I needed to take a trip to Walgreens here at CES, so I hopped into a demo car from ICO, which has launched the world’s biggest commercial satellite to beam TV into millions of cars next year.
They gave me some more details of their system, which is based on the international DVB-SH standard. The ICO mim TV system uses a satellite signal reinforced with ground-based repeaters to connect auto passengers with 10-15 channels of TV, plus navigation, emergency assistance, and even Web-based instant messaging.
The system runs on the S-band, which is near the 2,100-Mhz cellular band used by European 3G cell phone systems. But because it’s a broadcast system, ICO needs far fewer repeaters than a cellular network would; they’re covering Las Vegas with two towers, plus the satellite.
Many countries will be using DVB-SH equipment on the S-Band, so there won’t be the sort of “U.S. versus the world” division you see in traditional TV and cellular. That’s going to make mim-compatible equipment cheap, according to Alcatel-Lucent, who makes the network equipment.
Casio is bringing the slow motion hotness of its hulking EX-F1 to the world of point-and-shoots. Yes, that’s right: point-and-shoot cameras that can shoot 1,000fps video.
