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CES 2012: Themes, Takeaways and Cool Stuff.

The CES show floor is certainly overwhelming and everything written about the crowds seems understated compared to the actual experience. There are moments of serendipity, but to keep focused (relatively, anyway) I was fortunate to participate in a CTAM-organized tour specificaly designed for members of the cable industry.

From a cable programmer perspective, it’s impressive to see the role of consumer electronics in driving the blending of live and linear programming with on-demand / web / streaming content into a common offering that is all accessed directly via the consumer’s main “TV”. This is all made possible by a bevy of “smart” devices (e.g. SmarTVs, Apple TVs, Google TV, Roku, Boxee, etc.) that can combine offerings (via “apps”) into a single menu.

To be effective, this converged offering requires search-based navigation much more advanced than the cable screen guides of the past. Many such systems — both real and planned — were on display at the show. These include Samsung “app” partnerships with Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon and DirecTV [pic]. Time Warner also announced development of an app for Panasonic TVs. Google TV  was prominently displayed at the LG booth [pic], including a nifty two-sided remote to handle QWERTY duties. To be discovered and viewed in this new world, programmers like C-SPAN must emphasize accurate and complete program information (i.e., metadata) and tags that can be incorporated in these new navigation systems. Companies like Rovi work to bridge this world between programmers and navigation interfaces. Another variation on discovery is to pull from the social grid, the aim of companies like Shelby.TV  In the old days, it was often enough for a programmer to get carried on a cable system and have your channel listed in the onscreen guide. No more. There will be mutlitude of navigation systems representing different combinations of devices, providers and apps.

A second, related theme is the ability to have all of this content on all screens in the home. This can take the form of a home gateways like ones we saw at Motorola and Intel [pic]. These route content to large monitors as well as iPads and tablets. Echostar made a big splash with a multi-room DVR preloaded with nightly big-4 network programming. Similar to the way Netflix “remembers” where to start the movie when a viewer moves from one screen to another, these are all elegant solutions for premium content. But simply “throwing” web content to the big screen is getting easier too. One example: “Shodogg” which “enables any smartphone to deliver any streaming media to any connected device”. Other examples: “Warpia” which uses wireless hardware to provide an HD quality connection between the PC and the TV [pic], and Flingo.

Personaly, I think the use of iPads and tablets to create “second screen” experiences has loads of potential for consumers and programmers. Already available via apps such as Yahoo’s Into_Now, these technologies “listen” to programming on the main screen and then pull up relevant data on the tablet. Civolution is working to build the infrastructure that will support “social television” apps like ConnecTV.

Other items of note from my two days on the floor:

1. Beautful OLED displays that are now being built in larger sizes, including Samsung’s famous 55″ model shown on the floor [pic]. Available later this year for $8-10K. There were also 4K HD displays that were absolutely stunning — although years away from mainstream distribution. And yes, 3D is still being aggressively pitched by the CE manufacturers and programmers. ESPN 3D had a booth on the floor.

2. Superthin Ultrabooks were everyhere. They are impressive looking.

3. The Samsung Note was every bit as impressive as the hype. This phone-tablet combo (dubbed a “phablet” by a member of our tour group) seemed to have a lot of potential for capturing written notes, which is not particularly easy on the iPad. To show off the technology, Samsung commissioned artists to draw caricatures on the Note. [pic]

4. Voice and gesture controls — for your TV and Computer. Not just for gaming anymore. We visited the Primesense booth for an impressive demo.

5. New developments in infrastructure to make in-home connections even easier. We visited the booth of Wi3 which uses a home’s internal coax network to create wired and wireless connectivity throughout the home (without affecting the bandwidth used for TV and HSD).

Beyond TV and video, we heard a provocative keynote by eBay CEO John Donahoe, whose theme was that in the next three years, technology will disrupt retailing as a business in much the same way it has disrupted the media business. (This keynote was taped for airing on C-SPAN. Watch it here.) There were some fascinating developments on the automotive front as well. For more on the show, check out Techcrunch’s lists of the cool and the crappy.

Update 1/16/12 : I’ve posted several photos here and a few short videos here.