Thursday Thimble

The news from CES. But first, happy birthday Elvis. The king would have been 69. The show floor doesn't open until 10a, but CES kicked off last night with the traditional Bill Gates keynote address. I arrived too late last night to attend the address, so I missed the witty videos that Bill usually shows, but here's the hard news culled from people who were there.

1. Xbox Live will hit one million subscribers by June. Bill Gates told Reuters in an interview before his keynote last night that Microsoft would be releasing a kit for the gaming console that would turn it into a DVR, giving it much of the functionality of the Windows XP Media Center.
2. Jay Leno assisted Gates at his CES Keynote, suggesting the mogul consider Lasik and saying Gates still owed him $20 for lunch from the Windows 95 launch. Leno was there to help Gates launch a new verion of MSN. The Microsoft CEO also showed the Media Center Extender, a small set-top box which would bring content from the PC to the TV. Gates said some TVs would come with the capability built-in. He also talked about the Portable Media Center (see yesterday's entry), announcing content deals with EMI Music, Napster, and Cinema Now. And he said the SPOT watch which Microsoft had announced at last year's CES will finally be available next week. A transcript of Gates speech is online at the Microsoft web site.
3. Quotations from Chairman Bill:

   "A particular challenge here is making sure that we strike the right balance in managing digital rights and yet having the simplicity that you can move the content that you paid for around and have it available in the richest possible way -- a very tough problem"

   He said that Microsoft was spending record amounts on R&D to support "seamless computing:"

   So the theme of seamless computing, bringing the smart devices together with very rich interfaces, that's what we're dedicated to and that's why we're investing so much in the software and the partnerships that will pull this together.

   He struck a blow for upgrades:

   Many of the types of software products I'll talk about tonight are not software products that you just buy one time and that's it... the relationship between us and that software user is very different in terms of learning what we can improve and delivering those improvements on a constant basis.

   On the new SPOT watch:

   That technology is pretty amazing because it's got not only a wireless network receiver that uses a form of FM to connect up here but it's also got a very powerful computer... All I have to do is go onto the Web, use an account and type in the watch registration number, which I've already done that so I'm on here.

   Great. A wristwatch that requires a computer to program. Microsoft software will also continue to appear in cell phones:

   Here you can see all the different phones and there's quite a variety of form factors from the very small ones that you think of as more phone like to the larger ones that are more PDA-like. And the variety here will just increase over time as people want to add in GPS devices, as we go to different aspect ratios, different keyboard capabilities. You can see one already there with the keyboard, but you'll see more of those. That is a trend that is important.

   Uh huh. And automotive?

   In the car it's a particular challenge that you don't want to distract the driver, so here's where we know that as you go to your car, the idea of having directions that you've looked up on a PC or on a phone, having those available to you through a map or an audio readout, that makes sense. Having any new tunes that you got at home brought down to the device in the car or videos for the passengers, particularly the kids, that should be very automatic. And after all, your car is now generally within range of your Wi-Fi network, not always but in many households that's true and so just by having a receiver you can make that so you don't have to do manual synchronization. Even if you're listening to, say, a radio show, an NPR show, right, wherever you are, you ought to be able to have the rest of that streamed down to the car and then listen to it on demand through the rich device there in the car.

   Cool. Where do I get one of them rich devices? Set top boxes have always been a challenging arena for Microsoft. The very limited hardware makes it tough for software.

   We have software that runs even on the current set-top boxes, so our strategy is not based on just relying on a new generation, we went back and wrote software for even the very resource limited boxes that are out there. That's called our Foundation product. Today we're announcing the version 1.5, which is where you get the high definition and digital video recording support. More and more through add-ons, the set-top boxes are including those capabilities.

   His vision for the future of TV?

   A big project for us in this TV space we call IPTV, and this is assuming that in the future programs won't just be sent in a broadcast mode, but they'll be sent over the IP data network and so the ability to have high-definition, arbitrary number of channels, user in control, targeted advertising, rich interaction, those things become possible when you think of the platform as an IP-type platform. And helping make that transition very economical and simple for the cable operators is something that we believe that software can make that very possible.

   Gates also showed the Portable Media Center and Media Center Extender, both ways to move content from your PC to your TV and beyond.

   There's been a missing standard in the media area where every device that wanted to go up to the PC and find out what sort of audio or video things were there insisted that people had to install software on the PC, and as such on all your different PCs you get different versions of that software. Really, we decided that shouldn't be necessary. You should be able to go out and buy a portable media device, or a device that lets you go in and see the audio or picture files on the PC with no software installation required at all.

   As long as you're using Windows, that is. He concluded...

   And that is the magic of software. It's the very rapid hardware advance, the idea of software platforms, great software development tools, and software richness that makes me very optimistic that even though people have many, many devices, lots of music, lots of videos, lots of memory, even though they won't have time to want to manage these systems, and move data around we will be able to create the ideal for them, whether it's communicating, creating, or just consuming the best content that's out there.

4. One surprise was the lack of comment on tablet PCs. In an interview with c|net Gates admitted that he might have been a little premature in his support for the form factor:

   Many of my assumptions--I'd say a high percentage--are overly ambitious. I have to wait longer to have them come true. I was working doing the Tablet PC for a decade before it came out. Now, it's gaining traction, but we have lots work to do. I believe that it will be mainstream on every portable PC, but we're a long way from that.

   
5. In other news, Slashdot is reporting that the new version of Photoshop won't let you open images of money. Paintshop Pro seems to have the same restriction.

Comments

[Funkydory]

Someone is messing with you Leo, Microsoft announced 10 Million Members to xbox live already, 6 months ahead of schedule.

http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2008/01/06/xbox-live-announces-10-million-members.aspx

[Funkydory]

So this is 4 years old, oops.