Geeking Out the Living Room
Niall and I sat down earlier this week to discuss the Consumer Electronics Show 2006, and the whole concept of Geeking Out The Living Room. We dissected and pondered about a whole bunch of issues including Google and Yahoo!'s plans. We also discussed that why the most recent edition of CES was a bit of a let down. My biggest lament was the lack of innovative devices, and lack of clear trends in the gadget space. Incremental gains is how I saw the CES, even though Niall was very optimistic.
I think that the real CES starts with Steve Jobs' keynote at the Macworld tomorrow on January 10. Macworld started today and run through January 13th. This week's podsession on geeking out the living room is 20 minutes and 53 seconds long, a 9.6 MB download.
Topics
- The ten foot experience, and how the executives touting this vision have to practice what they preach.
- Why there was little or no focus on electronics?
- The lack of networking standards and ease with which data can be shunted inside of the living room, will be the big obstacle that needs to be overcome before living room can be truly geeked out.
- Intel's Viiv platform and Core Duo chips for laptops, that have helped some laptop makers eke out 11 hours of battery life.
- XM Passport, and how it could become the SIM card of "Digital radio."
- Comcast and its set-box related deals with Panasonic, Pioneer and Samsung. Why set-top box is the method of mass deployment when it comes to cool technologies.
- Good week for Real, as it scores a bundling deal with HP and its RealPlayer is part of Google Pack download.
- The content announcements from CBS are just a way to appease Wall Street and showing investors that they are trying to do something to capture the "Internet" opportunity.
- Microsoft's big challenge - how to understand the consumer?
- The chips inside the HD televisions and how CableCARDs can change the rules of the game.
- Silicon Valley's dismal record of producing CE devices. Despite the perceived success of TiVo, the only successful mass market CE device from Silicon Valley in recent years has been iPod.