CES 2008: Puzzling Products

I've been at this longer than most product evaluators—and WAY longer than most bloggers—so when I see a new product, I look past the flashy demos and colorful brochures, and ask some fundamental questions: Does this product improve upon, or at least match, what has gone before? Does it fill a need—real or perceived—in its intended market? Does it have the potential to enhance one's quality of life? Is it good value for the money? Does it fulfill its claims? Is it environmentally friendly?

As we browse the tumult of hundreds of small companies' booths at CES, we have to quickly filter out those of interest, which I do by categorizing the featured products in about a second or two. If the process takes longer, it's often because my eye falls on something puzzling, usually because one of my fundamental questions pops out. Here are a few of the products and ideas I saw here at CES, that I struggle with trying to figure out "what were they thinking?" I don't mention brands, because in most cases, there is more than one manufacturer producing something similar. Go figure…

Mirrored TV screens. I first saw this in a superstore in London, where traditional home décor and electronics clash. Now it's in the U.S. Put your flat-screen TV behind a one-way (half-silvered) mirror, and it disappears when it's shut off. But when the TV is on, that mirror still reflects light-colored objects—walls, clothing, furniture—negating efforts by the TV maker to design a nice, high-contrast image with deep blacks. More, the silvered glass blocks much of the light, making the image dim. (Click on the image at right for a closer look at what I saw on while walking the CES exhibit floors.) You could watch in the dark, but if you're willing to do that, you might as well use a front-projection TV, which would also solve the problem of the screen being visible.

Wide-screen digital photo frames. Nearly all digital cameras take pictures with a "standard" aspect ratio, usually 4:3 or 3:2, nearly matching traditional film and photo shapes, as well as picture frames. So, why are so many of the new digital photo frames we're seeing have screens shaped more like HDTV's 16:9 aspect ratio? Set to use the whole screen, they chop off bit of the top and bottom of each photo. Set to show the whole photo, they have black bars on the sides. (If you have Flash software installed, you can view our recent online video review of new digital picture frames for good examples of this, as well as the "mirror effect" described above.) Vertical photos have even larger black bars and are smaller than they would be on a 4:3 screen of the same area.

Inch-diameter speaker cables made of exotic materials. If your speakers were hundreds of feet away from your sound system, heavy cables (click on image at right for a closer look) would make sense, as the resistance of thin wire causes power loss and can affect the sound. But, for home use, anything short of a 50-foot cable run needs only the thinner 14- to 16-gauge cable that sells for about 50 cents a foot at your local Radio Shack.

Proprietary protocols instead of standards. Standards for wireless connectivity—such as Wi-Fi and WiMax for mobile networking, HomePlug for power-line networks, and Insteon and Z-Wave for home controls—are developed for two main reasons. First, standards ensure that products from different manufacturers can be made to work with each other. Second, they help ensure that a standards-based device doesn't interfere with another standards-based device that may be operating nearby. Some manufacturers violate standards to gain a small edge in performance over competitors, but that edge usually only applies when working with other products from the same manufacturer, and often disappears in real world situations anyway.

10,000-watt subwoofer amplifiers for cars. Sorry, but I just had to include this one. Call me a curmudgeon, but a product that violates every one of my fundamental issues just begs mentioning.

—Dean Gallea, Senior Program Leader

—Paul Eng