Finally arrived! CES 2010 in Las Vegas
The Consumer Electronics show – the world’s largest technology and gadget show – is on this week in Las Vegas. As usual, Microsoft has a massive presence at CES, including the line-up of players below to give the gadgerati a taste of Zune HD.
I arrived here late today, and missed last night’s keynote from Steve Ballmer. If you missed that, you can see the coverage on Engadget’s liveblog.
Starting tomorrow I’ll be navigating through the fields of booths here, for the latest in audio products, 3D, mobile entertainment, and other geeky innovations.
Meanwhile, my MVP contacts let me know that, in demos of Zune HD this week, they are shedding light on a couple of new Zune HD features planned for later this spring.
First, the Smart DJ feature, which dynamically creates playlists based on a seed song or artist, will be made available directly on the Zune HD player. (Presently it’s availably through zune.net and on Zune PC software. When Smart DJ is used on the HD, it’ll generate playlists pulling from music stored on the device, and from music on Zune Marketplace when the player is connected to the net via Wi-Fi.
I love that! Smart DJ is one of my favorite Zune features – it provides a Pandora-like experience with all the benefits of the Zune Pass subscription. It’s a great way to enjoy and discover new music and artists.
The other feature coming this spring: the Facebook for Zune HD app. This has been hinted at earlier by the Zune team; hopefully I can get view a demo of that tomorrow or get more details on it.
