Though we had arrived early for Monday's Press Day and a
number of meetings with Microsoft and other companies,
the 2002 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) didn't
officially kick off until Tuesday morning. Unlike
COMDEX, CES has grown dramatically in recent years, and
the types of consumer electronics products seen here are
far more interesting and relevant than most of what
COMDEX has to offer. We expect the attendance and
importance of CES to soon surpass that of COMDEX, if it
hasn't already.
Monday night, we attended the Gates keynote address,
which wasn't as boring as many of his recent speeches.
Microsoft's Freestyle and Mira technologies are
genuinely exciting, though they're probably almost a
year from fruition. The Microsoft employees we spoke
with at the post-keynote reception were even more
conservative, stating that they expected these
technologies to require numerous iterations and several
years before they would be mainstream. We're not so sure
about that: Freestyle, especially, is pretty mature and
in the same state that Windows Media Player 8 was when
we first previewed it six months before it was
completed.
In a Tuesday morning meeting with Microsoft, we
discussed Freestyle and Mira briefly with Dave Fester,
the general manager of the Windows Digital Media
Division. Fester reiterated that Freestyle was designed
specifically for what the company calls "the ten foot
experience," and said that it was just the first
generation. He noted that his Windows Media group
provides the underlying plumbing for the work the eHome
Division is doing. "Freestyle is just another UI for
accessing the digital media features in Windows XP," one
that uses a remote control.
Most of our Microsoft meeting Tuesday morning, however,
concerned Corona, the next generation Windows Media
technologies. Corona encompasses several components,
including new versions of the Windows Media Server
(which will be included in Windows .NET Server), Windows
Media Player, Windows Media Audio and Video codecs,
Windows Media Encoder, and the Windows Media Software
Development Kit (SDK). The timeframe for Corona is
somewhat vague, but we expect that all of these products
will be finalized before the end of the year. Note that
the Corona version of Windows Media Player will run on
"several Windows versions" according to the company,
though the XP version will be more full-featured because
of that platform's richer feature set.
Microsoft Group Product Manager Jonathan Usher provided
a tour of Corona's capabilities, and noted the momentum
that Windows Media formats have experienced over the
past year. Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media
Video (WMV) formats are now supported by a wide range of
devices, including portable, car audio, home stereo, and
PC-based products. The company has distributed 350
million copies of its player, and windowsmedia.com is
the most popular audio/video guide on the Web, with 11
million unique visitors. This figure was less than 7.5
million before Windows XP shipped.
One of the key digital media announcements Microsoft
made at the show concerned major DVD makers supporting
WMA format in their consumer DVD players. Panasonic,
Toshiba, APEX, and other companies will support the
playback of WMA audio files on data CD-Rs and DVD-Rs,
providing 22 hours and 160 hours, respectively, of
playback per disk. Panasonic, in particular, is offering
WMA support on a wide range of devices; the company will
issue 10 different DVD players this year, a range of
portable audio players, and other products that support
Microsoft's format. Pioneer, Kenwood, Blaupunkt, and
Aiwa are supporting WMA data CDs in various car stereo
systems as well.
"When you consider we've gone from 0 to 60 in just two
years," Usher said, "it's incredible the progress we've
made." The Corona player and server products support 6
discrete channels of sound, for blistering,
theatre-quality playback. A particularly effective demo
used earlier during the Gates keynote featured a
THX-style sound promo and a WMV clip from the Disney
movie Dinosaur, which rocked the house and elicited much
applause. Usher said that users would be able to fit two
feature length films per single-sided data DVD, using
Corona's 3 Mbs near DVD quality encoding process.
Windows .NET Server will support two interesting Windows
Media technologies that will benefit content providers
and consumers alike. An Instant On feature will
effectively eliminate buffering for broadband users,
ending the annoying wait when loading streaming video. A
Fast Stream feature silently saturates your data pipe as
you stream video, loading the player's cache with as
much of the movie as is possible; this will prevent
network degradation from disrupting the movie playback
and ruining the experience for the user.
After the Windows Media meeting, we hit the show floor,
which spreads far and wide throughout the recently
expanded Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC). Clearly,
CES is a bigger show than COMDEX, from a square footage
perspective, but the crowds seemed more manageable than
their COMDEX equivalents.
Zenith dominated the entrance to the main hall, with its
XP-themed "Digitize the Experience" products. We spent
some time with Sonic Blue, which now owns a number of
key digital media products and technologies, including
the Rio line of digital audio products, the RePlay
Digital Video Recorders (DVRs), and GoVideo. In
February, Sonic Blue will ship a 20 GB hard drive-based
portable audio player, called the Riot. This jukebox
device includes a beautiful screen and interface, USB
connection, and 10 hour battery life; it will retail for
about $400, giving the iPod a serious run for its money.
SonicBlue is also shipping a home entertainment device
called the Rio Advanced Digital Audio Center, which
features a 40 GB hard drive, a CD-RW, USB connectors for
connecting Rio portable devices, and a whopping $1499
price tag.
We stopped by Pinnacle briefly to check out their movie
maker and DVD creation packages. The company makes a a
number of video-oriented hardware and software products
that we'll cover more extensively in Connected Home
Express.
Belkin got stiffed with poor booth location but the
company made up for it with a number of design awards
for its USB hubs, wireless products,
Keyboard-Video-Mouse (KVM) switchers, and game
controllers. We still use a keyboard/mouse combo on most
first person games, but came away impressed with
Belkin's Nostromo game controllers, which are amazingly
cheap and easy to configure.
Microsoft had a suitably humongous booth, though it was
buried in the back half of the north hall. Like last
year's show, the company used a connected home theme to
show how its products work in each of the rooms in a
typical home. There were also big displays for Windows
CE for Automotive, Xbox, Windows XP, Pocket PC,
Freestyle and Mira, and Windows Media.
After that, we headed into Compaq's meeting rooms, where
we used the company's free wireless connection to check
our email on our 802.11b-equipped iPaqs. Compaq was
showing off its new line of Presario PCs, which all
include a smart card-based keyboard; these smart cards
can be used to store Web passwords and credit card
information, so that you don't have to type this in
every time you visit secure sites. Though Compaq didn't
agree with the comparison, it's pretty clear that this
system competes with Passport, made by the company's
biggest partner, Microsoft. We also checked out its new
Evo laptop products and iPaq accessories.
We had a couple of hours before our next meeting, so we
headed over to the Star Trek-themed Quark's Bar and
Restaurant at the Hilton, where we were accosted by a
Klingon for using inferior technology.
After that, it was time for some more meetings. First up
was Windows CE .NET, which was recently released, and
Mira, the upcoming networking technology based on
Windows XP. Windows CE .NET is aimed squarely at the
embedded market, a sister product of sorts to Windows XP
Embedded (XPe) that targets small, mobile, intelligent
devices. This latest iteration adds better real time
features, low-level XML and SOAP support, and support
for the .NET Compact Framework, a subset of the full
.NET Framework. Developer support for CE .NET is in a
bit of a transition right now, since the Visual Studio
.NET environment, which will target CE .NET, won't ship
until mid-February. But Microsoft has some interim tools
available, including a free emulation edition and an
embedded C++ compiler that will get early adopters going
now.
Mira is another story. Designed in tandem with
Freestyle, Mira is a standalone technology that will
enable users to "remote" their PC's displays to screens
other than their standard CRT. One typical example is a
dockable flat-panel display that would be used normally
while the user is sitting in front of the PC. But you
could pick the display up, like a tablet, and bring it
around to other parts of the house, connected
wirelessly, and access all of your apps and data using a
stylus. The connection technology is based on 802.11b
and Windows Terminal Services. Other remote screen
possibilities include a new generation of television
sets and cabinet mounted displays in the kitchen.
Mira makes for a good demo, but it's slow. Clicking on
icons or the Start button requires a bit of patience as
the response time lags by a second or two, which feels
slower than it reads. The idea that every screen in your
home could be connected is a good one, however. It will
be interesting see how Mira pans out.
Finally, we sat down with some people from the Windows
XP team to discuss some of the upcoming products that
are being built on the new XP platform. Third party
developers are just starting to ship XP-specific
products, and a few are worth mentioning. The first is a
Digital Persona fingerprint reader that makes it easy to
logon to an XP PC. It works amazingly quickly and
interacts with Fast User Switching to provide instant
logons: Just walk up to the PC, press your thumb onto
the USB-connected pad, and you're in. We also looked at
an upcoming Sonic Foundry product called Super Duper
Music Looper. Aimed at kids and the young at heart, this
application lets you create music using a variety of
instruments and a simple "painting" interface. It's cool
and a lot of fun. But most interestingly, it builds on
the Messenger service in XP and allows you to contact
your online buddies from within the program and share
your music or collaborate on songs, assuming the other
person owns the program as well. Super Duper Music
Looper works natively with WMA format as well.
We asked about some of the upcoming .NET Alerts we had
seen at the XP launch, some of which we're still waiting
for, and found out about another cool alert that's going
to ship soon. Microsoft is working with the Weather
Channel to provide location-based weather alerts through
Windows Messenger, and the service will be configurable
to provide a variety of weather-related notifications,
such as severe weather alerts. If you're going to
travel, you can set it up to feed you weather updates
from that destination.
After the Microsoft meetings, we headed over to Paris
(the hotel) for dinner at the Mon Ami Gabi restaurant,
which is excellent for a variety of reasons, but also
offers a great view of the water show across the street
at Bellagio. Good stuff, and a perfect capper for a long
day.
CES 2002 News reports
Before the Gates keynote, the Hilton stage was lit with three of the Aquarium screensavers from XP Plus!.
Gates acknowledging the crowd's reaction.
The "Stinger" phone has been renamed as Microsoft Smart
Phone 2002.
Another shot of the Smart Phone.
Gates and Steve
Guggenheimer check out a Mira display.
Here's a shot of the
Freestyle start screen.
CES 2002 was as crazy as
ever.
Sonic Blue's Riot media
player.
The Belkin Nostromo game
controller.
A Windows Car .NET device.
More Freestyle shots: This
one shows the TV menu page.
Again, Freestyle. Here's
the TV Program Guide.
This Klingon wasn't too
impressed with Keith's lack of enthusiasm for Star Trek.
A Mira display panel
prototype with slim-line PC.
We spent some time playing
with the Mira panel and found it a bit slow.
Gates models the Mira
display panel.