Everybody’s busy talking about all the gadgets at CES this week, but there were a couple of less flashy, but still quite interesting bits of news worth mentioning:
The spec for USB 3.0 was officially unveiled at the show, including the prototype for the connector. USB 3.0 will be ten times faster than USB 2.0, transmitting data at 4.7 Gbps. Since USB 2.0 is already fast enough for full-motion video in real-time, the new spec should make it much much easier to transfer video from cameras and other video equipment faster than real-time. Beyond that, I’m not entirely sure what else the faster spec is good for. The connectors and cables will be backwardly-compatible with 2.0 and 1.1/1.2, but I don’t think anyone’s likely to incorporate USB 3.0 as a standard port for a few product cycles. Apparently, there is also some discussion of making USB 3.0 “DRM-aware”, preventing users from transferring copyrighted materials by detecting some bit of data in the signal. That’ll last approximately 5 seconds before someone hacks it to death, I’m sure.
Also demoed at the show was a new fiber optic cable from Corning made out of plastic instead of glass. The plastic has several advantages over glass: it is more flexible and much harder to break, it carries a much weaker light signal which makes it safer for people to work with (you can damage your eyes if you look directly at a lit glass fiber, just as if you were looking straight at a laser), and it’s a lot cheaper. The weaker light signal creates a distance limitation for the new cable — 300 meters for green light, 30 meters for red — but the increased safety factor, along with the decreased likelihood of breakage means that the product might be ideal for home use, where DIY home-networkers might not be as well-trained as professional cablers. They’d best not waste any time getting it to market if they expect to sell it to consumers, because wireless is the future in the home. Still, it would probably be an effective solution for smaller facilities.
