED screen, and Sharp vice president Masafumi Matsumoto (pictured left) opening his company's massive stand with the announcement of new Aquos TVs, thinner than ever and of course using less power.

And there's another side to the Sharp TV story: under the screen of the new models is an ultra-slim speaker bar, developed in collaboration with Pioneer.

Meanwhile across the aisle the equally large Pioneer booth is showing a display of further co-operation between the two companies, including mobile and home technology allowing pictures, music and other data to be shared between the home and mobile devices.

The two will be extending this into navigation, using Bluetooth connectivity in the car, Sharp's expertise in mobile phones, and other wireless technologies at home.

There'll be much more from the show later, including pictures of those new Sony TVs, 3D displays from Pioneer and - we're promised - 3D TV from several brands. Watch this space - we're off to do the Panasonic stand tour now...

The first full day of IFA 2008 is no place for the fainthearted. Manufacturers, journalists, carpenters and assorted enablers may have been hard at it in the Internationales Congress Centrum in Berlin since Wednesday, but today's the first day of public exhibition and, frankly, more than a few people are looking a bit frayed around the edges.

The heady combination of days of hard work and nights of equally hard drinking were certainly in evidence at Samsung's keynote speech this morning. The assembled audience was an exotic selection of hungover journalists, rabidly enthusiastic salarymen and photographers unperturbed by getting right in everyone else's way. A pungent mixture of body odour and aftershave hung heavy in the air.

The keynote speech was delivered by Dr Jongwoo Park, President of Samsung Electronics. Given the wildly dramatic music accompanying him on his way to the stage, I was expecting some kind of Jedi Knight - but Dr Park turns out to be an affable and eloquent Korean businessman.

Despite the distraction of snickering sycophants in the audience falling about at his mildly amusing asides, Dr Park delivered an engaging speech laced with only slightly too much corporate rhetoric. "Emotional" is not a word I'd readily use to describe an owner's connection with his TV, but Dr Park seems convinced that the bond between man and machine can be transcendental. "Unmatched pleasure for your senses" he promised - clearly a man who's never spent a weekend at Foam Rubber World.

The most focussed aspect of a pretty focussed speech was his ambition to unite product, network, content and user as cleanly and simply as possible - "the digital renaissance", he called it. Identifying "digital fatigue" (the bone-wearying effect of too much complicated technology in our homes) and the "digital divide" (aged consumers and emergent economies being left behind in technology's remorseless forward thrust) showed rigorous thinking too.

But why is it that electronics companies - because it's not only Samsung - think the pinnacle of an integrated home network is the availability of up-to-date share prices on your TV screen?

After 45 minutes of heavyweight trumpet-blowing, Dr Park left the stage. He was accompanied by a round of applause from the Samsung contingent that wouldn't have shamed a Wembley Arena audience. The journalists groaned and nursed their heads, and the photographers got in everybody's way.

It's kicking off big-time at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin this morning, with most of the major manufacturers holding their press conferences throughout the day.

Our four-strong news team has been up since the early hours dashing from one venue to the next, hotly pursuing the latest news from Philips, Sony, Sharp, Toshiba and Samsung, among others.

We've already brought you news of super-slim and LED Backlighting TVs from Philips, a new flagship Blu-ray player from Sony and some snazzy new Alumni speakers from Mordaunt-Short.

There'll be plenty more to come today and tomorow, so keep checking the site for regular news updates. Remember, it's our mission on whathifi.com to bring you all the latest hi-fi, home cinema and TV news first.

 

It's been a frustrating old day at CEDIA Expo at the Excel Centre in London's Docklands. There we were in the heart of a show highlighting some amazingly sophisticated technology, desperate to bring you news of all the latest gadgets and gizmos to enhance your home entertainment system, but initially we were defeated by – technology.

As I settled down in the press room at 10am, eager to post the first story on our lovely new website, I hit a snag – there was no wi-fi connection for my laptop. After much cursing and swearing, I asked the help of CEDIA's PR team, who kindly gave me a log-in and password.

Great, except the local wi-fi network was clearly struggling to cope with the demands placed upon it and was frustratingly slow. Our homepage took a staggering 15 minutes to load, enough time for me to drink several cups of coffee.

Refusing to be defeated, deputy editor Dom Dawes and I decamped to the main foyer where we managed to log on to a (slightly) faster wi-fi network in the local coffee shop. So while Dom went off whizzing around the show taking pictures and gathering stories, I battled on uploading them to our site.

One of the first stories we published was about the new Air remote application for using your iPhone or iPod Touch to control your entire home entertainment system. What a brilliant idea, I thought. If only the technology at technology shows worked as well as the products they're promoting.

A few minutes later a PR contact came up to say hello, cursing that he couldn't pick up his emails on his iPhone – because of the poor wi-fi connection on his stand.

All of which is a roundabout way of apologising if our online news service today was a little slower than we would ideally have liked. But worry not – I'm back home now, with the joy of a 20Mb optical cable broadband connection and my trusty Mac to hand.

So I'll be busy posting lots more news over the next 24 hours to give you a real flavour of what's going on at CEDIA, and Ms Editor-in-Chief Newsome and News Editor Joe Cox will be back at Excel on Thursday to mop up anything I've missed.