philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

CES 2012: State of the Gadget Nation

Despite Loss of Big Supporters, Show Remains Center of Connected World

HOOKED INTO TV

The connected-TV revolution will continue to gather insurgents, with announcements and demos expected from Google TV, Sony, Nintendo and others.

At CES, Roku will be pitching its idea to Internet-enable millions of TVs, including Best Buy’s Insignia line, with a version of its streaming-video set-top box that it has boiled down into a stick about the size of a USB flash drive. “We think there’s opportunity to expand our streaming platform to smart TVs,” Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood said.

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Roku now offers more than 400 channels, including Netflix, HBO Go, Disney, Fox News, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus and a sampler channel from Showtime Networks that launched last week.

But alongside the Internet-to-the-TV storyline, major manufacturers — coming off a dreary year of sales and plummeting retail prices — will also be focused on delivering HDTVs that are mainly bigger, thinner and brighter.

Hoping to dazzle show-goers, LG Electronics plans to show a 55-inch full-HD 1080p organic light-emitting diode TV at CES, billed as the world’s largest OLED display. Samsung Electronics also is expected to debut an OLEDbased set at the show.
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The caveat: They’re going to be ultra-pricey. The 55- inch OLED HDTVs will carry a list price of about $8,000 when they begin shipping in the third quarter of 2012, ...

VIDEO SLINGING

The ongoing migration of video content to a swarm of tablets and smartphones will again be a big CES theme.

Broadcom, for one, is integrating EchoStar Technologies’ Sling Media place-shifting software into high-performance set-top and gateway chips.

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“It’s clear that consumers expect a wide array of television viewing options on their favorite wireless devices, and EchoStar’s Sling Media technology solution is the gold standard for place-shifting,” Dan Marotta, executive vice president and general manager of Broadcom’s Broadband Communications Group, said.

Zenverge, a developer of advanced media chips, will showcase multistream transcoding and encoding products for the North American cable market, which provide the ability to simultaneously transcode up to four HD channels (or up to 16 standard-definition stream) for delivery to devices in the home. Investors include Motorola Mobility and Entropic Communications.

Another company looking to make multiscreen waves at CES is Shodogg. The Valhalla, N.Y.-based startup is pitching a solution to TV makers and content owners that lets smart phones send any Internet-hosted video content to connected-TV devices.

“We’re AirPlay for everybody else,” said Shodogg CEO Herb Mitschele, referring to a feature of the Apple TV set-top that streams content from iPads and iPhones to television sets.

But Shodogg’s approach simply facilitates the playback of Web video on connected TVs, so content owners have complete control over how it’s distributed. The company has approached several TV makers about embedding its playback client in their Internet-connected sets.

The technology was developed David Strober, an information- technology professor at Westchester Community College. His brother is Michael Strober, Turner Broadcasting System’s vice president of advertising sales in New York, who is listed as one of Shodogg’s founders. The company, founded in May 2011, has raised a $1.7 million seed round of funding from individual investors. (Disclosure: Bill McGorry, chairman of sister pubicationBroadcasting & Cable’s Hall of Fame, is on Shodogg’s advisory board.)

Elsewhere in the cross-platform arena, Civolution will demo a new real-time content triggering service that enables synchronized ad delivery to second-screen applications. The service uses Civolution’s broadcast monitoring infrastructure of more than 1,700 TV channels worldwide, of which more than 1,250 are in North America.

BUILDING A SMARTER HOME

CES also will feature advances in products and technologies aimed at letting consumers live the “connected lifestyle,” to access media more easily on a range of gadgets and control the electronic systems in their homes.

Motorola Mobility, for example, will roll out a device it touts as the brains of the connected home of the future.

The Connected Home Gateway, built on Motorola’s 4Home platform for home automation, security and energy management, plugs into any outlet in the home and automatically connects to the diff erent devices it discovers. That promises to let service providers sell new services that let customers remotely control and monitor their lights, thermostats, security systems and other “smart home” components.

“People want anywhere, anytime access to their digital lives,” Motorola Mobility president Dan Moloney said in a statement. “Our suite of award-winning products addresses the new ways that people are embracing their connected lifestyle in the home.”

The gateway is built on Marvell’s 800-MHz Armada processor (upgradeable up to 1.2 GHz) and supports a range of networking technologies, including Wi-Fi 802.11.n, Z-Wave, Bluetooth, Ethernet and a USB 2.0 host port. Th e two-pound device measures 4.5-by-1.5- by-4.5 inches.

The Connected Home Gateway includes Motorola’s Edge Service Assurance software for remote support, troubleshooting, proactive quality assurance and service activation.

The 4Home system has been deployed by Verizon Communications, which introduced its “smart home” services last fall. Motorola acquired 4Home, whose investors included Verizon, in December 2010.

Motorola Mobility is in the process of being acquired by Google for $12.5 billion, pending regulatory approvals. The deal is expected to close in early 2012.