CES 2008: Samsung has a new look

SAMSUNG HELD A press conference to a packed house at CES,and the most significant thing they showed off was a new color scheme. The restwas more of the same, nothing outstanding, nothing bad.
The theme of the conference was 3Cs, Connectivity, Content and Creativity.Samsung wants everything to hook up to everything else, they want the content toplay from all sources, and they want you to be able to do interesting thingswith it. They have not realized that until they ditch DRM entirely, it is boundto be as successful as VIIV. That said, Samsung had some neat things to show,but the overall themes were not totally met.

The most significant part was the new look of the TVs. Samsung is rightfullyproud of the old 'Piano Black' finish, and one look around the show floor showshow much it has been copied. The new look is quite different, and unlike theold, it kind of changes with the light. It is branded ToC or Touch of Color.
The color is a pleasing off-brown covered with a clear front,. It changeswith the light and has a glowy quality to it. You will be seeing a lot of thisin the near future, just like the last finish. I am not immediately turned offby it, and see some up sides, so it will probably grow on me in short order.
Next they used those TVs for their wireless connectivity demo, having acamcorder wirelessly put up pics on the TV, and you can control it from the TVremote. This is the connectivity part, and it extends to MP3 players and otherbits. The part that they don't get is that it is connectivity between certainSamsung parts, not a standard. Until they get the standard part down, the restis doomed, walled gardens don't work.
The TVs themselves are quite neat, the new ones are called the 7 series, andmany of them have what is called Infolink, basically an RSS feed that will pullin info from the net. The TVs have a side mounted Ethernet port for internetconnectivity, and USA Today is the initial content partner. This is simplybecause with a TV resolution, from 10 feet away, you can't get much on thescreen, so a partner that used very small words was needed, and Fox said no.
The next push is to bundle TVs with home theater systems, something thattends to be done in stores already, so Samsung is putting out a pre-done bundlesto capture that market. The first of these is the HT-X715, a 5.1 speaker setthat has Bluetooth, a 5.8GHz wireless sub and knows how to handle HDMI. It isalso in the same ToC finish and colors as the new TVs.

There were a few other interesting things shown off as well, the NV24 camerawith a 10MP resolution and a 24mm wide angle zoom lens. It has HDMI outs andworks with the new TV remotes, so it is inching toward connectivity, but thecreativity part is still up to you.
The HMX20 is another neat one, 1080p video with a n 8MP still camera. Itwould be the one to use for your main camera, but it is a little large forpocket carrying. It also does HDMI and is compatible with the rest of theSamsung family.
Last they had several new MP3 players, some with touch screens, others lowerend. The point to note is that all have Bluetooth connectivity and are beingpulled in to the Samsung walled garden of connectivity. This is branded 'MPFreedom', and if that isn't ironic, I don't know what is.
In the end, there wasn't anything earth shattering. New products, better,smaller, faster, bigger and the like. The standout part was the new look, and itwill be everywhere soon enough. More importantly, it will be copied by everyonesoon after that, at which point you know they did it right.