Shift to Tablets Akin to PC Transition, Nvidia Says At CES

LAS VEGAS - Tablet devices are poised to become “our most personal computers” in a transition that will be akin to the switch from mainframe to personal computers, said Mike Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia’s mobile business unit. During each such transition over computing’s history, the amount of people using the devices has increased by an order of magnitude or more, he told a CES panel discussion on disruptive technologies. “We're going to look back in a few years and find that a large part of the world’s population did their first computing on a smartphone or a tablet device.” New high-powered smartphones have the same specifications a top-of-the-line notebook PC had a few years ago, he said. “It’s beyond disruptive,” he said. “It’s one of those half-dozen events in the computing industry that we'll all look back and are excited to be a part of."

Internet-connected TVs also have the potential to disrupt traditional businesses and consumer behavior this year, said CEO Levy Gerzberg of Zoran Corp. “You will see new kinds of advertising technologies.” It could bring down the cost of advertising on TV, potentially bringing a host of new advertisers to the platform and spurring the development of new companies to help them put ads there, he said.

3D video technology will continue to evolve this year, said Josh Greer, RealD president. The market for active shutter glasses for viewing 3D will continue to grow this year, he said. “You'll see a lot of product.” RealD and others are working to develop better passive glasses, because it overcomes some of the limitations of the active shutter glasses, he said. They're cheaper, lighter and have fewer problems with strobing. Glasses-free 3D, or autostereo, is still a ways off, he said. “We love autostereo, and if we could get rid of the glasses that would be great, but I don’t think people understand the complexity,” he said. 3D technology has already come a long way, he said. “To have so many people just not laugh about 3D is amazing."

As technology improves, all video will eventually be captured in 3D and consumers will never look back, even for capturing their own home video, he said. “Once the technology becomes simple enough that you just have to point and click, why would you go back,” he said. “Why would you go back and buy a black and white TV set, or a TV without sound?” 3D will happen, Gerzberg said. Before all video is recorded in 3D, video will have to be converted from 2D to 3D, he said. “2D-3D [conversion] is a key technology but it has to be perfect,” he said. “It cannot be jerky and it cannot drop frames."

Critical to the success of these devices will be network connectivity, said Mel Coker, vice president of product development and operations for emerging devices at AT&T. It wants any device that has a current running through it to be connected to the network, she said. But the devices and applications need to be matched to the right network, she said. Sometimes that will be the cellular network, other times a Wi-Fi hotspot, she said. “We have to think about the networks, the devices and the applications,” she said. “We want you to use the best network for the application you're using, and take into account your rate plan and price structure.”