Digital Trends

There it sat alone, a symbol of a fading technology. In a sea of flat panel displays, the TV/DVD Combo from an unnamed manufacturer stood out like a UPS van at a Corvette show. It was one of the few, if not the only, CRT displays in the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The theme of the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) might as well have been "flat panels, flat panels and more flat panels." It seemed as if every exhibitor had an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display), PDP (Plasma Display Panel), or DLP (Digital Light Processing) display to show off. While we have no way of quantifying our assessment, it's probably safe to say that never before has there been such a collection of LCD, DLP and PDP displays under one roof.

Products ranged from the huge 80-inch Samsung and 76-inch LG Electronics PDPs to the tiny 240x320 LCD displaying ATI's new 3D graphics engine for mobile phones.

The Designtechnica crew was at CES in Las Vegas from January 7 to January 11th and walked through the 1.38 million square feet Las Vegas Convention Center for four days to bring you the latest and greatest products from the world of consumer electronics.

According to the Consumer Electronics Association, CES 2004 attracted over 129,000 visitors and over 2,400 exhibiting companies to Las Vegas. More than 18,000 of those visitors came from 110 countries outside of the United States.

We didn't get a chance to visit all of the companies' exhibits in the largest trade show in the world, but the blisters on our feet prove that we certainly gave it a try. We'll spare you the pictures of our feet and go on to the good stuff.