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Summary: Alex Pournelle of Byte.com weighs in with his take on this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. The bottom line - Comdex, the hardcore computer show held in November has lost its signigicance, being repleaced by CES, where what computers can do for consumers holds more interest than how they do it.

Alex provideds a wide ranging look at what was there, from device convergence to media players and formats to a look at the promise of  satellite access for the everyman.

Full Article:  CES 2003: More like Comdex than CES
by Alex Pournelle

Someone with a strange sense of humor hit Las Vegas with a time-swap, swapping Comdex and CES. 

At least, that was my first impression, upon encountering Comdex size crowds in the middle of the Las Vegas Convention Center, the first day of a major tradeshow. After all, Microsoft was in their usual position, smackdab by the front door; many exhibitors had very familiar booths (and booth positions). Surely this gaggle of nerds, sellers and salesmen were here for a computer show? The CES pressroom was certainly full of familiar people, looking for comfort in the face of change everywhere.

Crowds. Of course, that’s “old Comdex” size crowds, back when the current South Hall was then the site of the funky “North Hall” (compass directions in Las Vegas seem negotiable). Actually, the crowds were somewhere between LVCC-with-arena-era (10+ years ago) and LVCC-with-North-Hall-era (3), but still considerably larger than Comdex/Fall 2002. The talk afterward was that CES had stolen the “largest tradeshow in North America” title from Comdex, which seemed fair. At that, CES has lost a good fifth of its former constituents to AVN’s Adult Entertainment Expo, nicknamed “PornDex”, which ran (on 6” Stiletto heels) concurrently at the Sands/Venetian Expo and Conference Center. It always seemed an odd fit, anyway.

Big tradeshows, ones that generate this much windstorm of hype, tend to spawn secondary hype-storms. At CES, those brushfires were pretty modest. There were off-venue press parties, each smaller than back in the day; all four (PepCom, ShowStoppers, Press Club/JP Davis Events, Pat Meier’s Lunch@Piero’s) familiar watering-holes for the weary journalist. The biggest was PepCom’s “Digital Experience!” which showcased products from companies as diverse as NetFlix (mailorder DVD rentals), Epson (video projectors), Fuji (digital cameras), and ViewSonic (Tablet PCs, Miro/SmartDisplay PC remotes, LCDs). H-P showed their Tablet PCs, iPaqs, and the new Media Center Console, about which more in a minute. The most non-sequitur sponsor had to be Swanson’s--yes, the instigators of TV dinnerdom were commemorating 50 years of frozen-meals-in-a-box. There were spokesgals with model TVs on their heads, handing out TV-dinner-shaped chocolates. Morgan Fairchild cut the celebratory cake, which tasted like it had been in the icebox for three too many days. You can't beat that for authenticity!

The PC is dead, long live the PC

Comdex used to be big because the Personal Computer was essential to the consumer-computer revolution. These days, the margins on PCs is razor-thin, and so is interest in not-really-new “new” systems, which seem so very like last year’s, with faster CPUs and more RAM. Even the Tablet PC, Comdex/Fall’s big noise, was only a given, rather than a hype-o-center, at CES.

Is this Convergence? Yes, in very specific ways. Not the shiny future with rocket cars we all wanted, no weather control, but you can remotely control your PC from anywhere, and play jerky music videos on them, too.

That, at least, was the big message of Microsoft’s house-in-the-LVCC-parking-lot, a temple to Smart Display and the newly-released Windows Media 9. I think. We got tired of waiting for entry and wandered off, and had to judge from the wraparound graphics. Smart Display (Code-named “Mira”) was on offer, with hardware from the usual suspects. SD does this little trick with Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), the same way Windows XP lets you remotely control your desktop computer. Smart Displays are, in fact, Windows CE devices, so they might be useful when disconnected, as well.

Showing the world is changed, Microsoft Windows Media 9 went into final release during CES, with “hundreds” of manufacturers now supporting the format. A few (Norcent) were showing HD-capable DVD players, presaging the bigger movement by a year or two. Most movie producers are still too hung up on copy-protection to preserve their intellectual property for HD DVDs to appear anytime soon; while I can’t blame their reasoning, I still want this to happen sooner than later.

Just after CES, the Sundance Film Festival announced WM9 was an acceptable submission format. That’s great news for budding filmmakers who don’t want to spend the many thousands required for a film transfer. At CES, Microsoft showed clips from Warren Miller’s new HD-TV film “Step into Liquid”, the first computer-delivered, streaming video I’ve ever considered to be of acceptable quality for extended viewing.

In a moment of too-little-too-late me-too, Real Media was touting their own Real9 format for cinema and home cinema. Here’s a hint, guys: If you’re going to do that, you need to make sure that your sample video plays back smoothly, and without jaggies, in your own booth. WM9 and QuickTime did that, and you did not.

There was also a “demo house” in the parking lot of the Stardust, to show the consumer electronics, homebuilding and custom-home-audio-install industries the latest gewgaws for home theatre. It seems there are enough shows in Las Vegas this time of year (at least four) to build this palace. I guess cocooning has become the Great Profit Hope for the convergence biz, from the number and sort of products on offer for home entertainment.

HP and other, more familiar consumer-electronic companies were showing living-room set-top boxes which attached to the TV, the better to spool up slideshows and MP3s on the entertainment system. I personally don’t “get” these devices; TVs are too low-res to show snapshots well, and such devices don’t work with hi-def televisions. Previous use-the-TV products (notably, WebTV) have also not lit a fire in the marketplace. Still, companies must experiment to find the next area for innovation, and the third (fourth?) time could be the charm.

Microsoft and their hardware partners were also touting the “Media Center PC”, another attempt to put a PC-like box into the living room, complete with keyboard and mouse. Multiple attempts at this sort of study-to-front-room convergence have failed, but perhaps this one will be more successful.

Bill Gates’s keynote was on SPOT technology (Smart Personal Object Technology. Pocket PC on a wristwatch?), about which more elsewhere. SPOT starts with subcarrier FM-broadcast of one-way data (sports scores, war news) and is promised to grow from there. Even Microsoft admits that SPOT recycles Atari’s (never shipped) get-new-games-over-the-radio and Lotus Signal (Stock quotes), 20 year old technologies that may have a new place in the sun.

It was also the last year for satellite radio to make some sales numbers, and both Sirius and XM were trying very hard. It's not clear that there's room for one company to succeed in satellite radio. Delco/Delphi and other companies weren’t throwing in the towel, showing off cool new products like the Delphi XM boombox. Delphi’s XM receiver (the part that decodes the radio, and holds your listener’s license), plugs into your car, or adapts to your home audio system. The receiver plugs into the new boombox and gives you portable XM tunes. Very cool.

If satellite radio doesn’t (ahem) fly, for my money, that's a shame. Local radio has narrowed to such a tiny set of not-really choices that satellite might bust wide open. For certain communities, satellite is a hit; there are appropriately big antennas for big-rig long-haul trucks, tiny discreet ones for luxury cars, and everything in between.

My dream killer satellite app is for “traffic reports from the sky”, coupled with a GPS-enabled receiver, to route you around traffic problems both large and small. Such a thing does exist, using digital terrestrial radio, in Europe, but we Americans don’t quite have it. One reason: There’s no standard for the collection and dissemination of traffic-report data, and some big suppliers (LA County) won’t let anyone charge for doing so.

Terrestrial radio's reception quality is improving, too. Hi-def AM and FM were around for listening, mostly for car audio, and actually delivering CD quality on FM. Now, if we could only get a better selection of programming...

CES is also home to more 4,000+ Watt mobile bass-boxes than would ever be healthy for your hearing. Mercifully, the loudest ones were in the parking lot, meaning actual conversation on the show floor wasn’t impossible. I will leave it to others to discuss whether neon undercarriage strips, strobe-light hubcaps, kilowatt amplifiers, or 22” bass reflex units were the biggest CES news in car audio.

As I headed to the airport, typing CES notes on my RIM Blackberry, juggling my two cellphones, stuffing my pager into my checked bag, and hauling my 15-pound laptop, I considered that “convergence” might be a good thing. But, like most movements, the PC-in-every-home revolution has changed massively since its inception, with completely different goals now from then. And, CES shows, as the revolution has changed, so has its biggest public forums.