While CES 2013 is going on for another couple of days, I figured I would use my time at the Las Vegas Airport to summarize my observations.

There are a few hot topics this year, including some close to my heart.

One such topic is high resolution, and pretty much all the majors were addressing this in one form or another.

Whether you are talking 4K (4096×2160) or UHD TV (3840×2160), the ’4K’ label was being applied liberally.

Big names including JVC, Sony and Panasonic were promoting 4K capture in consumer or pro-sumer camera systems.

Even the latest GoPro Hero 3 is capable of delivering 4K, albeit at a less than desirable frame rate.

Displays were everywhere too, including screens in the 84 – 85 inch range from Sony, Samsung, LG and Panasonic.

Sony and Panasonic were both showing early versions of OLED screens at 4K with a 56 inch diagonal, and Panasonic had prototypes of a 20.4″ 4K screen – in a massive high resolution Windows 8 tablet!

The big question though is perhaps the most pertinent to Blu-ray lovers – how is the content going to be delivered?

So far there has not been a lot of information available, though if you buy the Sony 84″ LCD you will get a ‘free’ 4K media server included with 7-8 4K movies on board.

In order to add new content, there will reportedly be a service available in the summer time frame, though it is not clear what it might be.

I have heard rumours of special Blu-ray data discs with the 4K content on them, or even content delivery in non-real time via a fast net connection.

Either way it will be the media server that plays back the content – no packaged media per se seems to be on the horizon.

Sony does however plan to launch a range of regular Blu-ray discs that are certified as ‘Mastered in 4K’.

While they will be 1080p discs, the high quality of the mastering chain means that this label would be akin to the THX certified DVDs or Superbit CDs.

Blu-ray players are evolving also, with many offering new features, mainly in the ‘smart’ or ‘connected’ category.

Panasonic and LG are talking about Miracast, where your tablet or smart phone could connect to the player via WiFi and playback videos and pictures to the big screen via the connection.

The likes of Samsung and Panasonic are also including the smart features of their latest TVs into their new Blu-ray players, so that users can enjoy the same streaming and content searching that the TVs offer, with the less expensive Blu-ray player upgrade.

A number of vendors also have 4K upscaling included in their top of the line Blu-ray players.

Another topic that is getting a lot of attention is the second screen, where it has been recognised that viewers are increasingly using a smart phone or tablet while watching TV and movies.

Sometimes it is related content and sometimes unrelated, though the content providers are increasingly looking for ways to enhance the second screen with a view to enriching the overall experience or monetize it.

Something else that I have noticed is that the scope of my blog has become too narrow, and while I will continue to talk about Blu-ray on this site, I will likely start a new site soon that discusses a wider range of interesting technology… so stay tuned!

Dolby is aiming to take back its market share of Blu-ray audio soundtracks by adding a new phase in the Blu-ray authoring process.

The company is adding the option of upsampling native 48kHz audio to 96kHz in a pre-filter process to the Dolby TrueHD encoding process.

The new technology is based on the Meridian apodising filter employed in their highest level of Compact Disc player.

The filter effectively identifies the pre-ringing created by brick wall audio filters and works to mask that effect.

The technology provides a clearer sound field and crisper transients compared to traditional upsampling technologies.

The best part is that this technology is being offered to content providers and will be fully compatible with the current Blu-ray players and home theater systems.

Dolby will have this technology installed at authoring houses including Technicolor and Deluxe Digital Studios, so little stands in the way for content providers to offer this technology.

This technology will be exclusive to Dolby TrueHD Blu-ray releases.

It will be interesting to see how rapidly this technology is employed – watch for the Advanced 96k Upsampling badge on future releases!

Brad Bird cares a lot about the sound design in his movies, including his most recent live action film Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

The movie saw theatrical release with a native 7.1 channel sound mix, and this excellent soundtrack has been carried over to the Blu-ray Disc release in lossless Dolby TrueHD 7.1.

Check out this video which features Brad discussing the audio and sound design for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

Of course we have a copy of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol to give away right now, courtesy of Dolby, so be in to win!

CES 2012 is finally over and I am back home after a week in Las Vegas.

Highlights for Blu-ray Disc included a couple of innovations at the Sony booth with respect to players.

The first is the new top of the line player designed to upconvert 1080p Blu-ray content to 4K2K for the new higher resolution displays and projectors.

Perhaps more interesting was the Blu-ray player with Google TV, that featured a new remote with a touch pad navigation input, a full keyboard on the back and even a microphone for spoken word control.

Other innovations were more related to the recordable platform, with CMC from Taiwan showing BD-R media with extended archival life as well as BD-R with lenticular 3D printing on the face.

TDK and Memorex brands sported the new BDXL format extension with 100 GB and 128 GB capacity, and secure BD-R that can safely store content with a password key.

Corel was also showing off the latest WinDVD playback software for PCs that handles Blu-ray 3D, 2D to 3D conversion (for DVD only) and playback from BDXL media.

In a wider sense, for me the key products were new displays, including 55″ OLED displays from Samsung and LG, and Crystal LED from Sony.

Sony took things a step further though with their $25,000 4K2K projector hitting an 18 foot diagonal screen.

JVC was also showing a 4K2K projector using e-Shift technology to upconvert a 1080p projector to 4K2K, along with a 1080p 3D mode with one of the strongest 3D presentations you are likely to see.

With native contrast ratio as high as 120,000:1, the JVC projectors are also winning big in terms of contrast.

Panasonic also had 4K2K this year, though in an incredibly small 20″ display, with an IPS LCD pixel array at 216 dpi.

Perhaps in an effort to top them all, Sharp presented their 85″ 8K4K UHDTV capable display, showing UHSDTV footage in native 8K from NHK.

I had a talk with Andy Parsons from the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) on Tuesday and was delighted to hear that they often use the sight to get quick stats when they need them.

That said, Andy had some interesting stats of his own to offer.

On the hardware side, there are now over 36 million US households that are BD enabled, which is an increase of nearly 40% over 2010.

On the software side, sales grew by over 1/3 in 2011, where Blu-ray accounted for 40% of disc sales of the Top 10 titles released in 2011, up from 27% in 2010.

Even with the down economy, consumer spending on Blu-ray Disc software surpassed $2B for the first time ever in 2011.

I asked when Blu-ray sales were expected to surpass DVD, given that it was predicted that this should happen in 2012.

Andy noted that the BDA sees Blu-ray as complementary to DVD rather than a competitor, and as such doesn’t expect Blu-ray to ever totally take over from DVD.

Certainly some content doesn’t need any of the benefits that Blu-ray Disc has to offer and a DVD only release still makes sense in these cases.

Another interesting note was that recordable Blu-ray, which seems to me to have become mature and inexpensive though is not pervasive as of yet, is finding new applications.

With software that allows the creation of photo slide shows on BD-R, blogger moms have been increasingly writing about the archival of photos to Blu-ray Disc.

Certainly many of us have lost pictures and other files due to hard drive crash, and with drag and drop software it has become easier for regular folks to create a disc that not only backs up the pictures but also offers an easy to play slide show for the home computer.

It sounds pretty interesting and I will be digging some more into this story later…

As for previous years, once again I am happy and proud to represent Blu-rayStats.com at the 2012 CES show in Las Vegas Nevada.

I am already in town for the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow, and am looking forward to seeing all of the new goodies.

While my focus is on Blu-ray products, I will also be checking out related media and display products.

I will be hitting the booths for all of the major companies and have a meeting scheduled with the Blu-ray Disc Association to discuss the latest news in Blu-ray.

Be sure and Like our page on Facebook to see a majority of the pictures and news, updated from my mobile.

If you do, you will also have a chance at winning Super 8 or The Art of Flight on Blu-ray, courtesy of Dolby!

Exhibit space at CES covers 1.7 million net square feet of space, and they say that a person walking the carpeted aisles of the CES show floor would walk almost
15 miles!

Here’s hoping some of that pays off, though the food here in Las Vegas means that CES could never be considered a weight loss program…

Well CES 2011 is finally over and I am almost back to normal.

There was certainly plenty to see there and the industry feels a little rejuvenated this year with 140,000 people attending the show.

Probably the biggest topic at the show was 3D, which showed up in many guises from capture to display.

Both Panasonic and Sony were showing off their professional rigs for 3D film production – Sony even had the car from The Green Hornet on display to demonstrate their system.

Both companies were also showing off their solutions for consumer 3D, with 3D camcorders on display and Sony showing 3D editing with their Vegas software package.

On the playback side, Sony was showing off a full resolution 3D capable VAIO laptop using active shutter technology.

Corel was also showing off their WinDVD software playing back Blu-ray 3D on an Acer laptop at the Showstoppers event.

Autostereopic displays, or ‘3D without glasses’, was also demonstrated in its infant form, with displays from relative unknowns like iPont through to the big boys like Toshiba and Sony.

Sony perhaps had the most convincing display, with a 4k2k display that probably had the best performance, but in all honesty I found that the experience tended to make me feel a little nauseous.

Sony was also demonstrating a portable Blu-ray 3D player prototype with no glasses needed to see the 3D effect on the little screen.

As for regular Blu-ray players, pretty much all of the future models are 3D capable players and companies like Samsung and LG are taking style to another level with the products on display.

Samsung was showing off their slick new Home Theater in a Box, and the wall mountable BD-D7500 Blu-ray3D player will look great with a nice new wall mounted flat screen display.

Blu-ray drives were not forgotten either, with Plextor demonstrating new 12x external drives with the new USB3 interface and Verbatim showing samples of the new 100 GB triple layer BDXL writable Blu-ray Discs.

This extra high capacity technology will not likely be compatible with older players, though we should be able to take advantage of the extra space for video once the players catch up.

LG was also showing an external Blu-ray drive that is compatible with this extension of the format, claiming writing capability for 100GB and 128GB discs.

This brings up an interesting point.

Blu-ray will probably be the last disc media, though with that said this media will likely be extended in capacity and speed, to handle higher bitrates, multiple streams as with for 3D and higher resolution like 4k2k images.

As we have seen with the roll out of picture in picture, BD Live networking and 3D capability, the Blu-ray format continues to evolve to dangle carrot after carrot to keep us hungry for a new player.

As such the format has a lot of life left in it yet, though as solid state memory gets cheaper, there will likely be a time where it just makes sense to abandon rotating media for good.

Watch for more CES related stories over the next few weeks.

At their booth at CES this year, DTS is showing off their new Neo:X technology, with up to 11.1 channels of audio.

The Neo:X algorithm can take anywhere from 2.0 to 7.1 channels of input and offers a 9.1 channel or 11.1 channel conversion.

The system also offers Cinema/Game/Music selectable modes for a range of listening experiences.

Essentially the system adds a new pair of extra wide front speakers and a pair of elevated height speakers also at the front (see illustration).

The Front-Height speakers can deliver discrete effects to the vertical dimension and also elevate ambient sounds to a third dimensional space for more depth and realism.

The Wide speakers expand the frontal sound stage image.

Audio intended for these additional speakers can be matrixed into the 7.1 mix, though the algorithm can also enhance regular surround mixes that have not been targeted to the system.

The Neo:X mixes are also compatible with regular surround sound implementations.

The Neo:X format can be supported using a standard Blu-ray Disc with a discrete 7.1 sound track, which is exactly how DTS has been delivering the demo at CES.

The CES demonstration is also presented with 3D visuals, and is a pretty compelling combination that is well worth a look if you get the chance!

Catching the demo will also earn you a DTS hat and a coveted DTS Blu-ray Sampler disc.

Today at CES I spent an hour at the Panasonic booth where Fox and Panasonic presented a Director’s panel, discussing the benefits of Blu-ray Disc in home theater.

Directors Michael Mann, Oliver Stone and Baz Luhrmann were on hand to answer questions.

Topics included the benefits of Blu-ray Disc and other questions about their films.

Being a Fox presentation, clips were shown of The Last of the Mohicans, Wall Street and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps as well as Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!.

Michael Mann seemed to be pretty fixated on bitrate, saying that Blu-ray offers the highest quality of content delivery while Stone and Luhrmann both commented on the ability to see age old films in pristine condition, often as good as a film print can offer.

Luhrmann also commented on the opportunity to restore films and colour correct in ways that were not possible when the films were released theatrically, though he warned of over processing films to the point where they are not recognizable, perhaps referring to Digital Noise Reduction used on titles like Predator (Ultimate Hunter Edition).

All in all it was an excellent presentation and enjoyable discussion!

I am down in Las Vegas at CES 2011, checking out all the new tech gadgets that we will be seeing in stores in 2011.

There is certainly a lot of buzz already around 3D products and there are still a number of new Blu-ray related products coming out.

One such product is the external Blu-ray writer, the VBD-MA1, pictured here from the Pepcom Digital Experience event last night.

This unit can write video Blu-ray Discs, DVDs or AVCHD discs using an array of inputs that include Memory Stick and old style analog video.

It can also be used as an external BD-ROM over USB.

While I will be posting from time to time, the best way to see new pix of things I see is to ‘Like’ our Facebook page.

Should be a fun show!