CES 2000 Picture Gallery!

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Site created 12/15/97.

page created: 1/8/00
(updated 1/13/00)

CES 2000 Picture Gallery

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Three companies have committed to supporting Nuon in their 2000 product lines: Samsung, Toshiba and a Taiwan-based manufacturer called Raite (more on them in a moment). Samsung expects to be the first to market in the States with a Nuon-capable player, sometime around April 2000 (for about $499). Toshiba will follow later in the year. The Raite models are now available in Asia (for about $299) but it's unclear when they'll be widely available in the States.

A Nuon-enhanced Samsung DVD player.

Note the Nuon logo, along with Dolby Digital, DTS, and HDCD (High Definition Compatible Digital).

As a game machine, a Nuon-enhanced DVD player can generate impressive graphics (with or without polygons). Add a Nintendo-style gamepad or a joystick, and let the fun begin. Frank and I saw a number of games being demonstrated at the show, including: aMaze, Iron Soldier, Freefall, Merlin Karting and favorites like Myst and Tempest.

Nuon "DVD Interactive" game discs and controllers.

Because Nuon requires an integrated chip, there's no way to upgrade current players (with an add-on box, or otherwise). But the good thing is that once you have a Nuon-capable DVD player, it's flash ROM upgradable. So when CSS-2 arrives for DVD-Audio for example, your hardware is still good - just a quick upload to the player's ROM and you're all set.

A Nuon-enhanced DVD player from Toshiba.

So what good is Nuon for movies? Well, one way to think of it, is that it lets you access the kinds of interactive extras usually found on the DVD-ROM side of your disc, via your set-top player and TV. You can surf a movie's website from the disc, browse the screenplay, move through "virtual" lobbies, access the weblinks (via phone line), play games based on the movie and more. The Nuon reps we spoke with laid out several cool scenarios. Here's one: imagine that you're listening to a director talking on a commentary track and he says, "hang on a minute - I want you to see this." Then (via programmed commands on the disc) he takes control of your DVD player, and jumps to a specific scene or extra that he wants to talk about. So up front, you could choose to watch the normal linear audio commentary, or the special interactive director's commentary - cool, no?

Nuon can also add (at the push of a button, while full motion video is still playing) a Graphic User Interface (GUI - see the picture below) to the screen, allowing you to access or change any option possible - everything from the audio track you're listening to, to zooming into the picture, to picture controls like color, brightness, contrast and gamma correction.

As far as studios, New Line has apparently expressed an interest in adding Nuon features to future DVD releases. Our feelings here at the Bits on Nuon are that it's a great idea... BUT we'd hate to see all of those added interactive bells and whistles distract from the presentation of the movie. A movie DVD should ALWAYS keep the movie as the main focus - that's what it's all about, after all. Just because you can add interactivity to a DVD movie doesn't always mean that you should. I think that the real challenge of Nuon for the studios will be to find tasteful and APPROPRIATE uses for it. Still, this is an extremely cool technology, with a lot of potential. We'd definitely like to see more of it in the near future.

Nuon's GUI (Graphic User Interface) for movie DVDs.

Okay... a few minutes ago, I mentioned a Taiwan-based manufacturer called Raite. Frank and I had never heard of them before our visit to CES, but I'm told that they're big in Asia and Australia among other places. One thing that impressed me about Raite, was that (using Nuon-enhancement) they're readying a number of cool options for DVD players, staring with "Internet DVD".

An "Internet DVD player" from Taiwan manufacturer Raite.

Imagine being able to send and receive e-mail or surf the Net via your DVD player (we think The Digital Bits should be your first stop, of course!). I suppose this would work like a Web-TV set-top box, with the added functionality of DVD. But that's not all... Raite is also designing their DVD players with the ability to play MP3 music files! All you have to do is burn a CD-R loaded with your favorite MP3-format songs, and the DVD player will play the disc just like a standard music CD. We think THAT'S a cool feature, although whether legal issues will prevent it from appearing in players here in the States is another matter.

Another cool Raite feature - DVD players with MP3 playback capability!

Raite wasn't the only previously unknown (to us at least) manufacturer showing DVD gear - Shinco had a TON of DVD products on display, from standard set-top players to portable units.

Shinco who? Well... they apparently make MP3-capable DVD portables. Go figure.

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