Consumer Electronics Show reveals how latest gadgets will permeate our lives

Thursday, January 13th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

LAS VEGAS - If the emerging products at this year's Consumer Electronics Show are any indication, visions for a truly connected world are hardly far-fetched. But just how all the gadgetry will be fused into a functioning network for work and entertainment is anything but clear.

Options collided all over the Las Vegas Convention Center floor last week with a surround-sound crash. That means some daunting -- and sometimes confusing -- decisions soon.

Digital subscriber line, or DSL, technology promises to bring always-on Internet connections with an incredible array of customizable services -- if home and office telephone lines qualify for that high-speed service and if DSL can be delivered better than cable.

Multifunctional hand-held computers running Windows CE will offer dazzling alternatives to the popular PalmPilot and its operating system. AOLTV's partnership with DirecTV satellite services and Philips portends a compelling option to the Net-connected Microsoft WebTV set-top box.

And short-range, wireless connections using new technologies such as Bluetooth will lead to simpler ways for notebook computers, hand-helds and desktop machines to communicate quickly through walls and across distances that make infrared beaming seem silly.

In the automotive category, the rush to bring driving directions, Internet information, e-mail, MP3 music and other entertainment to the cockpit begs the question: Just how much can a driver handle before it gets dangerous?

As consumers struggle to find the right connections for their budgets and needs, huge corporations such as Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Intel and 3Com are scrambling to be in every facet. The technology industry, however, often can't agree on standards, much less on what to call the modern household. In speeches at the Consumer Electronics Show, Sun's Scott McNealy insisted that his operating system's "dot-com home" vision is far superior to Microsoft's, which chairman Bill Gates termed "the connected home."

Celebrities touting the products of 1,500 CES exhibitors ranged from wholesome Barbara Eden of I Dream of Jeannie to the heavy metal band Megadeth. The technological choices facing the typical household and business are no less disparate.

With the Internet still in its infancy and the digitally fueled economy in overdrive, the pace of the innovation displayed at CES 2000 will undoubtedly continue.

Said Mr. Gates: "The bottom line is straightforward. There will be a whole new generation of products, and we look forward to new partnerships. The next five years are going to be incredible."

High-speed Net access

At the heart of the fight for Internet home and business connectivity is the delivery of broadband -- high-speed, high-capacity, always-on service. For the first time at CES, an entire pavilion was devoted to DSL, with more than 40 companies showing off products and concepts.

Most of Dallas, and the country for that matter, couldn't get DSL last year. And some consumer surveys indicate that delays caused by the need to upgrade telephone equipment are forcing people toward Internet access through cable instead. DSL, which can transmit voice calls and data simultaneously over standard copper phone lines, is available only to subscribers within a short distance of telephone equipment stations.

DSL subscribers numbered about 760,000 nationally in 1999, while cable crossed the 1 million mark. According to the research firm TeleChoice, 38 million homes will be capable of receiving DSL service in 2000. The projection is for more than 12 million subscribers by 2003.

Intel, 3Com and other big players want to provide the modems needed to handle DSL and the equipment needed to hook it all up. Intel's vision includes Web pads that can be carried around the house or business, all connected wirelessly to DSL service. Kitchen Internet appliances at the show allow instant shopping through panels that also deliver e-mail, voice mail and display video sticky notes to help families communicate and track each member's daily schedule.

This sort of push-button connectivity is aimed at the 50 percent of American households that are not linked to the Internet, said Claude Leglise, general manager of the Intel home products group. But the technology must offer more than zippy weather, stock quotes and e-mail, he says.

"Some customers may just want an e-mail station. But once you get e-mail, once you get connected, you want more," Mr. Leglise said. "We must be able to offer the entire Internet.

"As soon as they discover you can buy books, send flowers or book trips to Disneyland like this, you can't tell them, {lsquo}Oh, there's this thing over there you cannot have.'"

Intel plans to introduce a range of simple appliances by midyear. They're expected to be available for home installation by companies that provide Internet service.

Meanwhile, a company called 2Wire stole CES' Best in Show award in the home systems equipment category for its HomePortal 1000 series residential "gateway," essentially an enhanced modem for DSL. This device dramatically illustrates the options awaiting home and small-business owners.

The HomePortal 1000 hooks into a telephone line equipped for DSL, then provides networking for entertainment and computing equipment using existing phone lines. It's flexible, allowing no-effort USB connections to printers, Ethernet hook-ups for existing networks and complete command of telephones.

Such a setup makes viewing streaming video or playing video games with others easier. And, at prices estimated at $200 or less, these devices seem to offer consumers great value.

2Wire's director of product marketing also showed off a browser interface that lets users instantly change the way telephones function within the home or small office. Dragging an icon from the home office area on a screen to the kitchen area would automatically switch calls there, where they would arrive with a different ringing pattern.

"That way, if you're in your office and you want to go into kitchen to have lunch, you take your office phone and drag it there," John Marshall said. "You can drag phones anywhere with this."

The company's newest generation of DSL software will also allow the instant addition of more telephone lines, which can be added to a room where guests are staying for the weekend, then removed when they leave.

In households with kids, calls to 900 numbers or any area code can be blocked and call patterns monitored from the home PC.

"If little Suzie is grounded for the weekend and she can't make any calls in your area code, you punch in that area code and all calls to that area code are blocked," Mr. Marshall said. "The possibilities here, we feel, are endless."

Battle of hand-held PCs

Microsoft was late to jump into the hand-held computing market, where personal digital assistants, or PDAs, from 3Com and new companies such as Handspring have become status symbols for the connected professional.

But with a series of enticing announcements from Microsoft at CES, the PDA landscape is on the brink of an intriguing era.

Microsoft -- teaming with vendors such as Casio, Siemens and Compaq -- previewed plans for its new Pocket PC software that will bring electronic books, digital music, photography, mobile phone connections and other options to PDAs that use Windows CE.

The Pocket PC software, distinct color displays and multiple options scheduled to hit the market during the first half of this year are designed to give owners of 3Com's Palm V and VII a bad case of buyer's remorse.

The Microsoft Windows Media Player for Palm-size PCs is to be available for download in February for Casio's Cassiopeia E-100 and E-105, Compaq's Aero 1500 and 2100 series, and Hewlett-Packard's Jornada 430SE. The Windows Media Player will support the Windows Media and the MP3 formats. Consumers selecting the Windows Media format will get two hours of CD-quality playback on a typical device with 64 megabytes of memory and one hour of playback using MP3.

Meanwhile, the Microsoft Reader software for hand-helds will arrive in April just before the opening of a Barnes & Noble Web site that will market electronic books for download. Pricing for such books has not been set, Microsoft representatives said.

In demonstrations at CES, the ClearType format for displaying books on small screens was crisp on a color Casio hand-held, a vast improvement over the fuzzy monochrome display in Palm V and similar devices. Whether many people take to reading on hand-helds remains to be seen, but the portability of e-books may appeal to students and mobile professionals.

Owners of PDAs with Pocket PC software can download audio programming and audio books through Audible.com, which said actor-comedian Robin Williams will provide unique, half-hour shows for the Internet.

Meanwhile, Rand McNally took a CES Workstyle award for its Global Positioning System add-on for the Palm III and Palm V.

StreetFinder GPS is the first cordless unit created specifically for Palm organizers. With this 6-ounce receiver attached to the back, a Palm becomes an instant trip-planner in the car, home or office. StreetFinder GPS can determine real-time position and trip progress, as well as help a driver follow any route to a destination on downloaded, vector-based maps.

The unit will have a suggested retail price of $179 for the Palm III model and $199 for the Palm V and will be available in April.

AOLTV vs. WebTV

Recent research from Jupiter Communications indicates that interactive TV will reach 30 million U.S. households and generate $10 billion in revenue by 2004. Determined to get a piece of it is America Online, the world's largest Internet service provider, which this week says it intends to buy Time Warner, the largest media and entertainment company.

Ten months after being announced, AOLTV made its bow at CES. The service, which employs the DirecTV interface and an AOLTV-branded set-top box, allows subscribers to browse the Web and retrieve e-mail while watching television. It uses infrared keyboards and a remote to issue commands, like dozens of other interactive television services on display.

To flag programs matching a customer's interests, though, AOL is adding its instant messaging technology as well as the ability to search automatically through DirecTV's program guide. The television picture can be minimized by clicking the menu bar, allowing Web viewing in a picture-in-picture format. An e-mail and instant messaging alert permits viewers to see when friends are online, conduct chats and participate in online polls from the comfort of the couch.

No pricing estimates were available from AOL at CES. AOLTV is expected to hit the market by April.

On the WebTV front, Thomson Multimedia and Philips Electronics said they will be the first to develop cable boxes that combine Internet access, enhanced TV and digital video recording. The boxes will be available later this year, but prices were not announced. WebTV may add instant messaging later.

Bluetooth vs. infrared

Bluetooth is the new kid among wireless technologies.

Technology innovators at CES are turning to Bluetooth's short-range, 2.4-gigahertz spread spectrum radio frequencies more and more, and some industry analysts predict that at least 250 million devices will be using it to talk to each other by 2002. Consumers will start seeing it in PDAs, laptops, MP3 players, camcorders and other appliances this year.

Bluetooth's wireless connections don't go far: They fan out only about 30 feet. But the strong, 1 megabit-per-second connections between devices make it far superior to infrared beams for some applications.

Devices with Bluetooth technology can sense each other when in range, then synchronize to exchange data. Unlike infrared, the signals can pass through walls and other physical barriers.

This enables Bluetooth mobile phones, for example, to interact with PDAs or computers. Demonstrations of the technology often include what has become known as "the briefcase trick." In it, a Bluetooth PDA wakes up a Bluetooth cellular phone hidden in a briefcase, then sends a message through the cell phone to a nearby notebook computer.

Acer, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Lucent, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, Siemens, Sony and Microsoft are all hopping on this bandwagon, with plans to tap Bluetooth's potential for Internet connections.

At CES, Acer NeWeb demonstrated a Bluetooth component called Blue-Connect for the Handspring PDA. Slipped into the Compact Flash slot of the hand-held computer, the tiny add-on allows instant chat between similarly equipped units. The PDAs can also connect to computers with Blue-Card PCMCIA cards and to networks with Blue-Share modules.

Some of the products may sell for less than $100 and will be available in the second quarter.

The technology is touted as a way for many owners of hand-held appliances to skirt the PC completely.

Casio is among those betting on Bluetooth's future. Users of Casio digital cameras can now automatically upload images directly through a PC to the Zing photo album Web site, the company said at CES.

In announcing the birth of "the Internet camera," Casio said its next push will bypass the PC using a phone with Bluetooth technology. With the push of a button, a camera modem will transmit digital pictures through the phone line or cellular connection directly to the Web.

Car computing, safety

Automobile after-market manufacturers, pulled by the same Internet lure as the rest of the consumer electronics industry, were busy demonstrating how computers can make drive time more productive.

Because drivers don't need additional distractions, most systems on display featured voice-activation and text-reading functions. The megasystem from Visteon Automotive Systems -- ICES (Information, Communication, Entertainment, Safety & Security) -- even automatically disables certain user-intensive computing functions while the car is in motion.

ICES' key features include steering-wheel-activated control, a 5.8-inch color display on the dashboard and several applications, including e-mail access, traffic reports and stock information from the Internet. Turn-by-turn navigation, two-way paging and links to roadside help are also built in.

Voice-recognition software for the Windows CE-powered ICES was glitchy during a demonstration, which Visteon, a unit of Ford, said may have been caused by pervasive noise from the showroom floor. Visteon is hoping that drivers appreciate having e-mail read to them by a pleasant, stereophonic voice as well as not having to stop at a gas station for directions.

ICES' easy-to-read color screen pulls down to allow access to a CD-ROM player. Screen navigation is accomplished with a swiveling, pointerlike control.

The system's aftermarket cost will be about $3,000 plus installation when it becomes available later this year.

In the same arena, Motorola presented its version, the iRadio, which will appearlater this year as automakers add it to accessory lists. Motorola envisions various levels of services, from GPS navigational data to entertainment with Internet-downloaded music. Users will customize data they want to see on a dashboard display using a Web page on their home PCs.

And Q-PC, a division of Applied Data Trends, decided to put its chips on a fully equipped Windows 98 PC that is installed in a car trunk. Called the Real Car Computer, Q-PC's design is based on the tactical command systems developed for Humvees in the Army.

Its flat-panel display can be mounted anywhere in the car. Highlights include a talking navigation system, the ability to tune in VHF-TV stations, e-mail access, Internet access via cellular link-up and the ability to receive faxes.

Q-PC officials said they are getting a lot of interest from Realtors who have latched onto its abilities to display PowerPoint presentations to clients and show them home specs as they move from property to property.

The Real Car Computer will cost from $4,000 to $6,000, depending on options.

By Doug Bedell / The Dallas Morning News