A few overdue thoughts from CES

* after several years of “high def is here” pronouncements that were, well, several years too early, i’m now becoming a believer. The pricepoints are starting to become low enough to support an upgrade cycle. Additionally, I think the next generation of gaming consoles are going to drive HD purchases, perhaps even more so than sports and DVD titles.

* related to that, I saw ~10 minutes of prerendered PS3 footage and it was stunning. I know, purists will say “wait for actual gameplay,” but what I saw was just beautiful. Doesn’t mean the games will be great. In fact, likely means the first generation of games won’t be good at all as teams burn their development time and budgets trying to play with all the pixels. But damn, there were some scenes that just made my gut throb, the right visceral reaction.

* the North Hall was all tricked out cars and automotive audio. Not my thing but a total scene. Definitely skewed towards booth babes, mullets and guys who looked like they wanted to kick my ass. However, I did get to watch two XM satellite radio jocks interview David Coverdale (Whitesnake) so my North Hall excursion wasn’t all bad.