The day before CES opens is designated Press Day, with press conferences scheduled every hour, including presentations by major consumer electronics manufacturers such as Pioneer, Toshiba, Philips, Samsung, Panasonic, and Sony. These are extremely well-attended, to the point that last year some of the press conferences were so full that members of the audio/video specialty press ended up being turned away. As Wes Phillips noted in a recent news story, for the 2008 Show CES announced that, to deal with this problem, it would be more stringent in determining who gets a Press badge. While they may indeed have done so, there were still huge crowds at all the press conferences I attended, although I think this time at least all my fellow audio/video writer colleagues managed to
get in. (That's
www.ultimateavmag.com's Tom Norton in the foreground.)
The press conferences usually have interesting information about new products, but they almost invariably go overboard on hype. The head of the cell-phone division of one of the majors stated that cell phones were tremendously important in the marketplace, because the mobile phone you own "defines who you
are."
Sure, gadgets like the iPhone may be fun, and a topic of conversation, but "defines who you are"? What if the cell phone you own is the cheapest phone you could buy, and that's all you need/want? Does that automatically mean that you're among the dregs of humanity? What if you don't own a cell phone at all?
(There are such people.) Does that mean that you're a nobody? Sheesh!
