CES - Favorites from the show

10.01.2007
This year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas was notable, in part, because much of the buzz heard on the show floor was generated by a company that wasn't present: Apple. Apple's iPhone and Apple TV media server announcements sparked a flurry of discussion on the floor. And, without doubt, many of the largest companies were showing products in response to Apple.

That's not to say that this year's show was uninteresting. The size and scope of CES is hard to convey, but, as always, the show is huge with vendors ranging from the well-known usual suspects like Microsoft Corp. to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of smaller, newer companies. Each put on its best face and many had fascinating products to show.

Here are our unofficial "awards" for this year's CES.

Theme of the show

The most visible, overriding theme of CES was media in the home and the network required to distribute that media. True, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of vendors displaying wares that had nothing to do with this theme, but you couldn't escape the fact that the most interesting products related to getting media into the home via the Internet, networking that media around the home and displaying it on new types of devices.

The most visible vendor pushing this theme was Microsoft. It was practically the only topic in their sprawling booth. Perhaps spurred on by the Apple TV announcement, Microsoft tried to make a big splash for its home media technology, particularly the Media Center capabilities built into some versions of Windows Vista. Just before the show, for instance, it introduced software for creating home servers that, among other things, collect and manage all types of media.