As many of you know from personal experience or from the exhaustive media coverage, CES reached a record 150,000 attendees from around the world with more than 2500 exhibiters and some 4000 products. CES 2006 may be over, but the excitement will go on for quite some time with new technologies ready to change our culture, again.

One overriding theme of the show, shared by most vendors and venues, was “Any content, Anytime, Anywhere!” Many analysts are saying that convergence is really finally here. Our world of digital wonders has reached a point of sophistication that is enabling the merge of digital content (Any Content) and its access via any digital appliance (Anytime, Anywhere).

To the point, both Yahoo and Google revealed their digital services that enable users to search, see, synch and savor all manor of personal and Internet content using a PC, PC+TV or a variety of handhelds.

Yahoo’s service— Yahoo Go—comprises the Yahoo Go Desktop, Yahoo Go Mobile and Yahoo Go TV interfaces. Yahoo Go serves up Yahoo content such as photos, email, address books, TV/video listings and more, no matter what device a consumer is using as long as it’s connected to the Internet.

Google announced its new Google Video Store. Through a partnership with CBS, the Google Video Store makes CBS and Paramount Studios TV shows available for a small fee via the Internet. The Google Video Store also will feature a library of video content, including NBA basketball games, Sony BMG music videos, cartoon classics and Charlie Rose clips. Google Video Store content can be viewed on a downloadable video player for a PC or on the Apple iPod or Sony PlayStation Portable.

Sling Media showed off its Slingbox, which broadcasts live television or any other media stream within the home to a mobile device. Just connect the Slingbox to the Internet and a cable set-top box, DVD player or stereo system, and it streams content to a laptop or Windows Mobile-enabled handheld. The Windows-based software, SlingPlayer and SlingRemote, enables you to play any home media content at home on your desktop or away using a portable PC device and to remotely control the source appliance that is supplying the media stream to the Slingbox.

Services, software and hardware, like those mentioned above, enable you to piece together a converged media system of your own. Commercial service providers, such as telcos, cablecos and satellite companies, are working to do the same on a larger scale. The buzz is all about converged voice, video and data services delivered to the home. Use your Slingbox to allow the services to follow you while away from home.

So, we have converged content coming into the home, a content gateway to extend services while outside the home, but what about distributing the content everywhere within the home?

That’s another dimension to the “Any content, Anytime, Anywhere!” theme. It’s absolutely essential that we have digital content access from any location within our homes with a robust home network. Three technology contenders for the home network made their presence known at CES:

• Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11g, n, MIMO)
• MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance)
• Powerline (Ethernet over the household AC wiring)

All three of these contenders are in a fierce battle for this market real estate. New Wi-Fi technologies boast of data rates as high as 300 Mbps, enough to handle many high-density and standard-density video streams along with other Internet-based digital content. Can it provide whole-house coverage and quality of service (QoS)?

MoCA claims high data rates and offers household networking to support IPTV and other Internet services, but is limited to cable runs and installed jacks.

Powerline technology, based on the HomePlug AV 200 Mbps standard, offers speed, QoS and ubiquity—AC outlets everywhere in the home.

Who will win? Which of the Internet/media access services will dominate (cable, satellite, telco)? Which of the content access software and service platforms will rise above the others (Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, other)? Which of the viable home network solutions will be most preferred and perform the best (wireless, MoCA, HomePlug AV, other)? The winners in all of these categories will give us the “Any content, Anytime, Anywhere!” that we desire.

Stay connected.