NWC @ CES: Scores of New Ways to Access Digital Content

Originally Published on TechWeb News

The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) gets underway this week in Las Vegas, showcasing tomorrow's cool gadgets. Brace yourself for the wave of new products. This year's show is expected to demonstrate how nearly every type of device will connect to the Internet and each other to give consumers more access to data, audio, video, and games.

The idea is to make it easy to retrieve digital content from anywhere--the street, the home, the office or the car--and share it among devices from MP3 players, digital cameras and watches, to set-top boxes and televisions. "Restrictions will dissolve and people will have access to content and the ability to move it between the content reservoir and their devices whenever they want," said Saul Berman, a partner in IBM Corp.'s media and entertainment consultancy group and CES panelist.

Microsoft Corp.'s chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates kicks off CES on Wednesday afternoon with his vision of consumer electronics in 2006. Yahoo! Inc. and Google Inc. will make their CES debuts with bookend keynote speeches on Friday as the Web becomes an even bigger conduit for delivering media content from CBS, NBC, Walt Disney Pictures and Television, Universal Pictures, and others

Expect Microsoft to demonstrate Windows Vista and provide details on how it's making the operating system software a platform for digital media on devices from watches to mobile phones to the Xbox 360 game console and other Internet-connected devices.