January 6, 2008 – ONE of the year’s best signposts to the consumer electronics trends that will impinge sooner or later on the world of IFE and passenger communications opens tomorrow in Las Vegas. The 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show will run until Thursday at the Las Vegas Convention Centre and Sands Expo and Convention Centre.

On the eve of the show, electronics manufacturer Hitachi launched a new hard drive that will springboard another huge leap forward in storage for PCs and handheld devices. The event itself will feature demos of relevant new communications technologies such as Near Field Communication (NFC), as well as a development that could help drive VoIP into the mainstream once and for all. And IFE industry leader Panasonic Avionics will be there, talking about the future of mobile entertainment.   

Hitachi’s new Travelstar 5K500 2.5in mobile hard drive offers no less than 500Gb – half a terabyte – of storage, enough for 500hr of digital video, 178 feature-length films, 250 games or 125,000 four-minute songs.

Described by Hitachi as the most capacious unit of its kind, the drive is expected to form the basis of a new wave of “slim” desktops, laptops, gaming consoles and other mobile devices. Essentially, the manufacturer says, it will allow the development of machines combining the storage capacity of a desktop with the portability and convenience of a laptop.

The drive has two features that will make it particularly appealing to mobile users – sophisticated shock-proofing and economical power usage.

Hitachi’s Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) technology provides early warning of excessive vibration caused by the laptop’s audio speakers, stabilising the drive head to avoid system disruptions. The drive also incorporates further measures to protect data from decelerations of up 400g as a result of falls, bumps and rough handling.

The three-disc system is extremely energy-efficient, with a power profile nearly identical to that of its two-disc predecessor. It draws just 1.9W when reading and writing and 0.7W when idling, for longer battery life and more unplugged operating time.

Near Field Communication supports data rates of up to 424kbit/sec over ranges of up to 20cm and is seen as the key to a revolution in cashless payments and electronic ticketing. The NFC Zone at CES will feature live demonstrations of various applications - using a phone as a payment or travel card, secure transmission of digital pictures, mobile phone-based purchase coupons, and “smart” posters.

Skype has been a very effective pioneer of PC-to-PC Internet-delivered voice communications over the last two or three years. Now it’s moving to mine a rich and previously untapped source of potential platforms – portable games machines. Visitors to CES should call at the Sony stand for a sight of Skype software running on the PlayStation Portable (PSP). On the eve of the show the company gave the game away on its Website, inviting PSP users to “call friends, talk trash to fellow gamers or catch up with acquaintances via Skype for PSP.”  
  
Last May Sony Europe teamed with British Telecom to develop communications tools for the PSP. The result is Go!Messenger, a video chat and IM tool that will be delivered to users on a memory stick or by download. It is expected that Skype will be supplied the same way.

In one of the most telling signs yet of the growing symbiosis of IFE and consumer electronics, Panasonic product research manager Steve Sizelove will speak on a panel about the future of entertainment and information in cars. “The goal is to bring technology into focus and discuss how home, car and aircraft innovations converge,” comments Panasonic chief executive Paul Margis.