Microsoft unveiled a new tranche of gadgetry this week, centring on a wireless home PC that will control an in-home entertainment and information system.

In a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the chairman of Microsoft, Bill Gates, displayed a tablet-like device that is a cross between a handheld computer and a TV remote control.

Code-named Mira, the concept device puts a home PC onto a mobile platform that delivers internet content, accesses music files and serves as a portable game player when used with Microsoft's Xbox video game console.

The content would be displayed on the tablet, or in later versions of the technology, on new flat-screen televisions.

Exact prices and availability dates were not disclosed, but Microsoft officials said consumers could expect to see such products within a year or so.

The operating system will allow various people use various PC, internet and entertainment functions around the house at the same time, for instance working on the PC in one room while someone else listens to music over the same system in another room.

"It goes anywhere in the house ... entertainment will never be the same," Mr Gates said.

While Microsoft's vision puts the PC at the centre of the digital home, start-up company Moxi Digital unveiled its own vision on Monday, of an all-in-one digital entertainment set-top box that performs much the same function.

Across the Consumer Electronics Show, companies were displaying solutions to the problem of high-tech gadgets that do not inter-operate, such as DVD players that cannot play picture CDs.

Microsoft's Windows-based solution is but one being displayed across the trade show's 1.2m square feet of exhibit space, and it remains to be seen if consumers will find Mr Gates' case the most convincing.