CES reflects changing world as in-car audio is upstaged by TVs and PCs exchanging information

First, IPTV outgrew its telecoms beginnings and burst onto the broadcast industry stage. At CES, its presence was proof that the convergence of CE, broadcast and telecoms is here. By Steve Hawley

The International Consumer Electronics Show seems to be having a bit of an identity crisis of late. In years past, so much of CES was about audio systems for home and car, television sets, portable electronics and other standalone devices made for entertainment. Those following the CE industry can remember the years when video games, the PC and later the Internet  “changed everything”. Now, computing and communications are part of the fabric of life, although it is unlikely that John Donne had foreseen such when he said that “no man is an island.”

IPTV presence

Just a few years ago, nobody would have expected that all of the IPTV platform companies would have a visible presence at CES (let alone NAB), including Alcatel, Microsoft, Motorola, Scientific Atlanta, Cisco Systems and Thomson. Not to mention several other well-known players appearing more surreptitiously in hospitality suites or for one-to-one meetings during the week.

Microsoft announced that it would make its Xbox 360 interoperable with its IPTV Edition platform – which prompted speculation as to who this might help and who it might hurt. Would operators using Microsoft TV welcome an Xbox functioning as an IPTV set-top box? Maybe yes, since set-top boxes represent an overwhelming majority percentage of the operator’s IPTV capital equipment investment, and perhaps Xbox 360 households would allow the operator not to have to subsidise expensive SoC-based set-tops. But then again, maybe no, because suddenly the operator would be thrust into the role of providing technical support for a device that is outside its control.

Xbox impact

The impact of the Xbox-as-STB could be more directly felt by set-top box suppliers supporting the Microsoft TV platform, not to mention the chip makers, since both are counting on IPTV operators as part of their customer base. But whether or not officials of Scientific Atlanta, Philips and Motorola, or companies like Sigma Designs and ST Microelectronics, are losing sleep over it is hard to say. Content owners will certainly want to have their say to ensure that the Xbox would not become a favoured target for video pirates. After all, Xbox users are in that intellectually-curious demographic from which hackers come.

Perhaps the biggest surprise about this Microsoft announcement was that it was seen as a surprise at all. Perhaps it was confusing to the mainstream consumer electronics press (it sure confused them – “what is IPTV anyway?”) but it was no surprise to IPTV industry observers. At least since 2002, the Microsoft TV group has been telling industry analysts that its IPTV product roadmap included its integration with the PC and gaming devices. It is well known that the IPTV Edition is an integration of more than a half dozen technologies from multiple business units of the Redmond giant, including several of its server products, Windows CE, Windows Media and now...the Xbox. But who’s to say that the Xbox will even get traction as a set-top box in the first place? We shall see.

Also notable was the presence of Thomson, the French electronics giant. Although the Thomson brand is virtually unknown in the US, Thomson’s RCA and Technicolor brands have been household names for many decades – in RCA’s case, since the dawn of radio. But who would have expected the SmartVision IPTV team to be at CES showing their latest Flash-based user interface designs for operators using the platform.

Thomson’s Benoit Joly demonstrated how the company can simultaneously support telephony, mobile, PC and TV within one unified suite of services. Accordingly, the SmartVision demo included voicemail and video mail accessible via the TV, caller-ID on the TV and contact management using an LDAP-based address book that can be leveraged across mobile and IPTV environments. “Video delivery is device-agnostic,” he said, “and the biggest influencers for us are to ensure interoperability, quality of service in the network and adequate processing power in the consumer device.” Since Thomson makes set-top boxes, branded as RCA in the US and Thomson elsewhere, this is of direct concern.

Every year, during the conference and after, people ask: “What was the biggest news at this year’s CES?” For some, the big story wasn’t at CES at all, since the annual MacWorld Expo happened to overlap with CES this year. Apple famously uses MacWorld to make its biggest announcements each year and this year it didn’t disappoint: the long-expected iPhone was a newsmaker, first, because it wasn’t a computer, and second, because it sparked a branding battle with Cisco, which already had rights to the name.

Cisco branding

Because Cisco has been on a campaign to create awareness among consumers, perhaps Cisco executives were smiling and winking over the fact that the cost of lawyering to defend its marque would likely be less than the cost of a huge brand marketing campaign. These topics overshadowed another Apple announcement that does have the potential of being significant to the world of IPTV: the Apple TV device.

But back to CES. To many, the most notable thing was the fact that few commentators could think of any one product that truly stood out in the crowd. Yes, almost everything was connected and almost everything that was connected had lots of intelligence on board – characteristics that would until recently have drawn much attention. TVs with hard drives, phones with colour displays, set-top boxes with home networking; all of which are coming to an electronics store near you.

Information exchange

But the ability for phones, TVs, PCs and Web sites to exchange information? You won’t buy that at Darty, Media Saturn, London Drug or Fry’s Electronics – and maybe that was the real news, that the biggest products at CES (in Las Vegas during January) were not for consumers at all. The platforms that make convergence possible might be reflected in consumer gadgets but are only sold to the operators.

First published April 2007 in IPTV News Analyst (see http://www.digitalmediapublishing.co.uk)