CES 2010

At the stroke of 4:00 PM on Sunday, a great cheer was heard throughout the show and the mad rush to tear down the booths began. Stay tuned for our wrap-up reports in a couple of days after we catch our collective breath and take a little time to digest all that we saw and heard.

Press Day once was a couple of major press events the afternoon before CES officially opened. A few years later it is wall to wall activity from 8am to 11pm. This year, after all the major announcements from the big companies ended, a show within a show began at the Mirage–called the Digital Experience, Decked out in a 50's theme with girls in ponytails, dressed in candy stripped dresses and sailing around on roller skates, manufacturer's displayed some of their key technologies, that were primarily about sharing the digital experience, i.e. networking and file sharing. By the way, the car grill at this bar is a real ice sculpture. A great place to stop for a cool drink before venturing into the Show Within A Show.

Its been awhile since I had heard from Moxi, whose DVR didn't get nearly as much recognition as TiVo. Making a stronger, more earnest effort to make a name for themeselves in that category, Moxi introduced a HD DVR here at CES. They made it clear this is a high quality solution for digital cable subscribers. Satellite users need not apply, The unit is far more than a straightforward DVR, as it serves as the hub for all your media with a 500GB hard drive. If that's not enough it can be upgraded to maximum of 2TB. Of course, it can also share content from your home (wired) network and interface with an iTunes library. It also provides access to web-based services such as Flickr for photo sharing and Finetune, a music streaming service. Instead of charging a monthly fee for their service, you pay a one time fee of $799 for the basic model. If I rememeber correctly, that was TiVo's original business model and they realized they made more money charging a monthly fee. So we'll see how succcessful this is for Moxi.

ZeeVee started delivering product in the fall of 08, so they are hardly a household name yet. What they offer is a solution for integrating your computer, not just your files, to a remote TV or even your home theater. The ZeeVee interface offers a simple scroll and click interface with icons for key internet sites where you can watch TV programs such as Hulu.com, CBS, Fox, CNN etc. Like many other networking systems, you can access the media files on your computer. However, ZeeVee goes a step further and does something I have not seen yet. Your entire desktop is now on a TV in another part of your house, so not only can you browse the internet you can open you applications and launch into Word, Photoshop, or whatever. The basic unit is not exactly cheap at $499 though it includes an RF remote & transmitter that sits at your computer. A RF keyboard is on the way to complete the integration (Price-TBA). Currently, it is only PC compatible but the Mac firmware upgrade should be available in late Q1.