Summary and thoughts on Bill Gates keynote at CES

Bill Gates wants to make home entertainment much more enjoyable. He wants to make it a lot easier to watch your favourite TV programs, listen to your favourite music, and view your favourite pictures.

Gates showcased how Microsoft intends to do this in his Keynote yesterday at the 2005 Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas.

Glitches plagued the presentation but Conan O Brien, who “interviewed” Gates for the hour, kept things going with his quirky jokes and comments. He also played the total non techie who wanted to understand how this tech stuff related to his life. That was refreshing.

What Gates essentially talked about was using a computer to store and send out tv, music, pictures, and games throughout people’s houses. This has some significant advantages – the best one for me right now is only one remote control. At my parent’s house, I need to use 3 remotes just to be able to watch the TV.

 A lot of music is now stored on computers but computer speakers generally are pretty low quality. Imagine being able to easily get the music on your computer to play on the best set of speakers in the house. How about the ability to “pause” live TV – as the new Media Centre PC’s show TV, the signal also gets recorded on a hard drive and will continue to record if you get called away for the door or have to go to the bathroom.

 
The Media Centre PC also allows you to access your digital images and view them on the best screen in the house.

And a comfortable couch beats an uncomfortable desk chair most days.

Combining a computer with a TV and high speed Internet opens up other interesting possibilities. During the keynote, a telephone company previewed their new IPTV digital TV service. This service allows people to preview several channels, full motion, in one screen. If you are watching sports, you can choose the angle of the camera on the game or match. And if you are bored with whats on now, you can choose to browse through a huge library of on demand shows – your own personal video store.

 
Some of these digital TV services are still coming but the possibilities look pretty exciting.

 There is a whole new line of portable video gadgets that Gates talked about as well. I am still getting my head around the portable DVD player but these devices have hard drives onto which you can transfer much more recorded TV or video and take these recordings with you wherever you go.

 Gaming is becoming a strong point for Microsoft. Their Halo 2 game for the Xbox flew off store shelves with papers in communities large and small covering the crowds in all the gaming stores. A lot of people use the Xbox’s Internet capabilities where gamers can play other gamers from all over the planet and can chat with them (more likely trash talk). Gates spoke of wanting to keep the gaming momentum strong.

I laud Microsoft's efforts in these areas but I am also a little concerned. I am not sure that it is a good thing that Microsoft can touch so many areas of our lives. I hope other well marketed initiatives appear on the horizon. People need real options and choices in creating their digital livingrooms.

 

 

 

Comments

[Jason Johnson]

Microsoft should master the o/s quality before venturing out into the entertainment field. All I can envision is the Micrsoft Entertainment system crashing each time I try to watch "American Idol". I can see the blue screen that accompanies each system crash in Win98. Please stop the insanity!

[Justin]

You make a good point Jason. I saw my first WinXP: Media centre system last week; it's part of an entertainment system display at Best Buy. Within 5 minutes of just moving around the special 'media' features, I switched it to DVD mode and the thing crashed, so at least Bill won't be the only one who will suffer if they use the system.

I still can't figure out what would possess someone to spend so much more money on a system that provides less freedom to enjoy your media than a VCR would. I tried to write about it today on my blog at:
http://bluealpha.com/archives/2005/01/07/media-centre-of-the-future/

How you, and your readers, feel about paying more and getting less?

[Arjun Singh]

Jason and Justin,

I guess I probably came down as a supporter of the Media Centre more that as a supporter of the general concept. There are people who really like the XP Media Centre. despite the glitches:
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/windowsxp_mce2004.asp

But I am more a supporter of the concept of computer enabling home entertainment than a booster of Microsoft's specific products in this area.

A VCR, Justin, only does video - not audio, pictures, games, etc. You wrote well on your blog and I am going to further comment over there.