The massive showroom floor at the International CES in Las Vegas serves as a proving ground for new technology each year. The potential for information overload is not only high during the four-day conference but practically guaranteed, as companies roll out a nonstop, high-tech blitz of their latest, greatest gear to a frenzied crowd of inquisitive gadget fans and jaded journalists.
It's not easy to stand out from the crowd during the annual corporate carpet bombing, but inevitably some things make their mark. Here's what caught our eye at this year's CES.
Most Promising New Technology: There's black and then there's absolute black. Pioneer's Project Kuro Concept TV with "Absolute Black," a prototype plasma that, like a black hole, doesn't allow any light to escape from the dark portions of the screen, delivered some of the most vibrant images we've ever seen. Need proof? Check out the halo effect around the tulip in the picture we snapped. It's the result of the camera's inability to reign in the brightness around all that exquisite blackness.
Best Cable-Busting Technology: It's the holy grail of home audio: A wireless audio protocol that sounds as good as a wired system. Frankly, cables are a pain in the ass – as anyone with a surround-sound system can attest to – and now Radiient Technology might have a halfway decent answer to the problem. The company's Roomcaster chipset allows each speaker to act as a repeater and uses an ultra-wideband (3.1-10 GHz) signal to avoid interference from Wi-Fi, microwaves, Bluetooth devices and so on, transmitting 192 KHz multi-channel audio with no dropouts.
Hugest TV: Who cares about practicality. At CES, it's about capturing the fickle attention of the press and standing out from the competition. Nothing said big and bad like a 150-inch plasma screen television from Panasonic. Dubbed the King Kong of HDTVs, this affront to modesty will be commercially available this year for no less than $150,000.
Most Abstrusely Historical Headline Written by a Wired Blogger in the Face of CES Fatigue: When you're faced with the sheer glut of gadgetry that CES presents, you do what you can. Sometimes that means busting out some obscure references. When coming up with a headline for a post on Sandio's new 3-D Game02 mouse, Wired's Rob Beschizza managed to work a Medieval II: Total War reference – thereby making a post about another new gaming mouse infinitely more awesome. The hed? "Sandio 3D Gaming Mouse Responsible For A historical Defeat of English at Battle of Jaffa."
Best Technology for Bank Heists: Need to make a quick getaway? AutoPage's C3 RS-1000 OLED car remote control can lock/unlock your car, start it remotely, check the location (using a Yahoo Maps mashup), speed, temperature, tire pressure or any other statistic provided by your car's network – all with a simple web interface on your iPhone or through a downloadable Java application that works on any phone with a four-directional control.
Upstaged Award No. 1: The six-minute spoof video shown during Bill Gates' keynote speech made him look far more human (and funny) than the keynote itself. Plus, it had better celebrity cameos. Good ones, too.
Upstaged Award No. 2: When Guitar Hero champion Kelly Law-Yone hit the stage during Gates' keynote, her shredding skills seemed pretty awesome. That is, until Slash came onstage and started shredding ... with a real guitar.
Woz-iest CEO: While reporters had to hump around Las Vegas on foot with gear in tow, Monster CEO Noel Lee cruised the floor on his Segway with orange racing flames, declaring that this was the most exciting CES ever. Yeah, we'll be the judge of that, Noel – after we finish draining our blisters.
Most Achingly Soulful Performance Supporting Overpriced Electronic Merchandise: Demonstrating that Monster will spare no expense to keep its retailers happy, the company famous for making ridiculously expensive gold-plated cables and connectors managed to wrangle Grammy winner Mary J. Blige to perform a soulful, 19-song set at the Paris Hotel. At the end of the performance, Blige was presented with a "monstrous" award – a gold-plated RCA plug – that she was unable to carry offstage.
Best Porn Delivery Mechanism Other Than the Internet: Yeah, you can get all the porn you want on the internet. But FyreTV is a compelling idea nonetheless. It's basically an ethernet-connected cable box for all your prurient needs. You pay $10 per month to get access to the entire FyreTV catalog, which currently includes about 20,000 titles from Wicked Entertainment and other studios, all streamed to your television in DVD quality.
