Cedia '08- Day 1

By Caleb Denison

Our first day at Cedia has come and gone and it was great! After a very early 4 AM wake-up call, we got to the airport, endured the security gate and made it to Denver in record time.

One rental car and a few sammiches later, Ken, Mike and I arrived at the Denver convention center greeted by the big blue bear that stands guard, on it's hind quarters, poised to break through the glass and attack whatever is inside. Who's idea was this sculpture?

Inside the generously sized convention center is, well...just about everything a consumer electronics fan could ever want to geek out about. Amplifiers, receivers, turntables, speakers, custom integration devices, speakers, movie screens, projectors, speakers, giant LCD and Plasma displays and a few speakers.

One of the coolest devices I saw today was none of the above, really. It's the Squeezebox Duet and Squeezebox Boom that had me really impressed. The Squeezebox device, now owned by CE accessory giant Logitech, is a slick piece that wirelessly accesses ANY music that you could access with your computer. You name it: Pandora, Rhapsody, Music Giants, your entire stored music collection and every internet radio station out there- the Squeezebox can access it and play it for you. With the Boom, you're getting all of this functionality in a liitle boombox. With the Duet, the on-screen interface is replaced by a touch screen remote control. VERY slick. Talk about putting a wealth of music at your fingertips.

We also spent considerable time ogling Sharp's 108" LCD display which was not really perceivably larger than the equally impressive 106" Plasma discplay from Panasonic. I've read about them, but witnessing them in action is quite an experience. That there's a big TV!@!!!  Both of them made me reconsider my plans to use a projector in my new home theater space.

Macintosh is also on hand to provide some seriously impressive eye AND ear candy. Their latest addition to their speaker line is a very impressive point source design derived from their monstrous Line Array design seen here (as you can see, the tower somewhat dwarfs speaker engineer genius Ken Humphreys). While I did feel like the highs were a bit on the aggressive side, the overall tonal balance was amazing. Of course, I think the 2400 watts of power driving these beasts may have had something to do with the jaw dropping experience as well.

More to come. Lots more.  Also, before I go, let me please thank the free Wi-Fi service courtesy of a certain coffee mega-giant. Were it not for their internet hot spots, I wouldn't be able to blog from the general vicinity of the show at all. While there are at least 60 operating routers at this show, they are all secured and not available to the public. Bummer.