The following entertainment article was written for Spreety TV Online by professional journalist Carolyn Giardina.

Consumer Electronics Association Offers “Mid Year” Report

By Carolyn Giardina

During a “Mid-Year Reality Check,” the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) suggested that televisions, computing and gaming are positively impacting consumer electronics growth.

Still while speaking at a recent CEA Line Shows in New York, Shawn DuBravac, chief economist and director of research at CEA, warned: “We’re at this very delicate handoff as we move into Q3 and Q4 from a stimulus economy to one that needs to be driven by the private sector.”

CEA–which hosts the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas–also identified some key areas for the industry. This included green technologies, digital publishing and eReaders, IPTV, tablets and smartphones, online retailing, social networks and 3D HDTV.

3D is actually entering homes through streaming over the Internet, as well as via cable television. “From the creation and production of 3D content to distribution via satellite, cable, Blu-ray Disc and streaming to playback on specially equipped 3DTVs, there are many pieces and moving parts that need to work together seamlessly,” said Rick Dean, THX senior vice president and chairman of the 3D@Home Consortium. “Hollywood studios, content production firms and companies from all corners of the electronics industry are working to make that happen.

“The success of Avatar and, more recently, Toy Story 3, has greatly raised the public’s awareness of 3D,” he added. “Now the challenge is to translate that theatrical success into a wonderful home entertainment experience.”

Also during the CEA event in New York: ThinkEco’s modlet, a device that allows consumers to plug a consumer electronics technology into an existing electric outlet and use a web browser to wirelessly manage their power consumption, won the CEA Line Shows Best in Show award via attendees’ text vote.

StickyBits, a new mobile app that lets consumers scan any barcode and attach a message to that physical object, won the NY Tech Start-Up Classic, produced by NY Tech Meet Up.

The 2011 CES will be held January 6-9 in Las Vegas.

However, some stations voluntarily switched on Feb 17, such as:

Kentucky: LEX 18
Louisiana: KALB, WNTZ
Wisconsin: WSAW, WJFW, WAOW/WYOW.
Missouri: KHQA-TV, WGEM-TV
North Dakota: Most stations.
South Dakota: Public Broadcasting
Vermont: WCAX-TV, WFFF-TV, WNNE-TV, WPTZ-TV, WVNY, Mountain Lake PBS and Vermont Public Television

A full list is available at the FCC site.

With a typical switch over, some stations were off-air for 30 minutes while transitioning, where others were simulcasting digital and analog, and simply pulled the plug on the analog.

So why did they switch early? Simply put, it can cost millions to maintain simulcasting the additional months.

Why switch at all? The new digital TV signals are 4 times higher quality than the old signals.

The bad news: If you previously received a station that was a bit snowy, but tolerable, it is possible the new digital TV signal will drop entire frames.

With the Internet and Spreety, why do we care? The frequency spectrum freed up by removing the analog signals is partially slated for high speed wireless Internet.

Since the change to June 12 was announced rather late in the game, several TV episodes had already been created in High Definition. An example is The Simpsons, which overtly celebrated the HDTV transition, without the transition. The HDTV version is available on the FOX web site.

To find the rest of the tv shows online, go to Spreety.com.