Mark and I arrived in Vegas around 8pm and only had to wait about 20 minutes for a cab, then spent some time unpacking. Here’s what I packed:

(As you can see, I expect this to trip to be a bit of a marathon).

We then grabbed dinner with Veronica, one of our program manager co-workers who spent the last few weeks providing backstage support for the CES demo tonight. Needless to say she’s completely burnt out, but did an amazing job. Sadly, Mark and I missed the keynote because we were in the air at the time (where’s my in-plane wireless broadband?). After dinner we met up with our design team for drinks at The Mix on top of The Hotel at Mandalay Bay; there are some great views there.

Now I’m back checking on all the post-keynote talk. Looks like Engadget has great coverage if you missed it.

One of the biggest Media Center highlights for me is that they showed off the ‘Movies Library’, one of my features:

The Movies Library enables users to store all their recorded TV movies, DVDs, DVDs in their changer, and local DVDs all in one location. Think of it as the grown up version of ‘My DVDs’ in Emerald. I’ll post more screenshots and details when I get a chance (expect the next four days to be fairly manic).

Other big highlights:

• DirecTV – Holy cow is this big news! Finally, satelite HDTV!
• CableCard demo – Finally, cable HDTV!
• 6.5 million units!
• HD-DVD & managed copy
• Comedy Central and the Daily Show come to Online Spotlight

I’m sure there’s lot more goodness but it’s getting late, so check out our press release site for all the details.

And Thomas, on your Media Center tax issue, I completely agree that the free way is the way to go, but the reason why people will pay for Vongo or comparable services is the convenience of getting the content in the correct format without timely transcoding and with the ads removed. It’s the same reason people pay for bottled water; packaging and convenience.

Expect posting, moderation of comments and responses to email delayed over the next bit. I’ll post when I can. I’ll definitely be prowling the floor with my camera, and hanging out at our booth so feel free to stop by and say hi. And if you have any rocking parties going on, don’t hesistate to call my cell 206-618-1600 :).

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