LAS VEGAS — It was probably the lack of any exciting new products from the Sony stable that the keynote address by company Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer was high on the celeb quotient and low on new product news.
At CES, Stringer paraded a list of stars including Tom Hanks, Usher, Oprah’s favorite doctor Mehmet Oz (better known as Dr. Oz on TV), the Yankees baseball hall-of-famer Reggie Jackson and Hollywood power executives, John Lasseter, chief creative officer of Disney and Pixar and Jeffery Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks.
Hanks and Stringer kicked off the keynote with banter about some of the prototype products that Sony is working on. This includes new eyeglasses that would allow the wearer to watch a movie on their glass and see their surroundings at the same time.
Sony didn’t offer any details on when early products based on the prototype will be available. But if successful in bringing it to market, the company would have eliminated the biggest problem in wrap-around personal movie viewer-glasses: claustrophobia.
Glasses from companies such as Myvu and Vuzix are not popular among most consumers because they completely cut off peripheral vision and awareness of the surroundings.
With its new glasses, Sony hopes to eliminate that problem and make it more acceptable to users.
Sony also showed a prototype of a flexible display screen. The organic TFT OLED called Flex can be squeezed and manipulated even as it displays on-screen video.
On Wednesday, the company announced a new mini-notebook called the Vaio Lifestyle PC. The size of a small business envelope, it sports a eight-inch LCD screen.
At CES, Sony is also showing a prototype of its sugar-based bio battery that generates electricty based on the breakdown of carbohydrates and GreenHeart concept phone that has a recycled plastic keypad and greener packaging among other things.
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