TMO at CES - From 102 Inches to 2 Inches, CES Showing Off Lots of 'Eye Candy'

by , 2:45 PM EST, January 7th, 2005

LAS VEGAS, NV -- Looking for that huge flat panel television? An iPod is just way too big? There's no other place to find the big to small, the utterly ridiculous to the amazingly miniature, but at the International Consumer Electronics Show, taking place this week in the gambling mecca of the world.

Electronics makers use CES to show off their new innovations to more than 130,000 attendees who are the eyes and ears to manufacturers who impact what consumers end up buying.

Depending on the product, size matters at CES. With televisions, its large, thin flat-panel displays that are getting much of the attention. 36-inch size displays in both plasma and liquid crystal display (LCD) technology are the dominate attention getters. But its the world's largest LCD display -- The Samsung 102-inch Plasma Display Panel (PDP) TV that is getting the ooohhhhh's and aaaahhhh's. Currently standing as the worlds largest TV, Samsung upped the ante of their own 80-inch screen they announced back in January last year.

The gargantuan 102-inch screen is currently just for demonstration and the company is even quoting a price. In the comparison, the Samsung 80-inch model, which will ship in May, comes in at a bank breaking US$45,000.

Samsung also announced a high resolution 21-inch single-panel, Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) display this week, but it was not displayed at CES. The 16:9 panel offers Wide Ultra Extended Graphics Array resolution, providing 1920x1200 pixels. Samsung claim it's a world first at this resolution. OLED screens have several advantages over LCD displays. The refresh rate of an OLED is 0.01 milliseconds versus 10 milliseconds for an LCD display. In addition, OLED displays use less power and have a higher contrast ratio.

Want something a little smaller in a plasma display? Enter LG Electronics with is 71-inch 71PY10 plasma television. The 71-inch beauty has a true 1080p (full Hi-Def) resolution of 1920 x 1080. Don't go looking for this everywhere. LG plans on selling it through a selected numbers of dealers at $75,000. While not affordable by everyone, a LG spokesman told The Mac Observer it has already taken about 300 pre-orders for the display that will ship by June.

Proving that size isn't everything, MP3 players at CES keep getting smaller and more colorful.

Take for instance the Lexar 2 gigabyte (GB) USB Jumpdrive Lightning at less than three inches in length. While nothing more than a simple USB 2.0 flash drive, Lexar has gone one step further and made it beautiful with its sleek design and stylish stainless steel casing.

JumpDrive Lightning is capable of an impressive read/write speed rating of 120x (18MB/sec) minimum sustained write speed capability and 160x (24 MB/sec) minimum sustained read speed capability. The portable JumpDrive Lightning will also be available in 512MB and 1GB sizes and will be available in February at a suggested retail price of $279.99 for the 2GB.

Want even smaller? Look at the Oregon Scientific Pendant MP3 Player. At less than two inches long, it comes in 128 megabyte (MB), 256MB and 512MB sizes, starting at a little over $100, making it the world's smallest pendant MP3 player with LCD display. It also has a built-in rechargeable battery.