Alongside the main CES convention, there were numerous seminars and panel sessions to discuss issues of interest to the consumer electronics industry. Most of these cost money to attend, but some were open to all CES participants.

The first session we attended (on Monday afternoon) was CNET’s Next Big Thing, a discussion about three hot areas of debate in the industry at the moment:

• Whether there is a genuine market for displaying video on mobile phones and other small-screen devices
• Whether streamed online content will lead to the death of the DVD
• How Digital Rights Management for movies & music can evolve into something less customer hostile.

Several industry panelists (including a CNET reader flown in from the UK to represent the consumer) discussed these items at length; the audience then voted electronically on how they thought things would develop in the future.

Mobile video

On mobile video, the verdict was: yes, there is a new and growing market for media playback on mobile devices, but access needs to become far less restrictive (both in price, and range of media available) before it will take off. Mobile video will supplement existing markets rather than replacing them.

Dynamic content like news clips, music videos, and short length TV programs are more suited to these devices than feature length movies. One panelist predicted that the production style of programs will change to match the constraints of the mobile devices – more talking heads, fewer panoramic landscapes, etc.

All reasonable points. However, the most important point was only briefly mentioned: mobile video need not be streamed. People use it to fill time when they would otherwise be bored (standing in a queue, waiting for something to complete), and it suffices to have pre-loaded content available on their mobile device; it’s not a big deal if it’s several days old.

With modern video codecs and ever-increasing flash capacities, it’s quite feasible to store multiple movies or (more likely) TV programs on your portable device. I think this trend is just beginning to gather stream.

The death of DVD?

The panel were (eventually) united in their view that DVD wouldn’t be going away anytime soon – certainly not by 2010, as had been suggested. The tangible nature of a DVD, which makes it collectable, suitable for gifts, easy to use and distribute, etc. all combine to make it unlikely to disappear.

However, the panel did did agree that online streaming media will gain significant following as well. (No surprises there.)

I’m broadly in agreement with this view. It takes a long time for a given technology to die out; after all, there are still plenty of VHS tapes around, even though it is now difficult to buy a VHS recorder.

I also doubt we’ll see broad acceptance of streamed video until most households have a fast broadband connection (where ‘fast’ means 10 MBps or higher, with no contention).

Digital Rights Management

Digital Rights Management (DRM) was the most contenious discussion, with representation from the legal profession, movie industries, and consumers, as well as several industry observers. Everyone agreed that some sort of rights management was essential, but making it transparent enough so that consumers were not unduly restricted when they tried to use media they believed they owned was judged difficult.

Apple’s ITunes was given as an example of how to make DRM straightforward, so that customers are not always even aware that any special restrictions apply.

The biggest hinderance to existing DRM technology is that it goes against the grain of what consumers are used to. If you buy a CD, you can take it to a friend’s house to share with them or loan to them. You can play the same CD in your living room, your bedroom, your car, on your laptop, and anywhere else that has a CD player.

This is almost never true for media protected with DRM, especially where that media has been downloaded rather than delivered in some sort of physical packaging. While providers are entitled to protect their content, they need to find a less onerous way to do so than has currently been attempted.

I have no doubt that this problem will be solved; until then though, consumers will continue to be highly suspicious of anything resembling DRM.

Seagate had a cute visual exhibit at CES 2007 – a typical laptop hard disk, represented as an equivalent number of CDs (assuming you only store MP3s, of course.)

Seagate’s point, of course, is that you might want to think about backing up that hard disk … and naturally, they had a product designed to do exactly that.

I’ve just returned from the Consumer Electronics Show, which ran from January 8-11 in Las Vegas. This was my first time attending the largest trade show in America (2700 exhibitors, 150,000 attendees) and it was quite an experience. Over the next few days, I’ll post entries about some of the more interesting products and companies I saw.

I was travelling with some colleagues, and we had four days to cover the exhibition – just as well, since it covers ten large convention halls, and conference space in several nearby hotels.

The scale of CES is hard to grasp – by lunchtime on the first day, we had cleared half of one hall and felt we were doing well – until we realised we had only cleared half of one corner of one hall!

It was time for a more aggressive approach. By planning ahead, and stepping up the pace substantially, we managed to cover about 90% of the exhibits during the first three days! This left Thursday morning for some final follow-up visits to stands, and we were all done by lunchtime, leaving the afternoon for some R&R.

The conference was well organised, with courtesy coaches between the different venues, free Internet access available in the halls (supplied by DivX), and even free international phone calls courtesy of Vonage, who had installed VoIP kiosks in the lobbies. Complimentary magazines from just about every consumer and electronics publisher you’ve ever heard of were also available outside the conference entrance, along with the six show guides and product directories.

While most of the halls were in the gargantuan Las Vegas Convention Center, one hall was in the Sands Expo Centre, about a mile away. (The Adult Entertainment Expo was taking place in an adjacent hall during the week, which led to an interesting mix of attendees in the areas outside the hall.)

General Trends

Two products were in evidence just about everywhere this year – large high-definition LCD televisions, and digital photo frames. Even manufacturers who didn’t sell photo frames were using them to display information sheets for their actual products.

There was a wide and varied selection of Windows Media Centre PC cases from assorted vendors – perhaps the most impressive (if not the most practical) were the Diamond Media Centre range from Moneual, which featured a jewel-encrusted fascia panel and control knobs at prices ranging from $30,000 to $1,000,000, they are for elite purchasers only.

While most of the larger vendors had extravagant stands with large floor areas, there were plenty of smaller stands there as well. The entry level cost for a stand is in the region of $6000-$8000 depending on location (about 2 metres x 3 metres) which is within reach for even small startups.

There were surprisingly few freebies on offer. Other than the ubiquitous carrier bags, and a few trinkets like LCD pocket torches, watch batteries, and T-shirts, pickings were slim.

Apple steal some thunder

One of the biggest announcements didn’t even happen at the show. Apple were running MacWorld in San Francisco during the same week, and launched their new and long-awaited iPhone, though it won’t be available until June. While the industry was impressed with the product, there was plenty of scepticism about Apple’s ability to break into the highly competitive cellphone market, especially with a product that costs $600! Time will tell…

The US magazine Consumer Reports (similar to Which? magazine in the UK) has been in the technology news recently. As part of a comprehensive test of antivirus software packages, they commissioned a consulting company to create 5,500 new viruses to see how well market leading programs would cope.

The antivirus industry, led by McAfee, was immediately up in arms when they heard about it. Imagine the risk to society of these viruses escaping into the wild! What blatant disregard for consumer safety! And other similar scaremongering…

It only takes a little scratching below the surface to show that their concerns are, at best, misguided. The viruses created for Consumer Reports were simple modifications of existing viruses, altered so that their signature was no longer identifiable. The viruses were kept in a secure environment, and all copies were removed after testing – only a single CD remains, which is kept in a locked and secure cabinet on site.

Surprise, surprise – McAffee’s package didn’t do particularly well in the test; it relies heavily on a signature database to identify new threats. When viruses were still something of a novelty, this approach worked well – it often took weeks before a new virus gained notoriety, giving McAffee plenty of time to respond.

By now however, it is so easy for would-be virus writers to develop new viruses, and variants on existing viruses, that a pure signature-based approach is no longer sufficient. A more pro-active approach is needed, that can identify virus-like behaviour and quarantine or block the affected program. Of course, there will be legitimate tools which end up looking like a virus – commercial tools can be recognised and permitted explicitly, while a mechanism can be included to allow users to grant access to other programs on an as-needed basis.

Maybe the industry should use two distinct terms – “Virus removal”, for packages that can remove existing viruses which are already known to the program, and “Antivirus” for packages that can detect new virus strains and prevent infection in the first place. (Somehow, though, I can’t imagine vendors thinking this is a good idea.)

Whenever Which? reviews product categories that I know well, I find myself disagreeing with their conclusions; this doesn’t give me much confidence in their reviews of other products that I’m not familiar with. People I trust have made similar comments about Consumer Reports. In this case, however, they’re on the side of right. More power to them…

(In case you’re wondering, the top rated antivirus packages were from BitDefender and ZoneLabs. The full report is only available to subscribers.)