CES 2009: Digital Experience

Well we are back at CES again this year. We start off this years coverage the day before CES at Digital Experience. Digital Experiece is a slimmed down version of CES where vendors showing off just a few of the new products they are announcing at the show. It is a more relaxed atmosphere and really gives us, the press time to really talk to the companies. Let's see what they have in store for us in 2009!

Nvidia

Nvidia was not showing that much but they had 2 really cool products they were showing off. First was the GeForce 3DVision. It is a set of glasses that work with the new 120hz 3D monitors that we have seen being released lately. The glasses come with an IR emitter and are charged via USB. The set will be available this week for $179, the 120Hz LCD monitors required to use the glasses are going for around $399. Many games already support this technology, most noteably World of Warcraft and Left 4 dead.

Nvidia was also showing off their Ion platform, which is an Intel Atom processor matched with a GeForce 9400. This tiny platform will allow you to have a DX10 system capable of playing HD content. They had a demo box playing Dark Knight in HD. The demo box had 5.1 surround sound, 6 USB ports, optical, 2 eSATA, VGA, DVI, HDMI, and an ethernet port. It is a great little HD box that you could use to play all of your HD content.

Alienware

Alienware was showing off their new M17 notebook. This 17-inch gaming machine is Alienware's first notebook ever to offer an ATI CrossFireX graphics solution, while features the world's first mobile quad-core Intel processor. So you are getting dual ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870's, an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300, up to 4GB of DDR3, and up to 2 500GB hard drives. The 17-inch display will give you a nice gaming resolution of 1920 x 1200 and of course you get all of the sweet looks of an Alienware laptop.

With the release of the Core i7 processor Alienware has a new dekstop system called the Area-51 X58, which is of course based on the X58 chipset. With an ASUS motherboard, 2 ATI Radeon 4870 X2's, up to 12GB of memory, 2 solid state drives, and of course a Core i7 processor. It is one of the first desktop systems that I've seen using SSD drives. They are currently using 2 128GB drives in RAID 1. We actually got this system in a week ago so stay tuned for a review!

Samsung

Samsung showed off new products from several lines. Samsung hopes its new Lapfit monitor will find a place beside users' laptop computer as a secondary monitor. The Lapfit is noticeably missing a base which would lift it from the desk. Instead, a think bezel aims to raise the actual display to a height the same as the laptop's body. The aim is to allow laptop users to have a second monitor which is on the same level as a laptop monitor in order to prevent neck-wearing head turning. The Lapfit will also be able to be connected via Samsung Ubisync, Samsung's USB video system. The resolution of the monitor is 1366x768.

Samsung also introduced a new slimline, LED backlight screen in 20" to 23" sizes at a variety of native resolutions. Each have a 2 ms response time. The largest is available for $399, making it an incredible deal for such technology.

In the digital media categories, Samsung introduced a new 1080p HD camera with an 64 GB internal SSD capable of storing 12 hours of footage. It is also capable of 4.7 megapixel still image capture. The camera can output to HDMI in addition to component and composite connectors. Its memory is expandable by SD and SDHC cards.

Samsung showed several new cameras, as well, including the HZ10W (10.2 MP, 720p video), TL100 (12.2 MP, SVGA video), SL420 (10.2 MP, SVGA video), and SL102 (10.2 MP, VGA video).

The Samsung mini projector might be one of the downright coolest things I saw at Digital Experience. It's a projector capable of a three to thirty foot throw in a device the size of a thick mobile phone. No price is available yet for it, though.