Everyone wants to sell you music, movies, and videos over the Internet. Intel and Google now join the party.Microsoft's Bill Gates kicked off CES with his keynote in which talked about making computers simpler and more content available. He unveiled MTV Networks' new music service, called Urge, and showed off Vista's photo editing and image search features. He also pushed Microsoft Live's online content and this year's Media Center, while promoting Xbox 360 and its new HD DVD option.
Even Intel is getting into the content game, with CEO Paul Otellini promoting content deals with more than 60 companies for delivering content—including movies—for the company's new Viiv platform, based on the new Core Duo processor family.
In other big news, Sony's Howard Stringer talked of marrying the company's content and technology, with a new Reader electronic book and the upcoming PlayStation 3. Even Google got into the act, with a new service to sell videos from CBS and the NBA over the Internet for $1.99 each.
Much of the content at CES was designed for high-definition screens and storage, with both the HD DVD and Blu-ray camps showing players and movies. It looks like HD DVD will arrive first, with Toshiba's $500 player and a new Qosmio notebook that will include a HD DVD drive expected in March. Microsoft announced an HD DVD option for Xbox 360 and said it would build support for the format into Windows Vista. Several movie studios announced a total of 50 HD DVD disks—not a bad start but far from critical mass.
Meanwhile, Dell, HP, and Sony have staked their claim with Blu-ray, which will arrive a few months after HD DVD. In sheer numbers of drives out there, Blu-Ray may then get the advantage over, particular if it in the upcoming PlayStation 3 includes one. Over 20 companies showed Blu-Ray products at CES, including lots of movies.
Between the format wars and all the services poised to sell you video and audio over the Internet, it looks like the competition to sell content will define the consumer electronics business for the next several years.
CES Gadgets: Dual-core Chips and Massive Displays
CES is still mostly about the gadgets. Here are my favorites.
Desktops: Intel was pushing its Core Duo chips and its Viiv platform, while AMD continues to push its X2 chip and AMD Live platform. In both cases, the key message is more processor cores to do a better job with multimedia. Dell took the concept to the next level, showing off its Renegade gaming desktop with a cool paint job, and more importantly, four nVidia 7800 graphics processing units. Yes, that's right – four GPUs. Call of Duty 2 looked even more lifelike than ever, especially on Dell's 30-inch high-resolution display.
Notebooks: Dual core set the agenda in notebooks, too, with almost every vendor showing off machines based on Intel's Centrino Duo. Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony and Toshiba introduced new notebooks that are thinner and lighter than their predecessors. And if two cores aren't enough for you, there's Portal Player's new Personal Media Display, which is designed to work with Vista to display information on an external screen so you can see your appointments or play your music on your laptop screen even when your main computer is off.
Cameras: The "dual" concept also made an appearance in the two-lens Kodak EasyShare V570. One lens is similar to that on a typical compact camera; the other is a fixed-focus 23-mm lens for wide-angle shots. This is a good example of a camera that differentiates itself with features other than megapixels. Kodak CEO Antonio Perez told me it was part of the company's strategy to think differently about digital photography, trying to break out of the trend of copying analog camera features.
Phones: Every phone maker had new products to show, though in most cases, these were variations on existing phones. I was intrigued by the Palm Treo 700w, which combines many of the conveniences of the Palm software with the Windows Mobile Platform. As a result, you can display photos of your most frequent contacts on your home screen and use lots of new keyboard shortcuts rather than the stylus. Motorola showed a new ROKR phone without iTunes, and without most of the storage limitations that plagued the original ROKR.
Displays: The proliferation of large displays continues. LG and Panasonic showed off high-definition plasma displays of more than 100 inches. Samsung and a number of other companies showed 60- or 70-inch LCD displays, and TI showed high-resolution DLP displays on screens large enough for a movie theater. For most of us, these screens are way more than we need for our homes, but they're certainly impressive
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