The 2018 CG animated movie “Ralph Breaks the Internet” raked in more than $500 million in box office revenues last year and, this year, visitors to The VOID in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas will be able to have the immersive “Ralph Breaks VR” experience. Located in the Grand Canal Shoppes, the experience — from Disney and Lucasfilm’s ILMxLAB in partnership with The VOID, allows four players to enjoy features not possible in a home VR experience. “Ralph Breaks VR” is available in eight locations including Las Vegas. Continue reading Disney, ILMxLAB and The VOID Introduce ‘Ralph Breaks VR’

The Entertainment Technology Center’s team of journalists and analysts reported live from CES 2019 in Las Vegas last month. Our extensive post show analysis — which includes video reports, keynote and panel overviews, and coverage of trends regarding products and services that will impact media & entertainment — is now available online. This year’s report examines key areas such as 5G technology, emergence of the Data Age, introduction of commercial quantum computing, advances in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, AR/VR, smart homes, digital assistants, robotics, and an array of CE products and services related to these growing sectors. Continue reading ETC@USC Publishes Coverage and Analysis of CES 2019

Samsung has been demonstrated MicroLED wall-sized TV screens at the last two CES confabs in Las Vegas. Dubbed The Wall, the screen comes in a gigantic version at 219 inches and, now, a smaller one at 75 inches. The latter is only a prototype, but the 146-inch version is for sale, for a price that depends on installation costs. The last new screen technology to be debuted was OLED, on Sony XEL-1 TVs in 2008. OLED now dominates high quality images on TVs and most high-end smartphones, although there are plenty of older LCD screens to be found. Continue reading Samsung, LG, Others Advancing MicroLED TV Screen Tech

IBM chair, CEO and president Ginni Rometty made her second CES keynote appearance and focused on artificial intelligence, big data, quantum computing, and closing the skills gap in computer science in a series of onstage conversations. Rometty drew a distinction between big data and deep data as she explained that there is a tremendous amount of information collected for specific analysis, but there is a wealth of analytical and predictive opportunity yet available. As an example, she cited analysis of fingernails as a means of predicting health issues or weather data to better forecast mid-air turbulence. Continue reading Keynote: IBM Chief Uses Case Studies to Explain Deep Data

“Mobile distribution really is the catalyst that will turn this whole decline of television argument on its head,” said Viacom CEO Bob Bakish in his opening keynote conversation at the Variety Entertainment Summit at CES. The daylong media and advertising-oriented gathering drew capacity audiences to sessions focused on disruption and opportunities in a dynamic and vastly different media landscape. Bakish knows that 5G will open new distribution channels and autonomous cars will remove “the last vestige of video-free environment.” Continue reading The Future of Television is Mobile Says Viacom CEO at CES

The iFLYTEK Translator 2.0 is a handheld spoken language translator developed with Chinese AI technology and training. The size of a mobile phone, it can translate between any two of 63 languages and is trained in a number of “professional vocabularies.” The device touts a 5-hour battery life, and at $450, would be a useful and affordable business and personal tool. This Chinese tech also raises some interesting privacy and geopolitical issues. In addition to the upgraded Translator 2.0, the company also announced its iFLYREC Series voice-to-text products, AI Note for recording and transcription, and iFLYOS voice-interaction system at CES. Continue reading AI Firm Shows Multilingual Translator That Fits in Your Pocket

CTA’s Tyler Suiters spoke with Phil Klein and Mark Mueller-Eberstein about their book, “The Trust Technology: How Blockchain Is Changing Your World.” “[Blockchain] has rapidly evolved,” said Klein. “The question is when it goes from bleeding edge to leading edge. I think we’re very close to that point. We’ve already crested past the hype cycle.” Mueller-Eberstein noted that blockchain and bitcoin first emerged as something transformational about four or five years ago. The academic research comes mainly from China. Continue reading CES Panel: How Blockchain, a Trust Technology, Is Evolving

Autonomous vehicles have been a part of tech culture for so long that it’s hard to realize that only a handful of people have actually ridden in one. So it was with great surprise that our very first Lyft ride out of our Las Vegas hotel on Sunday night was in a “self-driving” vehicle. Lyft partnered with Irish auto-parts-company-turned-autonomous-vehicle-startup Aptiv (formerly known as Delphi) to offer CES attendees and Vegas commuters the option to ride in one of their 30 “self-driving” BMW 5 Series. Continue reading We Were Passengers in a Las Vegas ‘Self-Driving’ Rideshare

At CES 2019 next week, 5G is expected to make a strong showing, not simply as a means to improve mobile phones, but as a game changer for everything from robots and drones to video games, sports and shopping. Although Samsung has already shown prototype 5G phones for Verizon and AT&T, ETC consultant George Gerba noted that, “the need to upgrade phones will not occur till 2020 when most metropolitan areas should be closing in on the first wave of 5G.” “This is one of those evolutions that will happen in waves and with some bumps,” he said. Continue reading CES 2019: 5G to Make Debut as a Multi-Faceted Technology

The ETC@USC team is heading to Las Vegas this weekend to deliver daily news and analysis from CTA’s annual CES trade show. Yesterday, ETC’s Don Levy pointed out that “the transformative potential of 5G … will likely emerge as the hot underlying topic of CES” and ETCentric will be covering the “show with particular interest in how developments can impact or disrupt media, entertainment and technology companies.” We’ve been watching for signs of a next transformational change that’s been growing in the background since Ericsson started testing 5G in 2015. At CES, we’ll be looking for supplementary trends to see how close we are to a sea change in distribution and personalization. Continue reading CES 2019: Yet Another Transformation Waiting in the Wings?

The transformative potential of 5G technologies progresses from promise to first products and will likely emerge as the hot underlying topic of CES 2019, which opens Sunday, January 6 in Las Vegas. ETC@USC will cover the trade show with particular interest in how developments can impact or disrupt media, entertainment, and technology companies and their business models. Artificial intelligence, mixed reality, IoT, cloud systems, media and marketing, and blockchain are six other topics that together with 5G suggest personalization to be an overarching theme. Continue reading CES 2019: Is This the Beginning of the Age of Personalization?

Unless there is breaking news, ETCentric and The Daily News Brief will not publish during the upcoming holiday break. We wish you and your families a very happy holiday season. Our team is currently gearing up for CES 2019 in Las Vegas and will be back in January with the latest in entertainment technology news. Continue reading Happy Holidays: ETCentric to Return for CES in the New Year

For a long time, we have posited that the future of immersive media will be 10 percent virtual reality and 90 percent augmented reality. In the coming year the VR and AR technologies and markets will continue to advance, but in different directions and for different reasons. VR is moving into niche markets, location-based entertainment (LBE), business applications and eSports. Meanwhile, we expect AR to focus on innovation across numerous fronts, including high-end niche business and professional applications, low-end consumer experiences and new glasses with limited feature sets. Continue reading CES: The Next Wave of Immersive Media Tech and Markets

CES 2019 in January will highlight discussions about what we can expect with 5G next year and beyond. Fifth-generation mobile communications brings faster speeds, lower latency and the ability to connect more devices, meaning it will not simply speed up mobile phones but power nascent digital technologies from VR and IoT to autonomous vehicles and smart cities. CES 2019 offers a Wednesday 5G summit, and the first 5G products will be sprinkled across the show floor. The ETCentric team will be in Las Vegas reporting on a number of companies in this space. Continue reading CES: Understanding the 5G Ecosystem in 2019 and Beyond

A future untapped market for media and entertainment is the time gained in our days thanks to the freedom provided by self-driving cars. As the world’s population increases, travel times also continue to grow. When we no longer have to focus on the road while in our vehicles, all that time becomes a perfect opportunity to provide content. Audi and Disney have partnered to create what the German automaker is calling a “new type of media” to fill that time. The fruits of this partnership are scheduled to be revealed at January’s CES in Las Vegas. Continue reading Audi, Disney to Demo Media for Autonomous Vehicles at CES