In Bill Gates opening keynote of CES 2007 he talked about todays consumer electronics trend towards High Definition TV, proliferation of media devices, and how software could provide a seamless experience between broadcast and personal content. He also mentioned that children in the US now spend more time in front of an Internet connected PC than watching TV.

That's certainly the case in the Ferry household, which has recently upped sticks and moved 1 mile across Auld Reekie to a new house.

As the residence does not yet have a TV antenna fitted, and I have so far deprived the household of any video gaming consoles, cost centre no.1 has resorted to entertainment from a rickety old tablet PC and the virtual world of Club Penguin. She threatened to report me to Childline as apparantly this represents extreme deprivation, so there's no chance she is getting a mobile phone either.

Sadly for most UK households the television remains at the centre of the home, with mental chewing gum in the Big Brother Celebrity Dance Jungle category passing for entertainment. With viewers hooked, most households pay over £20/month for their satellite TV Subscription. But don't get me started on Mr Murdoch...

However, there is hope. I noted 2 announcements at CES will help consumers use more interesting and stimulating applications on the device at the centre of their digital home.

Firstly, HomeServer. This addresses the "Digital Amnesia" issue of households with more than 1 PC finding it difficult to share, organise and retain "digital "memories" of photos, videos and music files. According to Mr. Gates over 6 Billion digital photos were taken last year. (I'm not sure what surveillance was involved in reaching an accurate count, but I will ask him when he comes to Edinburgh at the end of January for the Government leaders forum).

HomeServer will act as useable shared storage for all PCs in the home, centralising all those digital photos, music etc. safe, backed up and available from the desktop PC or the work's laptop in the study. The media content can stream to the XBOX so you can easily watch it on the telly in the living room, in much the same fashion as with Media Center PC today. What's more, when you are away from home it will give remote access from the cafe wireless network to show your pals pictures of the kids.

Now many of these capabilities are already here in various combinations of devices, but I'm betting that the HomeServer team will pull off the usability to make it transparent and appliance like for non-geek users.

The usability acid test will be whether her indoors can make sense of it all. Mrs. Ferry does not have the best command of electronic devices, and actually stopped cooking for several years when a new kitchen came with an oven bearing push buttons rather than a dial.

Secondly, there was an announcement of useful new IPTV capabilities for XBOX 360. The popular console has shipped around 10 million units worldwide with half that number used to access the XBOX Live social community, enabling multiplayer games, online presence and voice chat.

Now this is a big boon to planned massmarket IPTV services like BT Vision. This will offer the TV-viewing punter access to broadcast and on-demand TV content from the same "set-top box" that can also play games and access the family's precious photos, videos and music - making the XBOX 360 a cheap but powerful centre to the digital home. The addition of IPTVcould make this one in the eye for Mr. Murdoch...

What's likely to make this a "must have", is bringing together the community aspect of XBOX live with the TV broadcast content. But we will have to wait for the 2007 "holiday season" to see these capabilities ready for XBOX 360.

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