It is Tuesday, January 7. Telnexus employees Al Bourdet and Cohberg Ng are stepping on-board a sleek private jet destined to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, courtesy of Claremont Creek Ventures and our friend Nat Goldhaber.
Still a little giddy from the high speed, high altitude launch in to space, Cohberg and Al went to work looking at exhibits.
Whether you consider it a mecca for gearheads, haven for extravagance in the post-recession era or just another consumer exhibition, CES is an event that combines the grandeur and flair of Vegas with the next generation of technology in a not so subtle package.
While there were hundreds of interesting exhibitors that showcased at this premiere exhibition, the most interesting and memorable group were the guys from Airtame. They had a simple question: why does wireless display technology have to be so bad, expensive and difficult to use?
In what seems to me to be an AirPlay, Chromecast, and WIDI killer, Airtame is a software stack that facilitates wireless displays via the open source H.264 compression algorithm. The unique facet of this software company is that they recognize the inherent flaws in the concept. To sidestep the issue they have vendor specific fixes that allow for a smoother experience
On the Intel side of the equation, Airtame plans on using the hardware encoder that all i5 and i7s have onboard to offload the video processing and make the CPU work more efficiently. When questioned about the AMD side, Attila Sukosd, the CTO and co-founder of Airtame, promised a GP-GPU compute option leveraging OpenCL.
Coolest of all, the demo equipment was using Raspberry Pi as the hardware video target. The production model is going to be an HDMI dongle that you plug directly into a monitor.
We also spied Imprint, a Bay Area firm out of Bay Farm Island with its breakthrough zinc-based rechargeable battery technology, Zinc Poly, and the production of ultrathin, flexible, high energy density rechargeable batteries.
Al Bourdet spied a beautiful looking color screen SIP UT670 phone by Panasonic. After speaking to Jojo James Senior Solutions Engineer, we were informed that they intend to come out with several newer versions for integrated VoIP, data, and video phones for business application.
Stay tuned for posts on hanging out with the guys from DisplayLink plus their search for total sync through USB, our upcoming review of the Panasonic UT670 high-end VoIP phone, and the next generation of intelligent compact USB chargers from Anker.
— Al & Cohberg
