CES 2008

Though not nearly as big as CES, the PMA trade show is coming to Las Vegas in three weeks. Yes, less than a month after covering CES, our editors will bravely return to Sin City to report on some of the biggest names in digital photography. That didn't stop camera and camcorder makers from revealing plenty of new products last week, though; major companies from Samsung to Sony revealed their newest digital imaging products at the show.

Sony made one of the biggest camera announcements at the show, unveiling the Alpha A200 digital SLR. This new 10-megapixel model stands to face other intro-level SLRs like the Canon EOS Rebel XTi and the Nikon D40x. Casio also made a splash with the Exilim Pro EX-F1, an EVF camera the company claims can shoot 60 still images per second, or record video at a whopping 1,200 frames per second. I'll believe it when it's under our skeptical eyes in the lab. On the snapshot side of cameras, Kodak and Samsung both announced a handful of inexpensive point-and-shoots, and Kodak revealed the ESP-3 combination photo printer/document printer/scanner.

For camcorders, flash memory was the name of the game this year as Canon, Sony, and Panasonic all announced new, high-end SSD and card-based camcorders. Panasonic unveiled several new SD card camcorders, Canon combined large amounts of flash memory with SD/SDHC card slots, and Sony added an 8GB flash drive to a DVD camcorder, giving users plenty of options for recording and transferring footage. Besides flash memory, camcorder manufacturers revealed new cameras that used more conventional media, like miniDV, DVD, and hard drives. Though it didn't reveal any new high-def, flash memory models, JVC expanded its Everio line of hard drive camcorders with several slimmer, more colorful models as well.

Those are the big headlines from CES, but don't think that's all the new camera/camcorder news of the season. Keep an eye on Crave at the end of the month for our coverage of PMA 2008.

(Credit: Eye-Fi)

Wireless memory card company Eye-Fi just announced a partnership with Lexar to develop future products. According to an announcement on Tuesday at CES, Eye-Fi will combine its wireless technology with Lexar's flash memory and branding to produce a Lexar wireless SD card.

I spent some time with the original Eye-Fi Card back in November, and was pleased with what I saw. For a first effort at a new consumer device, the Eye-Fi Card worked as advertised and wirelessly uploaded photos to both local computers and online photo sharing sites with minimal fuss. Hopefully this will remain the case as wireless Lexar cards start to ship. The branding and interface might be slightly different, but since both products will use the same basic Eye-Fi technology, they should be similar and fairly direct to use. The original Eye-Fi card can't access public hot spots (hotspots must be registered on the card before it can connect), but perhaps future Lexar/Eye-Fi cards will see expanded Wi-Fi compatibility.

JVC's new GR-D870 mini-DV camcorder includes a dual record mode for simulataneous capture of standard-def video and 640x480-pixel still images.

(Credit: JVC)

With all the tapeless camcorder options coming out this year, we're not surprised that JVC has limited its Mini-DV selection to two models, with very little difference between the two. Both the GR-D870 and GR-D850 include 1/6-inch 680,000-pixel CCD sensors, 35X optical KonicaMinola zoom lenses, and 2.7-inch widescreen LCDs with auto backlight control to help keep your LCD visible when moving from moderate to bright lighting conditions. JVC says that the batteries included in the cameras give you two hours of operation and remaining power, expressed in minutes, can be seen at the press of a button even when the camcorders are turned off. That makes it even easier to check the battery the night before you go out to shoot an event.

For about twenty dollars more than the GR-D850, the GR-D870 also gives you still image recording, though its limited to a maximum size of 640x480 pixels (hardly enough for making a print), dual recording so you can capture one of those tiny stills to the camcorder's SD card slot while continuing to record video, and a new Live Slow mode. JVC says that this last mode lets you capture slow-motion, down to one quarter normal speed, which can be played back with real-time sound. They haven't said what happens to the difference in time between the slower video and regular-speed sound, but you can be sure that we'll let you know when we get a review sample. JVC says that the GR-D870 will sell for about $250, while the GR-D850 will cost about $230 when they hit stores later this month (Janunary 2008).

This is only a quick post because I just walked past the Aiptek booth and saw their tiny but feature-packed 1080p video camera that will be available in the U.S. later this year--at a very attractive price point. Its memory allows for approximately two hours of 1080p HD video using a 4GB memory card. This one promises to be a "must have" gadget for next year.

Phil Hester is senior vice president and chief technology officer (CTO) at AMD, responsible for setting the architectural and product strategies and plans for AMD's microprocessor business.

Comcast, the United States' largest cable operator, says the set-top box's days are numbered.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday, CEO Brian Roberts predicted in a keynote address that by the end of the year, "virtually the entire cable industry will support Tru2way," an "open cable" standard that would render the bulky boxes moot by directly integrating any U.S. cable provider's service with a variety of devices. Initial partners in the Tru2way endeavor include Motorola, TiVo, Intel, Samsung Electronics, Microsoft, LG Electronics, Cisco Systems, and Sun Microsystems.

Roberts also showed off a device, unveiled on Monday, that Comcast has co-branded with another partner, Matsushita Electric Industrial unit Panasonic. The AnyPlay, which has an 8.5-inch display screen, can record up to 60 hours of video, and it plays DVDs and CDs. It is slated to begin selling in the United States later this year.

Although Comcast CEO Brian Roberts indicated earlier to Reuters that Tru2way marks a step toward an "open, national, and interoperable structure between cable companies," the Consumer Electronics Association has argued that Tru2way would not be the truly open system that the Federal Communications Commission wants because it would not be compatible with the technologies of noncable video suppliers.

Ahem, DirecTV and Verizon Fios? The "era of closed cable" may be coming to an end, as Roberts said, but the wars between providers of television, broadband, and telephone services are far from over.

Indeed, the AnyPlay device is designed to play and record shows from any U.S. cable operator's system--but not those of satellite providers.

BigStage founder Jonathan Strietzel mugs in front of Steven Harwell's avatar.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

LAS VEGAS-- Intel CEO Paul Otellini's CES keynote was sparkling. In contrast to Bill Gates' pastel portrait of the future, Otellini presented a concrete vision of a personal, reactive Web, and the challenges to creating it (Silicon, Infrastructure, Context, and Interface). For a full rundown, see Dan Farber's writeup on ZDNet.

Intel loves where the Web is going. The more interactive and personal it gets, the more processing power is required and the more new chips Intel sells, for both servers and local workstations. The most interesting (and newest) product that Otellini brought to the stage in his keynote was an automatic avatar builder made by BigStage.

BigStage creates a model of anyone's head by using just three photos--head-on, rotated a little, and rotated a little more. The company processes these pictures on its own servers and ends up with a model that knows which pixels your eyes are (so it can move and blink them), where your mouth is, and so it. In the Intel keynote demo, BigStage found Jonathan Strietzel created an avatar of Smash Mouth singer Steven Harwell. It was eerily good--much better and less creepy than avatars I've seen previously.

The technology comes from a CIA-funded project at the University of California. It was originally intended for scanning surveillance cams, since at its core it measures the three-dimensional geometry of key points on a face, for example between eyes, or the shape of a person's cheekbone. The fact that the algorithm can extract a complete 3D model from only three images, and with what is now reasonably inexpensive computation (this is where Intel comes in) is what makes it commercially viable.

BigStage hosts the avatars and is looking at several ways to get them out onto the Web, to populate the virtual world with facsimiles of real people, instead of the cartoons that live there now. People will likely be able to create widgets of themselves that they can embed on blogs and social networks, and perhaps in existing virtual worlds like Second Life and gaming networks like Xbox Live. The company is also doing deals with brands and music labels. Strietzel told me that a big public product will be available that lets users put their mug in the "most popular music video of all time." (Thriller, right?)

I hope the company delivers on its demo. Look for public examples of BigStage technology in April or May.

See also: Gizmoz, Digimask.

The Lumix FX55 is a newer camera, but Panasonic hasn't yet detailed its upcoming WiFi-equipped model.

(Credit: Panasonic)

Panasonic announced a partnership Monday by which customers will be able to use forthcoming 802.11-equipped Lumix digital cameras to wirelessly upload photos to Google's Picasa photo-sharing site.

Panasonic announced the partnership at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Buying the camera comes with a 12-month subscription to use any of T-Mobile's 8,500 wireless hot spots for free, similar to an earlier deal that Nikon announced with the telecommunications company.

Panasonic didn't share further details about the Wi-Fi-enabled camera.

The RCA EZ205

(Credit: RCA)

RCA is updating the Small Wonder line with four new YouTube-ready digital camcorders. All of the cameras ship with easy-to-use software that allows users to edit, upload, and share their clips via Box.net or YouTube. Aimed at those consumers who want a tapeless, hassle-free way to capture video on the fly, RCA is offering four different models including one top-of-the-line camcorder that shoots in 720p. All Small Wonder camcorders allow for memory expansion--some via SD, others through a microSD slot. As you can see from the picture, the EZ205 has a flip-out screen, but the press material we were supplied with does not say how the rest of the camcorder screens are positioned.

The EZ300HD comes with 2GB of internal flash memory and can shoot 30 minutes worth of 720p footage or 6 hours in regular mode. Targeted toward those who are always on the run, the EZ210 Traveler will retail for $149.99 and comes with a 2.4-inch LCD screen and shock-proof battery contacts. Like the 300HD, this will also come packed with a 2GB internal flash drive.

For a more compact solution, RCA offers the $99.99 EZ205 pocket camcorder packed with a 1GB microSD card that will allow for up to 30 minutes of DVD-quality video. Finally, the skinnable EZ200 MyLife camcorder features a Web Photo button that allows for single-frame capturing and will retail for $89.99.

(Credit: Samsung)

Samsung's newly-announced i8 follows the i85 as the latest in the company's series of digital camera-slash-media players. As a digital camera it seems nondescript, with an 8-megapixel sensor, a 3x optical zoom lens, and a slightly larger-than-usual 2.7-inch LCD screen. It offers a unique SVGA movie mode at least, giving you the option of shooting 800 x 592 video clips at, Samsung claims, 30 frames per second. If you switch the i8 into PMP (Portable Media Player) mode, though, it really starts to stand out.

As a media player, the i8 can play movies, music, and even read text files. It lacks the simple, intuitive interface of dedicated media players like the iPod or the Zune, but it can still play the same files, offering at least the option of enjoying a movie or some music while on the bus without carrying around an additional gadget. To ensure compatibility, the camera ships with Samsung's Digimax Converter software, an application that can convert most MPEGs, AVI,s MOVs, WMVs, ASFs, MP3s, and even WAVs into formats palatable to the i8.

Like its media-playing predecessor, the i85, the i8 also includes Samsung's World Tour Guide feature. By downloading various guides from Samsung's Web site, you can load tourism information for a variety of countries and cities onto the camera.

The Samsung i8 ships in February for a suggested retail price of $300.

(Credit: Samsung)

The 8-megapixel Samsung L100 and L110 and the 10-megapixel Samsung L210 present the latest in Samsung's L-series of style-minded, compact snapshot cameras. Besides 3x optical zoom lenses and 2.5-inch LCDs, all three cameras share a handful of editing and playback features that set them apart from simpler, budget-priced point-and-shoots.

Besides the typical VGA video modes found on most snapshot cameras, all three new models feature an SVGA video mode that can capture 800x592 video at 30 frames per second according to Samsung. Onboard video editing tools let users trim and arrange their video clips on the camera, without using a computer. The camera's optical zoom works while shooting video, letting pocket filmmakers get closer without the detail drop usually found in the digital zoom modes many cameras use for movies.

The three cameras include several still photo options, including face detection and self portrait modes. A Multi-Slide Show feature lets you play back your photos with a variety of slide transitions and your own MP3 music soundtrack. Finally, the L110 and L210 include Samsung's Optical Image Stabilization system in addition to the digital stabilization feature all three models share. Optical image stabilization physically shifts the lens to help reduce camera shake, while digital stabilization usually just increases sensitivity and quickens the camera shutter.

The Samsung L100 and L110 ship in February with suggested prices of $200 and $230. The L210 ships in March, and will retail for about $270.