Reporter's Notebook: Simply Dazzled
CBS News correspondent Sandra Hughes files this Reporter's Notebook from CES 2006 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
More than 2,500 vendors and more than a 100,000 retailers converged on the Las Vegas Convention Center on Thursday for CES 2006. We've been here all week watching as piece by piece the techno-giants put together their displays and refined their pitches for 2006.
No matter where you wandered in the cavernous convention halls, you couldn't miss the spectacular-looking televisions, from the biggest of the big to the smallest of the small. Samsung is showing off two of the largest high definition televisions in the world — an 82-inch LCD TV and a 102-inch plasma — right next to a wireless TV that fits in the palm of your hand.
It's also hard to miss the absence of Apple, the one company that has already done the best job of interfacing video onto the tiniest of screens with its iPod. Apple CEO Steve Jobs puts on his own show called Macworld, where you can bet all the talk will be about how many people are downloading shows like "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" onto the iPod (though I still wonder who really is going to watch those teeny, tiny screens).
But portable multi-media devices made major news at CES too, just ones made by different companies. It's still not exactly clear what you'll be watching on those devices and where you'll get the video.
When we left on Wednesday night, the convention center was a mess of wires and scaffolding (and of course people watching the Rose Bowl game). Workers spent all night spiffing up the place and Thursday morning it was ready to dazzle.
And dazzle it did. Robots, digital cameras of every size and mega-pixel, cell phone covers, speakers of every make, model and brand. It's overwhelming! You can walk it all, but hardly absorb it all.
When the big guys like Bill Gates and Sony's Sir Howard Stringer spoke this week they talked a lot about "convergence" — a mouthful to say the least. The concept is connecting all your electronic entertainment needs with your personal computer to make one amazing hub right in the middle of your living room. But while they all agree it's the wave of the future, they can't agree on how likely consumers are to grasp on to this grand idea.
Team Gates wants you to use your PC as the base for the digital den. It would allow you to access your computer and the Internet, TV and movies, download music, organize your digital pictures, wash your clothes (just kidding on that last one) all this on one screen, likely your gigantic living room screen.
But others like Sir Howard see the future in the game box. His Playstation devices can play DVDs, video games, and just about every other digital file you desire.
Intel unveiled its new entertainment platform called VIIV. Their idea is PC based, but the PC looks like a DVD player so it's "pretty enough" to go in your living room! It packs all the same goodies: Internet, movies, music, DVDs, with a remote keyboard or control.
Still others see the future in cable. A company called Digeo says cable boxes powered by its Moxi software can satisfy all your digital content needs for just the cost of a monthly subscription.
The bottom line, though, is that for years Gates and the others have been talking about connectivity and while it sounds all well and good, the analysts, even CBS' own Larry Magid, tell me consumers are probably still not ready to launch into this magical world of remote controlled simplicity. So while I had a blast seeing all the gadgets and gizmos — I'm still pretty confused about when my life is going to get simpler!