Alrighty so yet again it's January of the new year and what does that mean?  It's time for the Consumer Electronics Show of course!  CES has been around for a long time and in case you don't know what it is, it's basically a trade show for all things electronic.  In recent years it has begun to revolve around display technology, massive TV's and the like, and although you get to see a lot of new tech it's sort of irrelevant because most of what is shown is a long way off.  It's assumed that what is shown will be available by the end of the year but that's almost never the case.  So, sure you can see cool things but in most cases you won't actually get a chance to put your hands on any of it for a year at the very least.

bill Still, there are a couple of notable things about this year's CES.  First off, it was Bill Gates' last time doing the keynote because he'll soon be stepping down as CEO of Microsoft.  This is truly the end of an era.  As a result of that they'd obviously want to make a massive announcement, right?  Really wow the media and go out with a bang?  Well...not quite.  There was a lot of speculation heading into CES particularly from the gaming community.  A rumor was leaked that a new skew of the Xbox 360, tentatively called the "Ultimate" at the time, was going to be announced at CES.  This new version of the 360 bundle would include an HD-DVD drive, have a 320GB hard drive, and finally work as an IPTV player.  Microsoft had been talking the Xbox 360 up as a great IPTV box (it was mentioned at last year's CES for example) so most of this made sense - but it never came.  It was reasoned that this was the year and that the recent Live troubles might have been a result of Microsoft working on integrating IPTV, but that turned out to be wishful thinking.

080104-blu-ray-hmed-1p.hmedium There was however a neat little video with a bunch of celebrities in it parodying Bill Gates' last day at Microsoft.  The video was funny and some people even went out on a limb by saying it made Bill look "cool," but overall the presentation was lacking any excitement.  Thank you, Bill.  It's been fun.  As Ballmer said - we'll see you at the board meeting tomorrow.  As far as more significant news goes there was one very important announcement from the Blu-Ray camp.  Five days before CES began Warner Bros. came out and announced that they would be allying with Blu-Ray in the ongoing HD format wars.  A lot of people are saying this is the death knell for HD-DVD as Blu-Ray's list of titles now contains 75% of the best-selling DVDs out there.  It seems that the format war might finally be coming to a close.  As I posted on Pownce, I'm feeling a lot better that I have that Playstation 3 (read: Blu-Ray player) sitting in my entertainment center.  =)

Now Playing:
The Sex Pistols - Anarchy in the UK
Hellgate: London, Ratchet & Clank Future