Elvis, the Rat Pack and Liberace
The citizens of Las Vegas are used to mixing it with the stars. However the folks of showbiz city USA were unprepared for an extraordinary double act that debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this week.
In the most unlikely pairing since Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates teamed up with WWF wrestling star, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson in a bid to reassure electronics dealers that in spite of the slide in the Nasdaq, digital technology was still the hottest act in town.
Playing Eric to Bill's Ernie, The Rock made the first formal outing of the real star of CES - Microsoft's Xbox console - an event to remember.
However, in spite of their showbiz antics neither Gates nor The Rock was willing to volunteer too many details about the games machine. The audience could make out a large (for a console) plastic black box with an X in moulded plastic at the top and a front-loading DVD tray.
Gates did confirm that the Xbox would ship in the autumn and that the four controllers that could be connected to it would all feature force-feedback so the gamer could experience the game's crashes and explosions. Among the first games for the Xbox are the UK-originated Malice and The Rock's favourite, WWF Raw is War.
Gates also treated the audience to a sneak preview of the Whistler operating system (the next version of Windows 2000) and demonstrated voice recognition software for Pocket PC Plus handhelds.
Intel's chief executive officer Craig Barrett had earlier kick-started the conference by urging dealers not to write off the PC. Barrett predicted that 2001 would be remembered as the start of an "extended PC" era where PC sales would be driven by hi-tech toys such as PDAs (personal digital assistants) and digital audio players.
To prove his point, Barrett unveiled a wireless tablet PC that allows several users to surf the net from a single connection, and Intel's debut audio player, the Pocket Concert. The player, which goes on sale in the US next month, will retail for around $300. It can store either MP3 or WMA (Windows Media Audio) files on its 128MB of flash memory. A UK launch is scheduled for later in the year.
Palm boss Carl Jankowski completed a hat-trick of launches from PC-related companies by unveiling the palmtop maker's latest innovation, the E-Wallet.
The system, due to be launched later in the year, enables Palm owners to buy products by beaming information from their PDA to specially made terminals.
Once a person has agreed to a purchase, they send their credit card details, which are held in the Palm, and key in a PIN number. Jankowski believes that US shoppers will appreciate the speed of the system and the way it does away with the need for a signature.
The highlight of Sony's stand was a prototype of its blue laser optical disc recorder. Sony believes that the system, which can archive 22 gigabytes of high- definition video on one DVD (five times as much as current discs), will be on sale within five years.
Sony also unveiled a web tablet that is expected to go on sale in the US later in the year for around $3000, and an AV/IT Gateway that comprises a touch-screen monitor and a base station. Owners can use the Gateway to surf the net, send email and watch video from a number of sources. Neither product is expected to go on sale in the UK.
Britons will however be taking delivery of several DVD and Super Audio CD players, a MiniDisc personal recorder that uses MDLP technology to fit five hours of music on one disc, hi-fi and PC CD-R/CD-RW burners, and two Network Walkmans.
Several of the impressive prototypes that Panasonic showed on its stand last year turned up as real-world products this time round. Americans will soon be able to purchase two digital audio/MP3 players that use SD (Secure Digital) removable storage cards. They take the form of a necklace/wrist band (SV-D75) or a pair of headphones (SV-D05). Both are expected in the UK in the summer.
Panasonic also paraded a DVD-ram based camcorder, the VDR-M10 and its first digital camera - the PV-DC3000.
Almost all the major players displayed DVD video recorder several of which are already on sale in the US. However a re-run of the Betamax-VHS battle now seems a certainty with recorders using three competing formats/discs - DVD-ram (Panasonic, Samsung), DVD-RW (Pioneer) and DVD+RW (Philips) heading for the UK later in the year.
Sony chose to sit on the fence in offering a DVD video recorder that works with DVD+RW and DVD-RW discs. It won't go on sale until 2002.
Other Vegas showstoppers included a portable hard disk from Iomega, a removable flash memory format from Dataplay, MP3-equipped sunglasses from Thomson, an internet/email watch from Timex, and our favourite, a smart frying pan that bleeps when your food is cooked, from Digital Cookware.
