CES Wrap: Cable Feels Pretty Good

Apple’s new set-top ports video and music wirelessly from a PC to a TV. The latest Slingbox incarnation lets viewers clip programming from TV and email it to others. Should cable be trembling in its boots? Nah, says Oppenheimer’s Thomas Eagan. "We believe the new products and services announced at this year’s CES conference are more likely to act as a complement than a substitute for cable/satellite subscriptions," he said. Instead, in a note to clients, Eagan raised more concerns about "the increased risk of Washington regulation heating up in ’07." Kevin Martin using CES to announce the denial of the largest MSO’s integration ban waiver petition did nothing to help cable’s relations with the FCC chmn. (Wonder if he’ll use NAB’s Apr confab to announce the denial of NCTA’s petition…) — Cox kept an interesting blog on show insights at DigitalStraightTalk.com. "If there’s an overarching theme that I could detect thus far, it’s that companies are struggling to figure out more and diverse ways to get content to the home and then to ‘sling’ it around the home once there," wrote Jay Rolls, vp, tech. A Comcast exec Cfax spoke to echoed the sentiment, saying that "this was the year that you really started to see convergence happening." And the good news, the Comcaster added, is that cable’s video services/broadband are necessary ingredients for many of the products. Nice Move: You may have noticed that most of the CES blog entries at Cox’s Website are from Tony Brown. If his insightful writing sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because Brown is the son of the late Roger Brown, the former CED magazine publisher. Tony is a freshman majoring in journalism at the U of MO. Cox had Tony blog from CES and the Cable Show last year as well, saying it hired him not only because he’s an excellent writer, but because he brings forth a fresh EchoBoomer perspective. Hear, hear.