Viewpoint

June 22, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

I think Gary Severson of Walmart said it best. Sitting down with Consumer Electronics Association’s Gary Shapiro at the organization’s annual CEO Summit last week in Dana Point, Calif., like a showbiz type from a prior generation, he quipped, “How do I follow him?” Laughter followed.

The “him” in this case is David Pogue, New York Times technology columnist, blogger, prolific author of some of the more popular “For Dummies” books, former musical conductor and wanna-be Broadway composer (yeah, really) ... and genuine ham. I mean that in a showbiz way, which is a compliment.

June 15, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

Well, the DTV transition deadline came and went and things seemed to work out smoothly.

Click here for executive editor Greg Tarr’s roundup of how things ended up when broadcast TV went from analog to digital.

I’m not going to say, “I told you so,” or even gloat since I never wanted the deadline to be moved. Let’s just say the relative smoothness of the transition is a blessing.

In the past few days I kept on thinking that this digital decade started with the Y2K scare that didn’t amount to anything and ends with the smooth DTV conversion.

June 8, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Finally, no fooling around, this time we mean it — June 12 is it, the deadline for the digital TV transition.

That’s the message from President Obama, who moved the deadline from Feb. 17 to this week. The president issued a statement last Thursday that there won’t be any further delays and that everyone who hasn’t prepared for the transition will lose their over-the-air access to television.

But there are still complaints that many “vulnerable communities,” as the president described them — lower-income families, t...Read More

June 4, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Where were you on June 4, 1989?

I was in Tiananmen Square in Beijing during the pro-democracy protests that eventually resulted in the deaths of hundreds of protesters by Chinese troops.

Well, not really. But I felt like I was thanks to technologies developed by the consumer electronics industry.

I was in my hotel room in Chicago on the eve of the Summer Consumer Electronics Show and saw and heard the story unfold half a world away.

That’s h...Read More

June 1, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

In our May 18 print edition I used the term “Good Riddance” in the headline for my column, and it was accurate. I wrote about 2008. But that was last year.

This column is about 2009 and it’s a different story. Things have begun to turn around in CE.

How do I know? Well it’s rare that you get to talk to a good selection of distributors, PRO Group retailers and vendors attending PRO’s event in a short period of time, but this reporter had that opportunity in May.

What’s even rarer is that the industry’s three key constituencies all agree on something: Business, by no mea...Read More