LAS VEGAS - Despite the attendance of more than 140,000 people at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), a lot of noise, color and new products, the show has lost its power to dazzle the attendees, according to the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. [Subscription required.]

"All the apparent excitement and energy of these mobs, though, can’t hide the increasingly apparent fact that against all expectations, a show that’s ostensibly dedicated to all that is dazzling and new in consumer electronics has managed to somehow become rather dull. Not the products but the show, which has become a victim of the consumer electronics industry’s spectacular success," Lee Gomes wrote.

In fact, CES which carried the flag of hope after Comdex collapsed in the late 1990s could suffer the same fate. Digital gadgets are now taken for granted, and perhaps more important is the content available for them.

"When you first invite friends over to see your new big-screen TV and home audio system, they will spend a few minutes oohing and ahhing about the picture and the wall-shaking bass of the subwoofer," Mr. Gomes noted. "But in not much time at all, they will settle down and watch the show or movie they came over to watch, which becomes the focus of the discussion from then on out. People forget about the technology, which is the way it’s supposed to be."

The problem may be that the promise of new technology is never fulfilled. Each year, a boatload of vendors roll out new gadgets, touting the gadget’s features, but when it comes to the industry bringing pleasure and coherence into the den or living room, it’s all a hopeless morass of competing and incompatible technologies. As a result, each year CES seems to be the same old thing.

Vendors, in the heat of competition, just can’t seem to gain any perspective about customer needs. Computer companies try to pass themselves off as consumer electronics companies. "Meanwhile, the real consumer electronics companies have come to accept, however reluctantly, that what really excites consumers is watching National Treasure: Book of Secrets, and that they are just along for the ride," Mr. Gomes concluded.