CES 2016 Intro

Covering the show is one of our Senior Editors, Jim Clements. First time to CES it is. Carlo Lo Raso is coming back for his 2nd round. Comfortable shoes you must bring. Cynthia Johnson St Denis, our Managing Editor will be posting as many photos and tweets possible when not running to the long, cold and windy taxi lines that attach the Convention Center and Venetian. Scheduled meeting calendar, forget you shall not.

Like last year, our primary coverage will be the highlights of new A/V products from the Venetian and the Las Vegas Convention Center complex. If you just want to follow the equipment photos, then follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Got Questions? Want to ask us something about the show? Tweet us at @hometheatergeek Make sure you don’t miss a thing and follow us on Google + and our homepage for all the CES fun!

CES 2016 coverage begins Tuesday January 5th!

Happy New Year!

As we are all recovering from our various celebrations in welcoming the arrival of 2016, the first week of January also announces the arrival of the juggernaut tech show that is CES. Senior Editor Jim Clements and myself will be arriving in Las Vegas by January 5th and, soon after, begin our coverage of all the new and exciting audio and video related developments that will heading our way.

Having just gotten my feet wet at this event last year, I think I am coming to Las Vegas, this time around, with a better grasp of the scope of the show and a better idea of what to look for. Last year, from a video standpoint, we saw the first inklings of somewhat affordable 4K displays, as well as the emergence of eye-catching OLED (LG) and S-UHD (Samsung) display technology put to practical application. We were also hearing the first discussions of High Dynamic Range (HDR) capable displays including Technicolor and Dolby Vision’s differing technologies and whether there was any movement to an overall standard being adopted for both content and display. Panasonic teased us with a working prototype of a 4K capable Blu-ray player and promised that the final specs on the format were just about ironed out.

This year I’ll be looking to see what progress has been made on these fronts and what news there is on any more 4K content to show off on these new devices. I’ll admit to being suitably wowed by LG’s implementation of OLED at last years show, with its beautiful inky blacks and rich color rendition being key to it’s stunning image quality. Walking into my local Best Buy over the holidays and seeing the big LG OLED 4K display again just re-affirmed my impressions and I caught myself trying to figure out ways to justify to my wife why we needed to replace our perfectly good Pioneer KURO at home! As tempting as it was though, there is still so much change happening in this segment of the market that, personally I need more information and a few more questions answered before opening up my wallet for sure. Are some of these new features and technologies worth waiting for or are they just the next gimmick? I’m guessing that a number of our readers may have some of the same concerns.

From an audio perspective, Dolby ATMOS and AURO-3D were the talk of CES last year. Where are we now with these technologies, and subsequent products, a year later? The DTS-X presentation last year was underwhelming. Where are they now and will they have a more convincing demo? Over this past year at Secrets we’ve seen some exciting announcements and had some hands on reviews of product that incorporated these surround formats, but what actual penetration have these formats made into the consciousness of HT enthusiasts? While someone planning a new HT install might have an easier time of it, these new formats require some serious re-jiggering of a person’s existing home theater speaker layout. In that regard, I’m curious to see, and hear, any surround setups to get a better sense of what is being done with speaker placements and to see if there are any new ideas or configurations to help us get the most out of these formats at home. I know each one of these formats has its own preferred speaker requirements but not all of us have the ideal room, so what is being done to help with that? Personally, I’ve had the wiring for ATMOS run and ready for months but I’ve been leery to make the jump to put speakers in my ceiling. Heck, I’ve actually simplified my home theater speaker layout from 7.2 to 5.2 because it actually sounds better in my room. So will this years CES give me the additional convincing I need to actually go through with the ATMOS upgrade? We’ll see…

Finally, I’m always interested to see the 2 channel rooms and the personal audio displays. There are some interesting speaker designs from Kii Audio and Bang & Olufsen that I’ll be keeping my eye out for. Last year, DACs and DSD decoding were the big standout themes in a number of these rooms. What will it be this year? The headphone market just seems to be growing almost exponentially so what will that bring to CES this time around? Stay tuned to the website and keep checking our blog postings in The Secrets Cave for regular updates. If nothing else, it’ll be fun to watch!