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CES and the Blue Room

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Roland Allen | 09:52 UK time, Monday, 25 January 2010

It's been a while since I blogged about the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Blue Room, amongst other things we've been busy at our annual visit to (the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas from which we and , more of which below...

A bit of background for those who haven't heard about the Blue Room - basically it's a room in the Broadcast Centre here in London and it's blue. But it is also a concept, a "media lab" facility lovingly developed and managed by my colleagues Trevor Robinson and Richard Robbins. It also regularly gets packed into a van and taken around the country to other ´óÏó´«Ã½ sites so to share the benefit amongst as many people as possible.

Our mission relates directly to the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s 6th Public Purpose: "´óÏó´«Ã½ viewers, listeners and users can expect the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to help everyone in the UK to get the best out of emerging media technologies now and in the future". The Blue Room exists to assist our colleagues in delivering this by ensuring they have an awareness of how the world of consumer technology is changing the way that we all consume media.

"But", I hear you ask: "surely ´óÏó´«Ã½ staff should all be wise to this sort of thing?"

To some extent yes. However like most organisations we comprise staff with a wide range of vocations such as Programme Makers, Designers, Lawyers as well as Technologists to name but a few and whilst I count myself lucky to work with some of the best and brightest it takes quite a degree of focus to keep fully across the rapid pace of development in the consumer technology arena, hence the role of the Blue Room.

So, back to

Now that the dust has settled on this year's event what should we be choosing to highlight in the Blue Room as a result?


Well 3D TV was one of the predominant themes and a lot of my colleagues are keen to understand more about it. Our plan then is to expand our displays of Anaglyph and Polarising systems to include Shuttered and Autostereoscopic systems, subject to these being available in the UK; inevitably there is always a time delay between what is on show at CES and when it appears on the UK market. We will also be looking at some of the boxes we saw that performed real-time conversion to 3D and perhaps Panasonic's "end-to-end" 3D with their integrated .

Multi-touch technology was another growth area at this year's CES - indeed I spotted several people pawing at various displays on the assumption that they were multi-touch capable, such is the expectation. We already have a Microsoft Surface (much in evidence at CES and not only on the Microsoft stand) but will be looking to augment this with other display devices, possibly from Asus or Samsung.

TV Remote Controllers have come alive this year with multi-touch devices with integral screens on offer from and (see picture above),and a Wii type pointer from LG. (I can just picture your kids saying: "Ooh! A tiny telly!" and wandering off with it to their bedrooms...)

iphone_helecopter.jpg

Above: A Parrot AR.Drone - iPhone-controlled helicopter with built-in cam that streams video output to said iPhone - from the

The eReader market seems to be really taking off, highlighted in some part by the number of rather cheap and unimpressive devices on show. The media industry in general is becoming quite excited by the prospect of sending content wirelessly to these devices and we hope to have some example from the higher end of the market on display, including the Barnes & Noble Nook and perhaps later in the year the

Other exhibits we hope to get our hands on include the , various projectors, the , , Panasonic and LG TVs with Skype and maybe even something new from Apple...

I hope to update you in due course as to our impressions of these devices in use and how we think they will affect what we do, in the meantime we continue to

Roland Allen is Head of Technology Liason, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Future Media & Technology

N.B. More videos from Vegas are available on the Blue Room's

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