CES 2007: Geeks, Gadgets and IPv6
By Christopher Harz
VP of Strategic Planning, IPv6 Summit, Inc.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is the largest trade show in America, with over 150,000 visitors and 65 miles of aisles zigzagging around the equivalent of 35 football fields of floor space at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Sands Convention Center, and various other venues around Las Vegas, Nevada. It is the annual trek to Mecca for anyone interested in consumer electronics, including television sets, car and home stereo systems, cellphones, cameras (both still and video), MP3 players and accessories, and the like.

Besides being a concentrator of what are sometimes called "boy toys," the CES is also an important part of the story of the future of IPv6, of the consumer demands for products and services that will be dramatically better, cheaper or more secure when enabled with IPv6, and which will eventually lead to ubiquitous v6 availability – and profitable ledger numbers for hundreds of existing and startup companies that cater to that demand. Our IPv6 community has mostly discussed the "push" aspect of v6 – what infrastructure IT executives need to provide, and what the technical characteristics of that infrastructure should be – and paid relatively little attention to the "pull" for IPv6 – what popular applications and consumer trends are evolving that could transmogrify the developmental status of v6 from "nice to have" to "must have" – for a mass-consumer audience.

The IPv6 Panel

One of the highlights of the show was the IPv6 panel, with presentations from Mitch Aramaki, Director, Panasonic R&D Company of America; Alex Lightman, CEO of Innofone.com; Dr. Sandeep Singhal, Director of Windows Networking, Microsoft; Alexander Ramia, CTO of Mobile Technology Group; and Chris Harz, VP of IPv6 Summit, Inc. Mr. Lightman led off with an overview of IPv6 (no small feat, given the time available), with its CE (Consumer Electronics)-related features such as the provision of multicasting and Flow to support Internet television with reduced costs and improved quality. He also listed accelerators for the New Internet (increased broadband availability, Microsoft Vista, etc.), and both short- and long-term CE business opportunities.

Dr. Singhal followed with an overview of Vista and its support for (and preference for) IPv6. He noted how v6 can enable a very secure locally linked P2P "Trusted Zone" – a seamless network for cooperative groups such as First Responders or other teams that value the ease of connectivity, mobility and security afforded by this IPv6 feature. He also outlined a new product, Windows Meeting Space, available only via IPv6, which enables collaboration with shared desktop presentations, audio/video, file sharing and text messaging for fixed or mobile applications. The long list of CE applications for this included sensor-based monitoring, driving in your car while listening to songs from a home PC, IP-enabled RFID tags and sensors, and ad-hoc connectivity such as printing via a local wireless printer without any network setup. Government applications include disaster relief operations with instant connectivity through ad-hoc auto-configured IPv6 networks, and military communications in a battlespace where every soldier and item of equipment has unique IPv6 addresses.

Mr. Aramaki gave an overview of Panasonic's IPv6-enabled products, which included wireless webcams, SOHO (Small Office, Home Office) equipment, entertainment products and PowerLine products. PowerLine is an especially exciting consumer product, because it provides an answer to the obvious question – "OK, now you have dozens of v6-enabled appliances in the home, but how the heck do you hook them all up to broadband access?" A typical consumer has a hard enough time connecting up two or three computers and a game station with Cat 5 cable to his router – doing this for 20 or 30 CE appliances could be a nightmare. Panasonic's elegant (and already available) solution is to turn the home's electrical wiring system into a 200 Mbps data network. To connect any appliance, simply plug it into the nearest electrical outlet (which you have to do for electrical power, in any case).

Mr. Ramia spoke about the services of Mobile Technology Group (MTG), which is located in Las Vegas, and provides cellphone-based content and transaction services. For instance, it lets you buy a ticket (either one-use or season pass) to the Las Vegas monorail, downloads a 2D barcode to your cellphone, and then you simply show your cellphone to a barcode reader at the entrance. He noted that such an admission pass is "live" – the systems knows when and whether a user has used his admission – whereas almost all other admissions are "dead" – the issuing agency loses track of them after selling them, thus losing valuable security and customer traffic feedback. The MTG system not only allows a customer to buy tickets to a Las Vegas Casino show, but also tracks him as a hotel guest, to welcome him as he enters the area, to speed his check-in, to offer him an on-property interactive map as well as advanced concierge services for special events and offers in the area, including very customized alerts such as "Your Texas Hold ‘Em Seat Is Open" or "The Slot Machine Jackpot Is Now Over $1 million!" MTG's services are initially available via cellphone networks, and will soon blossom over v6-powered wireless networks.

Mr. Harz (yours truly) introduced the IPv6 City of the Future project as an initiative where native v6 support for a range of CE products and services will be demonstrated, enabled by a high-speed WiFi network that covers the entire city and its adjacent university. The city of Harrisonburg, in Northern Virginia (near Dulles International Airport) will within months become the first IPv6-enabled city in America, and thus lends itself to both develop and showcase v6 applications, and also (probably even more important) to show that such applications can be profitable for providers and appealing for consumers. Planned projects include multicast Internet television/video (both for home sets and cellphones), a new type of mobile videogame, IPv6 WLAN webcams, a university virtual classroom, m-Commerce for local attractions, geo-based information access, homeland defense team training exercises, as well as mobile IPv6 and other projects sponsored by the Department of Defense. One of the high-potential projects is that of streaming TV-quality video, using v6 features to dramatically reduce the price and boost the quality of such a service; both SDTV (Standard Definition Television) and HDTV will be demonstrated. The university adjacent to the city, James Madison University, is an important partner in this project, and its students are expected to come up with "killer apps" for v6 that are as of yet undreamt of. Mr. Harz emphasized that this project is for the benefit of the entire IPv6 community, and that groups with good ideas are welcome to join, as are other high-tech areas around the globe, as "Sister Cities of the Future."

In a statistically wildly improbable coincidence, two of the people in the audience happened to be from Harrisonburg; both were from the Rosetta Stone company, which does translation. One of the fun IPv6-related mental exercises to pursue is how it could apply to apparently unrelated subjects – it's possible to visualize, for instance, a not-too-distant future where cellphones enabled with v6 and WiFi/WiMax promote JIT (Just In Time) translation services. Picture the following conversation: "Gosh, Harry, I love this four-star Parisian restaurant. I just wish I could understand the menu!" "Not to worry, Sally. I've got my cellphone out. This will take just a minute." Note that cellphones with high-resolution cameras capable of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and document capture were already on display at the CES. Or even, "Gee, Monica, I wonder what these hieroglyphs on this pharaoh's statue mean?" "Well, Steve, give me just a minute, and I'll tell you…"

Trends and Developments at the CES

Attending the same show for many years lets you pick up on major changes and trends, and there were several this year, some of which may have auspices for the global IPv6 community. One was the growing domination of Asia – there were more products from Japan, South Korea and China, and fewer from Europe and the US. Another was convergence, which has been a theme for several years, but now seems to have gone to a whole new level. Hundreds of products and companies pitched their solutions for making television and other video available any time, any place – without defining exactly how such content can be paid for. And high-definition big screens dominated the show floors – not the 720p screens of yesteryear (perish the thought!) but super-definition 1080p screens. Bluetooth and other forms of wireless also seem to be maturing, with many new products for WANs, PANs (Personal Area networks) and MANs (Metropolitan Area Networks), including WiFi (802.11x) and WiMax/WiBro (802.16). Here are some snapshots of the major trends of the products available.

Convergence -- on Steroids

TWICE, the magazine of the CEA (the Consumer Electronics Association, the group that holds the CES) touted the event as the new "It" show for the entertainment biz, and they certainly had some justification. Once the domain of gadget geeks, the CES has become a must-attend event for executives from TV networks and film studios. At a time when millions watch or listen to content on video iPods, cellphones, or automobile a/v systems, it pays to be in sync with Generation Y. One of the keynote speakers, Leslie Moonves, the CEO of CBS, put it succinctly. "If you're not totally aware of what's happening in technology and the new kinds of delivery systems, you're going to go the way of the dinosaurs," he said. Disney's CEO, Bob Iger, was another keynoter, discussing the Mouse House's plans to expand its web portal, to offer more shows from its film and TV subsidiaries, and to form partnerships with platform providers such as Apple in order to couple content tightly with delivery options.

Content was not limited to TV shows and films. Game stations such as the PS3 and the Xbox 360 were visible everywhere throughout the CES, as was a proliferation of amateur and prosumer content production devices, including new generations of high-def video cameras (with easy to use editing tools) and compact still cameras (with easy connections to the Internet). And the borders between content and platform categories continue their total meltdown. The Sony PlayStation 3, for instance, is not only the newest game platform, driven by a state of the art chip with 9 (!) CPUs on it, but it is also expected to be one of the main ways that homes will play Blu-ray high definition DVDs (also known as BDs) on their HDTV big screens, since it includes a Blu-ray player; the Xbox 360 performs a similar function for DVDs in the competing high-def format, known as HD-DVD. Both platforms serve as intermediates between the Internet and home entertainment systems.

Game platforms were not the only "translators" between the Internet and home entertainment systems. The Slingbox, a star of last year's show, debuted its new Slingbox Mobile, which now not only makes home TV content available to travelers via their laptops, but also to PDAs and cellphones running Windows Mobile. New Media Life, a competitor, ups the ante by storing and playing not only standard TV, but also high-def. Sony also had such a product in its booth, and proudly displayed how good HDTV content looked on its high-def 70-inch television sets. And Apple added cool design to the mix with its AppleTV box to transfer content either via wire or without.

SanDisk, the huge manufacturer of flash memory chips, offered its simple solution to transferring content via its USBTV, a 2GB or 4GB flash drive that downloads content from a PC and then plugs into the USB port of newer-generation TV sets. This method of transfer, which involves walking between PC and TV sets, is called "drag, drop and walk" by SanDisk, and "sneakerware" by everyone else.

The unanswered question at the hundreds of booths that had products for Internet TV was, "How can anyone afford to unicast HDTV content over the Internet?" The "dirty secret" is that such streaming of long content (as opposed to YouTube-type low-resolution three-minute video clips) is not really affordable for many applications. A regular movie is expensive to send via the Internet, at around $1 per gigabyte for streaming directly to one user. At this rate, a Video on Demand (VOD) business model can still work – for instance, a webcaster might charge a viewer $5 to watch a movie that costs $2-3 to stream at normal TV resolution. But a 720p HDTV movie would be several times that size, and a 1080p movie is still larger, on the order of 15 GB – viewers would not support such a cost structure. Similarly, an "all you can eat" plan that would charge a viewer something like $20 per month would run into problems with a user that left his viewing display running many hours per day – it would not take many such hours for the streaming costs to exceed the $20 user fee.

The most common means of avoiding the costs of streaming video in the US is by using the BitTorrent model, which in effect creates a network where the content owner sends out a few streams to a number of users, and then uses the PCs of those viewers to retransmit the content to other viewers. The down side of this method is that it slows down an individual's computer considerably, since it is constantly sending video in background mode; in addition, such retransmission of content is expressly forbidden by the subscriber agreements of just about all of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs), which are getting increasingly capable of detecting (and reacting to) such video streams across their pipes (most ISP pricing models are based on the vast majority of transmission going downstream to the user, with relatively very little going upstream – any change to this usage pattern will play havoc with the ISPs' bandwidth).

TV on Cellphones

Many of the new generations of cellphones at the CES were capable of receiving video signals, though most screens still had lower resolution than units already in use in Japan or Korea. One of the stars of the show (which, ironically, was not even present) was the new Apple iPhone, which not only has high quality (150dpi) resolution, but is able to receive WiFi, making it possible to get video downloads from a direct wireless connection to the Internet rather than by the more expensive route of a carrier's network. The expected enthusiastic response to the iPhone will put yet more pressure on content providers to send high quality programming over the Internet – although the means for monetizing this are still unclear.

Several novel approaches have been taken to get around the problems of costly delivery of content to mobile platforms. For instance, a new service from Qualcomm, named MediaFLO, will send TV via terrestrial broadcast to cellphones that are equipped to receive this new service, which is being rolled out gradually in new markets. The upside of MediaFLO is that it can effectively reach the low per-user costs of multicasting. The downside is that it needs new transmission capabilities, and phones with a tuner and a special antenna to receive the signal (Samsung showed phones with this capability). South Korea and Japan have taken a similar approach for sending TV via broadcast to cellphones, but instead of terrestrial transmission these countries do it via their DBS satellite system. This allows for one signal to reach many millions of subscribers, and a low per-subscriber cost. The downside is that you need to orbit a costly satellite, and build phones with a special tuner and antenna for these signals (Samsung and others have been making such cellphones for this market for several years).

Television Sets and Monitors

There are too many models of TVs to name even a representative fraction of them, and the models seem to change every month or so, but here is the pattern that seemed to emerge from seeing hundreds of sets from dozens of vendors. The prize for size at the show went to the Sharp LCD TV, which measured 110 inches (it is not yet for sale). What is more surprising is that last year's size champion, the 103-inch Panasonic 1080p plasma, has actually been selling a respectable number, according to the booth engineers (cost is about $70,000). In short, the story on TV sets is that consumers want more high-resolution content, which may have consequences for the IPTV market in the near future. Here are some personal observations for the types of sets at the show.

For sets sized 40 inches or below, the consensus seems to be to get a flat LCD screen. Prices for these have come down substantially; Samsung and Sharp are very strong in this category. At this size, it may not matter whether resolution is 720p or 1080p.
For sets sized 40 to 50 inches, plasma is king. You should be able to get a great 50-inch plasma screen from Samsung or LG for around $1,500 (720p) to $3,000 (1080p). LCDs are starting to intrude into this area, but are still much more expensive.
For sets of 50 to 70 inches, consider a rear projection TV, either LCD or DLP. Plasmas are expensive in this range (a 71-inch 1080p Panasonic costs around $16,000, for instance), whereas a 61-inch DLP rear projection TV from Samsung will be around $3,500 for the 1080p resolution version, and $1,000 less for 720p. To put this into perspective, these prices are less than half of what equivalent sets cost last year. If you want to wall mount your TV, don't count rear projection sets out of the picture; there is a line of super-slim models from Samsung that are only 8 inches deep, and come with hardware that lets you bolt them to the wall (you can even tilt them downwards, a great feature).
The latest rear projection sets have long bulb lives (10,000 hours), and new models come with LED lights instead of bulbs, which results in longer life (60,000 hours) and the elimination of the "crawling" effect sometimes seen with DLP sets due to the use of a color wheel, which is eliminated with the 3-color LEDs (LED sets cost more, however).
For sets much above 70 inches, consider a front projection TV. Sony has the VPL-VW50 1080p projector, which is relatively inexpensive (for Sony) at under $5,000 street price, but may not be bright enough for a typical living room. The best buy in this category seems to be either the 1080p Panasonic PT-AE1000U, which has 1100 lumens and costs around $4,000, or the Panasonic PT-AX100U, a 720p HD set with a remarkably bright 2,000 lumens (probably bright enough for your living room) that costs about $2,000. In addition to the projector you will need a screen, which will run about $500-$1,000; an electrical version will withdraw up to the ceiling, so you won't have an ugly white screen to look at while the TV is off.

Cool Gadgets

Although the total number of cool gadgets at the show is impossible to list, here are some that seemed especially useful or novel, and that may have implications for Internet traffic and markets.

Panasonic LM-BE50DE Blu-ray Disc Rewritable
Panasonic offers several player/burners for your laptop or workstation that read and record using this new Blu-ray disc (also known as a BD), which accepts 25 GB on each of its two layers, for a total storage of 50 gigabytes. The technology for this is remarkable – it records using a blue laser (as opposed to the red lasers of conventional CDs and DVDs) to get higher data density. The BD manages to get two recordable layers into a portion of the disc (which is the same size as a DVD) that is only 0.1 mm thick. Less costly is the LM-BR50DE, which can also record 50 GB, but is not erasable. The great thing about this level of recording, ten times that of a DVD and almost 100 times that of a CD, is that you can use one or at most two of these disks to back up all of the data in your home office, instead of having to worry about stacks of backup discs.

The Apple iPhone
This is really 3 gadgets in one: a very cool mobile phone with a remarkably high resolution screen and camera, an iPod with new, well arranged touch controls, and an Internet interaction device for getting email (in a way that actually works for the small screen) and downloading maps and map data from Google to let you find your nearest Starbucks.

New Flash Memory Cards
There are now 3 types of flash memory sticks: full size (about the size of a postage stamp or a stick of gum), mini (about half that size) and micro (small enough to make it almost certain that you will lose them sooner or later).
Sony's mini MemoryStick ProDuo, for instance, stores 8 gigabytes in a format that weighs 2 grams, is .8 inches wide, and 1.22 inches long. SanDisk's new Memory Stick Micro (M2) stores 2 GB, and is intended for cellphones such as the Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot. One advantage of having the larger memory capacity (4 or 8 megabyte) flash cards is that compact cameras using them can now take long clips of video, whereas even a minute of video on a camera would fill up its removable memory a few years ago.

Casio EXILIM EX-V7 Digital Camera
This 7.2 megapixel camera claims the status of being the slimmest digital camera in the world – it almost looks like a fat silver credit card. It is so thin that even Britney ought to be able to slide it into a tight jeans pocket. Remarkably, the camera has a 7x optical zoom lens, compared to the 3X that is still the standard on most compact cameras.

SanDisk USBTV
This new gadget, essentially a flash drive, allows you to take video or other content from your PC from one of its USB ports, walk it over to your home TV, and insert it into your TV's USB drive (which newer TVs will have). A remote control lets you choose which video clip (or set of photos) you want to watch. A simple device like this that involves walking from one set to another is not as elegant as wireless-everything, but it's simple and secure.

Kodak EASYSHARE Digital Picture Frame
Kodak has a new line of 10-inch and 8-inch picture frames that let you show your photos as a slide show. The pictures can either be stored in the system or downloaded from WiFi. There are other great digital picture frames on the market, including a wonderful model from Parrot, called the PHOTO VIEWER, which holds 500 images and downloads via Bluetooth, but the Kodak frame appears to be simpler to operate, and will make the perfect birthday or holiday gift for your grandmother. It is interesting to note that at a US IPv6 Summit panel 2 years ago, a representative from Panasonic predicted a day when pictures would be taken by a camera and made instantly available in a digital frame in a relative's house. That prediction is now a reality.

Fujifilm FinePix F40fd Digital Camera
This is a remarkably feature-packed compact 8.3-megapixel camera, and probably a "best buy" at the price. The camera has the ability to track faces (you will find yourself compelled to demonstrate this), up to 8 of them (the "fd" in the camera's name stands for "face detection"). On the screen you will see a person's face highlighted in a grid, and the camera does an eerily accurate job of tracking the face, even if the person is moving. Color values for the shot are optimized for the tones of the face. You might think that getting track on a face would slow the camera down ("slow-to-shoot" is another problem with small cameras), but the opposite is true: the camera can do its facial detection and take the shot in an industry-leading 0.05 seconds. An ISO speed of 2000, more than four times the ISO of 400 that other cameras have, permits picture taking in relatively dim light without resorting to flash. The convenience of this camera will almost assure that you will blanket your friends and relatives with emails with JPEG attachments.

LG Dual Format High Definition DVD Player
If you have been confused by the two competing high-def formats, Blu-ray Disk (backed by a Sony-led consortium) and HD-DVD (backed by a Toshiba-led consortium), the solution may be just around the corner. LG has developed a player that can accept either format. This is significant, because the acrimony between the two formats has caused many consumers to delay buying a set in either format. At around $1,200, the LG set is very pricey, but that should come down by next year. MGM Studios has developed an alternative solution, where they put one format on each side of a disk; although they displayed this dual-sided disk at the show, they are not sure of whether they will release their whole library in this format. Then again, you could simply buy a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox 360, and use the built-in HD players essentially for free (these game stations can also be used to access and download content from the Internet).

Tele Atlas
This company's van stood next to the main entrance of the CES, with multiple video cameras and high-resolution laser scanners mounted on top of the vehicle. Tele Atlas supports the booming GIS (Geographic Information Systems) market, by driving down city streets in such a van and laser scanning the buildings and objects on either side of the street, gathering many millions of 3D points (called a "point cloud") that describe the form of the buildings, traffic lights, and other objects in the area. The video images are then mapped onto those forms, for a totally photorealistic 3D environment (aerial images of the tops of the buildings can be added as well). The resultant 3D virtual city and terrain databases can then be used for videogames, for mission rehearsal exercises for First Responders, for car and pedestrian navigation systems, and for GIS-related commerce, such as the ability for tourists to do a virtual tour of an area and check out where the best restaurants and hotels are. Israel has an ongoing project with Elbit to do 3D mapping of every major city in the country. With overlays of IPv6-enabled sensornets with GPS location capability, such city databases will spawn many new applications for both businesses and national security.

Summary

The theme that seemed to run throughout the CES, in many of the products and services being discussed, is that there is an ever increasing demand for video, in every conceivable form. Not content with "standard definition" video, consumers will soon want more of the high definition video that they see on their TV screens. Clearly, this booming demand for Internet TV and video – whether to home or mobile devices -- will lead to an ever worsening problem posed by the costs and quality constraints of sending multimedia over the existing Internet, which was never originally designed for this. It is to be hoped that New Internet features such as system-wide multicasting and Flow will offer practical solutions to this expanding dilemma. It is only by offering effective answers to consumer mass market trends that IPv6 can reach the levels of widespread adoption and rapidly rising revenues that have been forecast for it. Let's hope we see more v6 products such as those from Panasonic in the near future – and forums in which they are being extensively tested and demonstrated.