I took a look at consumer-electronics trends for the new year on Tuesday, with the help of Technology Evangelist guru Ben Higginbotham and CNET senior editor Dan Ackerman. If you missed it, check it out here. 

Because it’s been a few weeks since I wrote that column, here are some follow-up clarifications:

High-def only: I can’t stress enough that consumers shouldn’t spend too much time worrying about the federal mandate for a switch to digital-only (HDTV) broadcasts by February 2009. Ackerman and Higginbotham were adamant about this. Obviously, if you want to upgrade to HDTV, this year would be a good time to do so. But no one who doesn’t upgrade is going to lose his or her TV shows. If you get cable or satellite, your provider will still get you that signal you’re paying for in a way that you can watch it. And if you get a broadcast-only signal via an over-the-air antenna, the federal government will issue vouchers for you to buy a converter box for your non-HDTV set at minimal cost.

HD DVD vs. Blu-ray: Higginbotham and Ackerman agreed with each other that the war between the two high-def DVD formats will be resolved by wider spread universal players that will render the battle moot.  Neither put much stock in the buzz that Warner Home Video, the only studio still supporting both formats, might announce at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show that it will back only one format. It won’t matter in the end, they say. Still, WHV’s backing of one format over the other certainly could send shockwaves through the industry. But even if one format is weakened by such a move, it would still take a while for the other format to die out, if at all. That’s why my techno-friends think a hybrid player will win out in the end.

Laptop boom: One reader emailed to chide me for saying that laptop computers are “going to take off.” They already have, the reader said. I guess I should have added “like never before.” The scoop is that, while laptops have increased in sales while notebook computers have declined in recent years, 2008 is when industry observers expect laptops to be the dominant configuration for the first time. 

Finally, one reader emailed to say that some of the trends identified in my write-up are “pure speculation.” Well, duh. It was a prediction-oriented column — hence, the intro noting “techno trends we see for the coming year.” So, yes, it’s speculation, but it’s from people who do nothing but follow technology for a living. We’ll find out at the end of year how much of it ends up being fact.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 9:28 am and is filed under DVDs, Gadgets, Home theater, Internet, Video games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.