This year’s Consumer Electronics Show was one of the best I’ve ever attended. I’ve been here at Videomaker for 6 years and gone to 5 CES shows and 4 NABs, and I really think this was the most exciting show in years.
The energy was alive, much different than the gloom-n-doom of the last two years. Everyone was “wow’d” by the 3D stuff, but the real word was “connectivity”. Connecting your home office to your home entertainment center to your family and friends.
Everything from uploading videos to share privately (as opposed to sharing publicly via social network sites) to actually “broadcasting” to grandma on the east coast so she can watch little Timmy’s birthday party LIVE on the west coast… in HD on the Big Screen TV.
Everyone was all about the video this time, and we got some good contacts that are looking at us as the experts to teach their users how to make video better. Many manufacturer reps and product managers we spoke with said video production is going to be THE skill-set and hobby everyone wants to do during these next few years, and as tried-n-true video producers, our readers are already on their way to rising to the top.
We spoke with all of the camcorder companies, and their newest releases are looking to be the best cams to come out in years, we can’t wait to get our hands on them so we can take a closer look in our Videomaker Labs. I spoke with Canon about both their newest DSLR release and some wonderful cams in the Vixia line: all drive or card based, not a tape camera in the lot.
Samsung is also looking at tape-free camcorders, smaller, but more robust and they’re all about instant uploading to most any format you choose to use.
Early last year Cisco bought Pure Digital, which manufactured the Flip line of pocket cams, you’ll see for a few newer smaller HD cams from them coming soon.
Watch here for more blogs specifically on the new releases of these cameras from other companies like Sony, Panasonic, Sanyo and JVC coming here soon. As soon as the Editorial Staff analyses all the data we’ve collected at the show, we’ll be posting about who we saw and what we heard.
Matt York, Videomaker‘s founder and CEO was honored with a personal pre-announcement look at the new 3D camcorder form Panasonic, we hear it’ll be retailing for around $21-thousand.
Meanwhile, I spoke with representatives from mic companies, lights, hard drives and support gear, we’ll tell you more about those and we also enjoyed taking a look at a few other niche products like the OWLE (Optical Widget for Life Enhancement) Bubo device, which is a little handheld stabilizer with a wide-angle lens that you slip your iPhone into to make your footage a bit steadier. Julie is already putting the Bubo through the paces with her new iPhone.
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The show was packed – around 100,000 people – and we were on the go from the moment our plane landed in ‘Vegas, but I did a few minutes to have some fun trying on some cool goggles from Liquid Image that were made for underwater shooting. Very niche, but will be fun testing while playing “shark” with the kiddies in the pool this summer.[image:blog_post:13662]
Again, stay tuned for more CES wrap from all of at Videomaker us in the following weeks.
