‘Content, Content, Content’ seems to be the flavour of 2006’s Consumer Electronics Show. In one form or another, focus appears to be delivering and distributing, viewing or producing mainly video in the comfort of our living rooms and on personal, portable devices. Here’s a round up of the major keynote speech’s
Beginning with the analogy the media is now pulled not pushed, Sir Howard Stringer begin the Sony Keynote with a lot of talk about direction for the company. One of the few examples displayed was the location free capabilities of the Sony PSP that was released with a recent version of the firmware. He demonstrated receiving TV broadcast from his London home while being on stage.
They went on to comment on how well the company is moving towards the HD era and the importance of the forthcoming Blu-Ray discs and drives will be to the consumer.
Conspicuous by its absence; the Sony PS3 of which only the latest video reel of games was displayed. Surely for a Spring release, even at a CES show, you’d have expected some sort of demo of a prototype to be running – pretty conclusive in my opinion that the PS3 looks less and less likely for a 2nd qtr release.
Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini officially introduced the Intel Viiv technology that they hope will be the building ground for all media PC’s of the near future.
Based around Pentium D or Extreme Editions processors, the operating systems are expected to be XP Media Centre. It is possible that an iteration of the Mac mini with Front Row could be announced at MacWorld next week utilising these chipsets.
Concentrating on Vista and Xbox 360 Bill Gates begin his keynote by giving his vision of the future and how technology will interact with his daily working life. In summary the convergence of various technologies and Microsoft systems leads to a less stressful and more productive life… etc.
Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman covers Vista to some depth, showing it off in its glory. Demonstrating the way the windows interact and slide over each other; the transparencies of the start menu and the overall gloss of the product. The ‘Photo Gallery’ product that is to be released with Vista offers fairly standard editing though Vista does offer a handy feature already found in iPhoto – the ability to revert back to an original document / file at any time.
The theme interaction between separate devices is highlighted all the way through this keynote along with the partnerships with various manufacturers, developers and providers. One such partnership will be with MTV and their Urge service, though seems less of a priority for Microsoft. While Google is concentrating on distribution (see below), Microsoft is still aiming at the end users by pushing the software from our offices, towards our living rooms.
Moving onto the ‘success’ of Xbox 360 and the continued increases in production to meet the demand. The big Xbox 360 announcement was the release of an external HD-DVD drive that would be in direct competition with the Blu-Ray technology of Sony.
Yahoo Chairman and CEO Terry Semel launched a new service call Yahoo Go which enables users to access their ‘content’ through different internet enabled devices. Go provides your information specially formatted for the device you are using, whether PC, mobile or TV.
Yahoo Go Mobile is specially designed for mobile phones and can be accessed through any mobile network. Though currently it only works on Nokia series 60 phones, support for additional manufacturers including Motorola is planned. Another version called Yahoo Go TV will be launched in the next few months for Internet connected televisions. Go for the PC offers a desktop sidebar in the same vein as the Google Desktop Sidebar.
Larry Page’s Keynote speech covered a number of topics but primarily it’s the development of http://video.google.com/ into the Google Video Store that will get everyone’s attention – particularly Apple’s..
Initially concentrating on the US market, Google has agreed content partners in CBS (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation), UK content from ITN, and the rights to make available all of the seasons NBA games with some of the classic games. Amongst other content, Google will be making available music videos from Sony-BMG’s collection. Pricing is likely to compete with the Apple ITunes content currently available.
Independent film makers will also be able to continue to provide content to download much as Google Video is used now. There will be non-premium content available for download or such as previews and trailers but all paid content will be US only at this stage. Logically specialist content geographically for the UK, Europe and the rest of the world will follow.
Larry Page also announced Google Pack, combining some of the better known, but freely available, Windows software packages in one customisable bundle.
Don’t forget apple’s keynote – it was a big one. I’m going to do a summery on my thoughts on it after I get the video later today.