10 things seen and heard at CES

IDG News Service - The latest TVs and tablets are only part of the fun that International CES has to offer. This is about the biggest tech trade show in the world, after all, with thousands of vendors falling over each other to get noticed. Live demos go wrong, marketing tricks backfire and the antics on the show floor can take your breath away. Here are 10 things that caught our eye at CES this week that didn't necessarily make the headlines.

Oh well, Sony a demo

It's painful to watch demos go wrong, but we love it anyway. Sony offered a spectacular example on Monday when it wheeled onto the stage the star of its press conference, a giant 4K OLED TV, only to have it immediately crash in front of the world's media and display the Windows blue screen of death. Sony President Kazuo Hirai did well continuing to present without skipping a beat, and even joked about it. "This revolutionary TV combines the world's largest OLED display with dazzling 4K resolution, including this beautiful ... interface screen." We wouldn't like to be the engineer who set that demo up.

Jesus loves gamers

Game Church is a Christian group from Ventura, California, that came to CES to spread the word that Jesus and video games don't have to be worlds apart. From a small booth in the Las Vegas Convention Center, they're giving out hip T-shirts that say Jesus Loves Gamers and the booklet "Jesus, For The Win!", which includes bits of gospel and advice about sex, death and love. It's hard to miss their booth as behind it hangs a giant picture of Jesus, wearing headphones and holding a game controller. The group has been to CES before but usually attends more focused gaming shows like E3. So why target gamers in particular? "Because we're gamers," one told us. Stupid question.

FCC that man out the door

Right after FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that his agency will act to make more spectrum available for Wi-Fi, a man stood up in the audience and interrupted him, shouting a question. Most of the audience had plenty of questions -- "How much spectrum?" "How soon?" -- but the man wasn't interested in that. "Mr. Chairman," he demanded, "is it wise to aggressively pursue a broadband policy knowing that we're exposing people to a known carcinogenic? We do not have safety guidelines in place!" he said. "People are suffering innocently, and you know it!" CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro, who was interviewing Genachowski, asked the audience to applaud the call for more Wi-Fi spectrum, which it did. After the man yelled a bit more, security guards ejected him.