By Thorsten Gehrke and Andrej Sokolow Aug 31, 2007, 14:53 GMT
Berlin - Flat panels galore fill the 26 pavilions of the IFA consumer-electronics trade show in Berlin: fair spokesmen say there are 5,000 on display at the six-day event.
Most visitors to the show which opened Friday in the German capital seem a trifle overwhelmed at first, but after a few moments they lose their inhibitions and begin trying out the goodies in this electronic wonderland.
'Roll up and see THE new product of the fair,' booms a stand host. 'The Blu-ray disc player brings you crystal-clear pictures and perfect sound.' The product aims to replace today's DVD movie players.
The excitement of glittering televisions and mobile communication devices is intended to awaken that desire-to-own among shoppers and advance the industry's plans to push 40 million old-style televisions out of German homes.
The new LCD and plasma televisions to replace them cost an average 750 euros (1,015 dollars).
Teenagers and gadget nuts are easily caught up in this fascination mill and even older people at IFA need little bidding.
An elderly gent who can't quite believe the screen sizes has brought along a folding ruler to check.
The young hostess on the stand for Loewe, a German TV manufacturer, barely bats an eyelid when the metal edge of the ruler scratches the immaculate high-definition (HD) screen.
She patiently answers when the gent checks whether the 'full HD, 100 hertz' television also displays videotext, a pre-internet system to broadcast news and weather as text.
Well briefed, she unleashes a stream of technical terms as the elderly man nods happily and looks as if he can't wait to buy one.
She does not mention that there are hardly any high-definition broadcasts on free-to-air television in Germany and that he will have to shell out a lot more for a high-definition player and a supply of movie discs.
That is, after he has mastered the perplexities of whether to choose Blu-ray or HD DVD, the two rival systems.
IFA lays bare the difficulties that consumer-electronics makers have in standing out from the crowd when all the devices look and work much the same.
Every device has a 'HD ready' sticker on it. Who would exhibit a device at IFA that cannot do HD? The pre-recorded digital pictures on the screens are always exquisite, unlike some murky images in real- life TV.
Winning over the punters amid so much sameness therefore requires something extra: a new label or feature: 'HDTV 1080p,' or 'Perfect Pixel Engine,' or 'SmartLighting Technology,' naturally in huge letters.
Most German-speakers don't really understand what the signs mean. Neither do most English-speakers for that matter. The marketing-speak labels are mainly there to give an impression of ever more accomplishment and perfection.
The German industry is also issuing a free booklet at the fair explaining key terms with simplified graphics. Though the text is in German, the cover title eschews German and is in (glamorous) borrowed English: this is a 'pocket guide.'
Design issues are coming to the fore as a unique selling proposition.
Philips goes furthest with this approach in its Aurea televisions, which are surrounded by a halo of light that spills out of the display, varying to match the images on screen.
Sharp has come to IFA with the flatter flat panel: its screens are only a few centimetres thick and are being promoted for new uses, for example as control panels for the entire home.
There are also signs that the marketeers are subtly backing away from technological perfection as the key value and are instead stressing lazy comfort, for example by displaying the devices in lounge-like surroundings.
IFA is not a modest show. The punters are drawn to the 'biggest' in everything, including Sharp's 'biggest television in the world' (a 108-inch LCD display). Its rival Panasonic snaps back with an integrated mosaic of 12 screens, each of 103 inches.
The 'most expensive audio system in the world' can only be seen after standing in an IFA line. A German magazine, Audio, borrows high-end equipment every year from manufacturers and hooks it all up. The magazine values this year's system at 600,000 euros.
Hardly surprising when just the amplifier, speakers and sub-woofer cost 350,000 euros. The set of connecting cables for 10,000 euros seems like a bargain by comparison.
Till Wednesday next week, the cavernous pavilions at Berlin's fairgrounds will be a mixture of comfy lounge, technological fun-fair and 21st-century games parlour where digital is the way to be and anything analogue seems hopelessly out of date.
Your Talkback on this Story