Panasonic Life Wall - CES 2008

While most of the hype surround CES 2008 revolved around big plasma TVs, and the effect Warner Home Video may have on the long term survival of HD-DVD, I found one the most important product demonstrations that may end up have far-reaching effects on how entertainment can be integrated into our lives, was the Panasonic Life Wall.

Keeping in mind that the prototype demonstrated is still in very primitive form, I was still blown away by the possibilities presented.

To summarize, imagine that the walls in your home are actually imbedded with an interface that allows every member of the family to access entertainment and productivity hardware and software independently. Featuring facial recognition software, the wall can recognize the family member and display that family member's personal GUI (graphical user interface). By way of this interface, the family member can access both video and audio entertainment, the internet, and more.

In addition, if the user materializes a TV screen, they can make the screen as small or as large as they like, including taking up the entire wall space on one side of the room. As another bonus, the TV screen will actually follow the user as they walk around the room.

This is definitely a technology to keep watch on, as it may have far reaching effects in the future, in essence, eliminating all external audio and video components as they are already imbedded in the wall itself.