Sony president's CES 2016 favorite? A turntable
LAS VEGAS — Here's what's cool for Sony at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show, if you can believe it: record players.
The old turntable, which Sony sold for years before phasing them out for compact discs (remember them?) is back. Sony has a new, shiny 2016 record player proudly displayed at its huge booth here.
But the turntable, Sony’s PS-HX500, does more than just play records. It’s a creature of the modern age. It also converts vinyl into high-resolution audio files, giving it what Sony Electronics president Mike Fasulo calls the best of both worlds.
“It’s just fun,” he told Paste BN. “Millennials are just loving vinyl.”
The format left us in the late 1980s for the presumably higher fidelity CD, only to find purists claiming that music sounded better on vinyl. Companies started making records again, big box stores like Target and Barnes & Noble started selling them, and now they're making an unexpected comeback. "Manufacturers can't make them fast enough," says Fasulo.
The Sony Electronics president and chief operating officer met with Paste BN for an extended podcast interview at the Sony booth Wednesday.
Besides the turntable, Fasulo also singled out three new Sony products for the cool, must-see category.
He mentioned the new X93D TVs for state-of-the-art picture quality, a tiny portable projector and Sony’s take on a product everybody owns: the lightbulb.
The twist? The bulb is Bluetooth-enabled and has a built-in speaker.
The new bulb is an “innovative way to address trends of different (living) spaces,” he said. No pricing has been announced for the three products, and availability is expected by mid-year.
Sony didn't have the lock on music-playing lightbulbs at CES, by the way. A new entrant, Sengled, released a combo LED/speaker as well, and won both the CES 2016 Innovation and Reviewed.com's CES Editor's Choice awards.
The Portable Ultra Short Throw Projector is smaller than most projectors. It's about the size of an external desk hard drive, and can project from 22 to 80 inches away, fit in a purse and be taken anywhere.
Fasulo also discussed Sony's take on virtual reality and how to explain the growing alphabet soup of new TVs--like an UHD HDR Quantum Dot Back-lit set--to consumers.
He spoke in clearer terms than marketing materials. "It will be the best visual experience you'll get," he says.
The Sony exec is high on 4K sales, predicting they will be one-third of all TV sales in 2016: "You're buying into the future."
Follow Paste BN tech columnist and TalkingTech host Jefferson Graham on Twitter, @jeffersongraham.