Consumer Electronics Show (CES) - 2002

The Consumer Electronics Show is the world's largest and most influential. This year the hit of the show was an impressive set-top box at an affordable price.
Las Vegas in January IS the Consumer Electronics Show. The world's biggest and most important showcase for consumer technology occupies 1.2 million square feet of exhibition space and is attended by more than 100,000 trade representatives from more than 100 countries. The show fills a new two-storey hall so large that it could easily accommodate the US Navy's largest aircraft carrier, plus a couple of other huge halls and several hotels. There are 2000 exhibitors at CES - one working journalist attending for four days must visit 500 stands a day, or just under one a minute.
You really need to experience the size and energy of this show to appreciate the magnitude and voracious spending power of America's consumer electronics industry.

The pervasiveness of consumer technologies continues to grow as they add value to virtually every aspect of consumers' lives.

So buoyant is the US consumer electronics industry that just four months after September 11, when every other industry was counting the costs, the American consumer electronics industry announced another record year.

Microsoft's Bill Gates kicked off the show with a keynote address highlighting the expanding range of consumer experiences available over the coming decade.

Looking ahead, Gates predicted increased availability of broadband connectivity to the home and simplified home networking. He said the proliferation of smart-connected devices in the home will provide for compelling consumer experiences in the Digital Decade.

"Technology advances are enabling a new generation of end-to-end experiences for the consumer in areas such as music, photos, video, communications and gaming."

Fresh from a year in which Microsoft launched the most successful game console yet (the Xbox), and the Windows XP operating system, Gates showed two sets of technologies code-named "Mira" and "Freestyle," which extend Windows XP making it accessible anywhere in the home and enabling an environment in which the experience can be more easily shared.

Gates outlined how, by building on its cornerstone consumer products - Windows XP, Xbox and MSN.com - Microsoft will deliver a set of products which it believes will provide best-of-breed capabilities in their respective categories and enable a new generation of consumer experiences that work seamlessly across a range of devices.

The hit of the show was the Moxi Media Center, a hybrid device which offers all the benefits of digital entertainment in one simple device. Moxi is a combination satellite receiver, music jukebox, video recorder, DVD player, cable modem and internet gateway. It's not what it is, but what it does which makes Moxi so good. It can record over 60 hours of video, store your entire music collection, sort through the masses of available shows and record what you want to watch, and it enables access to music or video from any TV or computer in the home. With Moxi, your family could, as an example, enjoy digital TV in the living room, watch last week's favourite sitcom in the den, pause the live cricket in the bedroom, and listen to music in the study ...all at the same time!