I just returned from my first trip to the Consumer Electronics show and thought I’d share some thoughts. This is an event that I’ve wanted to attend for years. My first trip was really sort of a shock, awe, and letdown campaign.

Shock - The sheer scope of this thing is incredible. You can’t escape it. Whether its the shuttle bus stops in front of every hotel, the presence of advertising absolutely everywhere, or the size and number of exhibit halls, it is a mammoth undertaking. I’ve been to two GOP conventions, the Iowa straw poll, two cable industry shows, and countless political conferences. Added together, I don’t think they equal the number of people in Vegas for CES. Someone told me (but I have not verified) that between 150,000 and 250,000 people descend on Vegas for the show. The GOP conventions were quoted as 15,000 delegates and 30,000 press for a total of 45,000. Cable’s big show draws around 15,000. They all seemed packed. This was insane.

Awe - The show has the latest and greatest gadgets. I’ve written about a bunch of them on CableTechTalk. You can read those posts here, here, here, here, here and here. My personal favorites had to be the MyVu personal video eyewear, the 3DV camera for gaming, the AnyPlay portable set-top box, DVD and DVR combo, and the Sonos home audio streaming system. If you’re a gadget freak, this is the show for you.

Letdown – The bad news about the show, and what nobody tells you, is how much garbage you have to sift through to get to the gems. For every one cool gadget, there are two places hawking batteries, three places pimping cases for every portable device and four places pushing iPod docks. If I never see another dog shaped, cat shaped, pig shaped, of giraffe shaped iPod dock again, it will be too soon.

The thing nobody tells you is how surreal the whole experience is. I’ve always known that the porn industry schedules its big show (The AVN Adult Entertainment Expo) at the same time. What they don’t tell you is that between porn stars, booth babes, and overweight geeky men, it’s very hard to tell who is there for what. It’s like a giant sea of guys who are absolutely geeked out – only you don’t know if they’re hot for the star of Debbie Does Everything or the latest duck shaped iPod dock.

The other thing to keep in mind is this is a trade show. Like any trade show, it wears thin after the first 36-48 hours – but it lasts four days. Even with four days, there is almost no way you can see everything on the show floor AND go to any of the panel discussions. I could have spent a lot more time doing either, but would have been completely unable to do both.

Would I do it all again if I had the chance? Probably. Would I try to blog it? If I was there for that reason, yes. But otherwise, absolutely not. Trying to squeeze in three to five posts a day on top of the panels and floor was a bit much. It can be done, but you need to get up early, stay up late, and do little else.

In all, it was a fun trip, but I wouldn’t want to do something like it more than once a year.

Between work, travel, the holidays, the caucuses and primaries, and another project I’ve been trying to launch, I just haven’t had a lot of time to write, but I wanted to share a new endeavor I’ve undertaken. NCTA (the day job) has launched a new telecom policy blog at CableTechTalk.com.

CableTechTalk will give the industry a voice in the ongoing discussion and debate over telecom policy discussions. Debate over the direction of our nation’s telecom laws increasingly takes place online. This blog seeks to be an active player in that conversation, but it won’t be one-sided. Far from a typical press release and talking points blog, CableTechTalk will invite people with whom we disagree to engage in cross posted debates on the issues – sharing both sides of the argument and letting readers draw their own conclusion.

The blog also gives us the opportunity to share developments in the gadgets that attach to and leverage our voice, video and data platform. This week we’re in Las Vegas looking at the new tech toys on display at CES. We’re looking at the new TVs and set-top boxes, personal entertainment devices, gaming and broadband applications, and all the other things that make life fun.

If you get a chance, I hope you’ll take a look.

As a fan of all things pop culture, and a huge fan of The Simpsons, I really had to take the Simpsonizer for a test drive – despite it being a goofy marketing tool of Burger King. Having done so, I have to say how impressed I continue to be with BK’s online team. The same unit that brought you Subservient Chicken now allows you to upload a photo of yourself, push a button, and become a Simpsons character.

I’ll let you be the judge of how good a job it did… Turk Simpson is standing to the right…

I’m back from the annual Cable Show in Vegas where Comcast CEO Brian Roberts rolled out the next generation of broadband technologies. Demonstrating the new DOCSIS 3.0 standard for broadband over hybrid coax-fiber networks, Roberts moved a 4GB file in just over 3 minutes.

The DOCSIS 3.0 standard gets its juice from “channel bonding” technology. The modem bonds the equivalent of 4 channels of television (which would each be the equivalent of 40mbps), allowing speeds in the range of 160 mbps downstream. The upstream rate would increase as well. While the demo didn’t address upstream speeds, I was able to confirm with DOCSIS modem vendors that the upstream speed would likely increase to the 10-20 mbps range.

That may still seem small compared to the downstream, but is a dramatic increase over the 1mpbs we currently receive.

The vendors also told me that the downstream speed isn’t capped at 160, but actually scales up dramatically. The DOCSIS 3.0 standard allows for up to 32 bound channels – meaning the maximum downstream speed for the standard is 1280 mbps, or just over 1gbps.

At 160 mbps, the new standard puts cable modems far ahead of the current fiber optic offerings (which top out in the 30mbps range). The new standard is expected to reach consumers by this time next year. The interesting effect of all this, I believe, will be the creation of a bandwidth arms race between cable and the telcos. For those who have been concerned with the relative low speeds of US broadband compared to other countries, this should ease that pain.

An arms race between access providers will also limit the possibility of “net neutrality” violations. If customers are continually seeing improvements in throughput and have one significant reason to switch providers, it’s unlikely the ISP would give them another reason by limiting content.

Mrs. Quip and I recently bought a brand spanking new HDTV. We’ve been very happy with the purchase with the exception of one thing – the ridiculous price of HDMI cables charged at Best Buy and Circuit City. Now I’ve been a technophile for a long time now, and own more than a fair share of antiquated technologies that are gathering dust in the garage (anyone need an 8-track player?). Most of those gadgets required some cable or other and were usually included as a throwaway item.

The cost of HDMI cables, as a result, struck me as really odd.

So I went online to find the reasoning. Here’s the first thing I found…

We dug a little deeper, and noticed that Best Buy wasn’t the only electronics purveyor hopping on the HDMI gravy train. Checking online stores, it appears that everyone wants to get in on the act of selling Monster Cable‚Äîor any HDMI Cable‚Äîfor seemingly inflated prices. Of course, these cables are gold plated, right? Help us out here. Is there really $143.62 worth of difference?

Now, Gizmodo is not exactly a site for Luddites. If they’re perplexed by the high cost, there must be something going on, right?

I clicked through the link in the post and found a 6ft cable, gold plated, and certified to perform at HDMI standards for $17.93.

Huh? How can that be, you ask? Surely they must be selling these cables at a huge loss. If the major retailers are hawking them at $130, there must be so much gold in the wire that it has to cost that much, right?

Apparently, no. I ordered two of the cables (which actually lowered my price per piece by $1). I should have them in a couple of days. When I get them hooked up, I’ll post my findings here. Maybe some Cal-Tech engineer could attach up some fancy meter and tell me the difference, but I suspect, as Gizmodo’s readers did, that the real difference between the two is their marketing teams.