The show has been very busy for us over the past couple of days. Lots of foot traffic. Overall attendance seems down from the last time we visited in 2007, but the visitors this year are much more focused and serious – no tyre kickers!
Steve Ballmer’s keynote speech was quite engaging, with plenty of pyrotechnics. Of interest to us was the comment by the Media Center program manager that there are now more than 10 million Media Centers regularly connecting to Microsoft’s electronic program guide.
Good to see some local Irish journalists and other Irish exhibitors here. In fact, we’ve had plenty of international visitors, from countries including Germany, Norway, Denmark, the UK, France, Spain, Sweden and Japan. There’s a lot of interest from potential licensees, not to mention a large well-known Japanese consumer electronics firm.
One concern we had ahead of CES was that our wireless audio chipset might struggle in the show environment, with so many other wireless gadgets operating in close proximity to our stand. Our fears were unfounded; Amulet has been performing flawlessly. We had the opportunity to do some range testing on the show floor, and managed to get up to 200 feet away before the signal dropped off – pretty impressive for such a hostile test site!
While things have been busy, we’ve managed to take a few minutes to explore our neighbouring stands. Boxee have a good presence in the i-Stage area, and were doing impressive demos when we visited. GridSearch are showing an innovative approach for searching video streams within Windows Media Center. Most unusual item, however, was an LG steam-based washing machine!
Two days down, two days to go – we’re starting to understand why booths are often called “stands”! I’m sure our feet will recover soon.
