Remember at CES when all of the companies were like “We’ll convert your 2D to 3D?” Yeah, ummm, nah. What will happen is that studios will back-convert some of their old movies – or movies not shot in 3D – to 3D using a time-consuming, partially automated process. Like in love, the first cut is the deepest:
The first step is to separate the shot into somewhere between two and eight layers of depth. Take, for example, an image of a man standing in front of a brick wall, with a blue sky behind the wall. The graphic artist might separate the shot into three layers: the man, the wall, and the sky. Then, he would take each layer and draw contour lines around any object that appeared there. He’d start by marking depth lines on the man using a computer, turning the image into a sort of topographical map. He’d repeat the process for any objects in the other layers. (If there were a bird in the sky, he’d draw lines there, too.)
The Onion, always good for a quick larf, just posted a list of great new devices launched at CES including but not limited to:
Radioshack—Big Sack of Adapters: The right one is probably in there somewhere
Bose—Noise-Postponing Headphones: Using Bose’s patented SoundDelay technology, these headphones store ambient distractions for up to six hours before unleashing them all at once against the wearer’s eardrums.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have a conundrum. As many of you know, Mass Effect 2 comes out on January 26. It’s the first big game of the year. There’s only one problem: I’m having a heck of a hard time getting excited about it. What’s wrong with me, because clearly something is? → Read More
You may have caught our interview with Yamauchi-san as it streamed live (about 40 minutes in) on Saturday, but for your convenience I’ve pared it down and added in our non-live footage. At 24 minutes it’s quite a long interview (so no transcription ready yet, though I’ll add one eventually) but an interesting one. Among other things, we talked about his approach to development, some favorite games from earlier eras, and the effect of casual gaming on the industry. Yamauchi-san seemed to be the kind of guy who knows exactly what he’s doing at all times, and it shows, because his games are always among the most polished on the systems they appear on.
Enjoy the interview. Gran Turismo 5 hits the PS3 in Japan this March; no date is set yet for the US. → Read More
Remember that OLPC design that had two touchscreens joined at the hip, kind of like we saw with the Courier later? Yeah, it got canned, but the basic design seems to have lived on in this MSI concept. → Read More
CrunchGear had its own booth at a CES event this year and of course we streamed all the interviews live. East Coasters may have missed out due to the late schedule though. So here they are for a second time. Daniel Brusilovsky started out the panel with a demo of mSpot video streaming Android app.
But we go on to take a look Stitcher, Shapeways, a Geek Not Needed router, the L5 iPhone remote, v.Clone Iomega software, Blue Microphones, Mad Catz Cyborg R.A.T. mouse, LowJack computer software, an HP CTO, PocketCPR, Pogoplug and finish up two hours of interviewing with a look at the Gunman iPhone game.
Forgive all the shuffling. We did this via Livestream, after all. Click through for all the interviews and general CrunchGear hijinks. → Read More
We missed this one. But then again, the onle mention of the Chumby Sunfury tablet at CES ’10 was in the Marvell booth. We were too busy palling around with Stan Lee to notice anything else. Good thing the nerds from technabob has our back and managed to get a spec sheet. → Read More
In the dog eat dog world of the CE business, margins are low and money – especially in this economy – is tight. That’s why a number of smaller vendors, including some we talked to in Vegas, took rooms in local hotels or ran “peripheral” events in other venues. The Daily Tech reports that some of those vendors have been ousted by the hotels themselves after the CEA, the organization that runs CES, convinced management to force them out. → Read More
Another year, another CES. The show this year wasn’t that different then previous years with some new stuff, a lot of old crap, and nerds all over Vegas. Hopefully you followed us around the show floor via our massively-successful Livestream feed. If not, stay tuned. We’re going to cut a lot of the fluff and repost the good stuff like my interview with a panda and Doug walking into a wall. But if you still have the CES bug, let me suggest this Flickr set from the 1990 Winter CES. Yup, Winter. The show was held twice a year from 1978 to 1994 — Winter in Las Vegas and Summer in Chicago. Anyway, enjoy the set. We did. [via gamovr] → Read More
To cap off the CES coverage, we’d like to give a shout-out to our partners and also discuss our coverage. We do this for you guys, after all, so feel free to chime in with your opinion on both the show and us. The biggest electronics show in the world is a difficult thing to report as it is with only a handful of timid bloggers, ripped from their natural habitat as it were, and placed in an unfamiliar environment. But to put them in front of a live camera and ask them to provide meaningful commentary for hours on end is to invite calamity. Fortunately, thanks to our great Livestream team and partners like Alienware, who provided our rendering computers, I think we did passably well. Impressions and notes on the show and our coverage follow. → Read More
You remember a few months ago there was a video going around of this thing, and I called it out for being derivative of the Redneck Techie’s Game Gun? Well, that criticism still stands, but after testing this controller out, I have to say that whether it’s the only game gun on the market or not, this thing is awesome. → Read More
CES is over for CrunchGear (we’ll still be posting some stragglers today and tomorrow) but we’d like to reflect on the best gear we saw at the show. These few days flew by and even with the glut of 3D TVs and ereaders we were actually impressed by a few small, good things that caught our eye on the show floor. Here are the winners of CrunchGear’s Best of CES 2010 informal editor poll. → Read More
So if you’re living anywhere outside the US, you’re sitting on an electric bike right now. It seems we’re the only country in which electric-assist bikes like this haven’t caught on. Maybe it’s because of our obsession with gigantic, gas-guzzling SUVs we never use for their intended purpose. But I digress. The fact is that other countries have found electric bikes practical in pretty good volume for some time now, and we’re late to the game. But Sanyo thinks the time has come for us to zoom around in future-bikes. → Read More
At the Startup Debut event earlier on at CES, we got to check out this great, and practical, new guitar component called Evertune. It’s a bridge that keeps your guitar tuned at whatever you put it at, but not using freaky electronics. I thought it had to involve microservos and such, but no:
The EverTune bridge feeds your guitar strings into an adaptive spring-tensioner inside the guitar body. As each string or tuner posts loosens, the springs compensate, maintaining exactly the tension you set the first time you tuned the guitar, no matter how hard or how often you play.
Good for those of us who take an hour to tune our guitars because we don’t know what we’re doing at all. → Read More
Let’s have a round of applause for Sharp, which could be the only TV manufacturer here that isn’t freaking out over 3D. (Not that it, too, doesn’t have 3D TVs on its roster, but it doesn’t treat them as the be-all, end-all.) Instead, Sharp made the brave decision to try something different, which, you’ll recall, adds yellow to the usual threesome of red, green, and blue pixels. → Read More
CES always seems shorter than it really is. We’ve been here in Vegas since Tuesday, reporting live on almost everything of any importance, and we’re all goofy and tired. I usually hate CES. It’s a long slog through endless halls and repetitive meetings that go over what has already been gone over. But this year was different.
This year’s CES was strangely subdued yet refreshing. CE companies have stopped the genitalia-waving associated with speeds, sizes, and megapixels and have started producing products with considerably more finesse. The devices we saw were well-designed and featured a number of clever UI tricks that can turn an average iPod dock into a thoughtful device designed for a specific purpose and person. → Read More
Why do nightclub bouncers think they’re above the law? I attended a Divx party at some place called Moon at the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas for CES. (Divx actually has some neat stuff on the way, but that’s a matter for another day.) Like always, I had my camera, a Canon DSLR, hanging around my neck. This, having a camera, wasn’t an issue at the Divx party, which ended at 11:00pm, but it most certainly became an issue a few hours later. Photographers take note!
Following the Divx party, which was 100 percent okie dokie, another one started up. People were welcome to stay at Moon just that it was no longer a Divx event. I think the new party had something to do with the Adult Video Awards or whatever. With this new party, apparently, came new rules, rules that were not made clear to attendees who had stayed over from Divx. The rule that got me in hot water: no cameras allowed. → Read More
Men have often dreamed it, but it hasn’t become a reality until today: the sex robot. The technology was developed by Douglas Hines of True Companion, an electrical engineer and computer scientist who formerly worked in the artificial intelligence lab at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Roxxxy, the sexy bot, is a completely anatomically correct and customizable companion (from features to hair color) that exhibits different personalities and responds to touch. → Read More
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