How big? In recent years the Consumer Electronics Show has been drawing around 125,000 visitors. And these aren’t consumers (at least they’re not supposed to be), but people in the business from all over the world.     That’s the crowd waiting to get into the show on a typical opening day. The photo is from the Las Vegas Convention Center, a complex of several buildings just like this one. Attendees refer to the LVCC as “the zoo,” and it’s easy to see why. Despite the fact that Las Vegas a couple of years ago added an extra building, CES still requires temporary buildings from some of the exhibits. And there are more sites, many more!

There are more exhibits at LVCC than anywhere else, of course, but since we’re in the audio business we are especially interested in…audio (duh!). The main venue for that is a motel-like complex called Alexis Park. That’s it at left, seen from the central walkway. It’s attractive, and it can be idyllic when the weather is right, as it was two years ago (there were even people in the outdoor pool). Last year? Rain every day, to the point where firemen were rescuing people from their cars and whole areas were evacuated. Welcome to the desert!

There is a new venue this year: the Sands Convention Center, and therein lies a tale. Until a few years back, CES included an adult video section. It was at the Sahara, and so was high end audio back then. A lot of the high end visitors would spend maybe a half hour or so touring the booths of the porn producers because, to be plain, they were a hoot. Only the exhibitors thought they were paying too much for too little, and they organized a competing show, which ran parallel to CES. Originally at the Riviera, it moved to the Sands, and CES threw in the towel. Has the show folded? Is there a market for recorded porn in the age of the Internet? As far as CES is concerned, no nudes is good news.

Speaking of competing shows…

For many years there has also been a competing high end show. Long poorly organized, at offbeat venues like the Debby Reynolds Hotel (don’t ask!), it was taken in hand by a new group some years back. The Home Entertainment Show (T.H.E.Show for short), used to be in a remote location too, but ran shuttles to Alexis Park (on at least one occasion a shuttle driver was arrested for trespassing). Now T.H.E.Show is right next door to Alexis Park, at the St. Tropez (at right). In the picture is the show’s noontime free lunch…a tradition that will continue this year.

But is it keeping its clientele? In recent years it had a second venue, at the San Remo hotel which had lots of big rooms. Not this year. We’ll be interested to see where they put the huge speakers from Wisdom, or the equally large amplifiers from Halcro.

The gigantic Hilton hotel next to LVCC is the other major CES venue. And some companies maintain off-site hospitality suites, for which they don’t pay either show one thin dime. These are the companies that know whom they want to invite, and are not much interested in the passing trade. The big mistake many of them make is to run the same hours as the show itself. Or worse, to hold an event far from the show right in the middle of the day. Fine for people who are there to booze and eat for free, but those are not likely to be the most promising partners. The real go-getters have enough to do on-site, thank you.

But oh, we might as well ‘fess up. We may not be there just for the drinks and the free food, but we’ll be lining up at the buffet tables too. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.
We will also be filing daily reports, with pictures and the usual UHF take on what we see. There will be five reports, for the four official show days plus “Day Zero,” the press preview day. In most cases we will put the reports together at the end of the day, and upload them as soon as we can. Since Las Vegas has more hot spots than ever, that might be the evening of the show day, or it might be only the next morning. Remember, however, that Vegas is on Pacific Time.

As other years, you’ll see a banner at the top of each report with a special deal from our Audiophile Store.

So…a couple of weeks during which we are pretty much guaranteed not to be shoveling any snow. We can live with that!