CES is the Consumer Electronics Show. It took place last week in Las Vegas. This is where all manufacturers introduce the latest in electronics and technology. This is where stores like Best Buy take a look at all those gadgets and decide what to buy and then sell in the months to come.

Dr. Z followed the events of last week very closely–the web has all kinds of sites keeping track of what happened last week. The best site for this was the CNET website. (ces.cnet.com). Some of the videos on the website are captioned!

Several devices attracted our interest — LG had a TV that came with a webcam. Can you imagine doing a VP call with a large screen TV–how cool would that be, but that would mean giving up what you were watching on TV to do a video call. I am sure we can schedule these times to make video calls that does not happen at the same time as the Super Bowl. But we are seeing a slow trend towards video communication. There were a few other devices that had video communication capability–but these were in the prototype (test model) stage and could take a year or so before we can see them on the market. There were a lot of netbooks with built-in webcams that came with a faster Atom processor (chip) made by Intel. The old processor was a “N270” and the new ones coming out had a “N450” processor. This usually means a faster processor which means better video quality for video communication when using a product such as ZVRS’ Z4 (it should be coming out very soon.)

All this is good news–this is a signal that the major players are seeing the potential of video communication which spills over to better technology for us deaf and hard of hearing people to communicate.

Dr. Z cares about your communication access.