Yeah, that's pretty much the summary of the show - 3D, tablets and application platforms for TV.  Here are a few notes.

• Great idea for Amex to setup a large booth at the show.  No competition for their message. Guy Kawasaki had it packed.  Excellent use of marketing dollars.
• 3D TV? I'm not buying it. Literally.  Tried a number of demos and just not impressed.  The Toshiba glasses-free 3D? Even worse.
• If you can't stay away and still scoop a 3D television you may want to check out Polaroid's 3D glasses.  Best selection I've seen.
• If someone wants you to invest in their iPad accessories business don't do it.  This business has officially jumped the shark.
• Lot of folks building tablets.  None looked close to the first-generation iPad.
• Crazy foot traffic at the Blackberry booth. Not sure what that means.  Maybe people will buy the Playbook.
• Decent interview with David Katzenberg at the NBCU booth.
• BodyMedia was passing out Magnum condoms at their booth.  Seems both smart and dangerous in Vegas.
• iGugu was selling an Internet TV that looked like it was straight out of 1992.  Wow.
• The men's bathroom in the Hilton was hilarious.
• The one gadget I will be buying after walking the floor is the LG Smart TV.  Expected price point is $149 and with the box shipping in second half of this year.

Google TV is headed in the right direction.  And regardless of it's initial commercial success it's going to change the television landscape.  That said, I'm underwhelmed by the UX.  But hey - this is Google.  Today Google TV's product lead Rishi Chandra took the stage at Adobe's MAX conference to speak on the vision for Google TV.  One of his points I took issue with was the assertion that like the smartphone market the television will open up once this new wave of devices enters the market.  Sorry, the devices or even software isn't going to do it by themselves.

Is the digital living room experience about to change?  Definitely.  But there's a big different between phones and TVs - and that's the content.  Much of the content on a phone (voice calls, text messages, emails) are user generated.  As a result there is less mess to untangle while you sort out a licensing and business model.  Your customers are paying you to allow them to create the content.  Brilliant.  Television on the other hand is powered by content producers who place a high long-term value on what they create.  Google has historically been disrespectful to high value content.  This will become their achilles heel as they move into the living room.  Still, it's great that they are giving it a try.  They are getting other players worked up and that commotion will help disrupt an industry that I'm happy to see transformed.  When we look back at this transformation we'll see a journey that was less about the technology and more about how high value content gets funded, produced and distributed.

My uncle had the first television remote control that I can remember. It was wired. That's right. A cable ran from the remote to the television. Still, even that seemed magical. You didn't have to get up from your chair to change the channel and that was amazing. This was especially helpful if you were a child since many times you served as the human remote. Anyway, wired remotes are no longer the norm. As such, we don't need to explicity call out wireless remote controls. We assume it's wireless. On with the story. Mobile phones, cellular phones - whatever you want to call them - have only been around for a few decades. That's an eternity in tech years, but an eyeblink in history. Since the first mobile phone call in 1973 a lot has changed. Namely, mobile phones are all over the place. Billions of them. In fact, there are more mobile phones than any other type of phone. So the point? Mobile is a category that will grow to include a number of form factors (e.g. tablets, laptops). You wouldn't say mobile tablet. Likewise, we can stop using the term mobile phone. The mobile phone is dead. Long live the phone!

Many big innovations are the combination of a bunch of smaller innovations bundled together. The digerati and fan boys yawn when many of these smaller innovations make improvements. They've seen some form of it before and the interactive improvement doesn't get them excited. They want the new thing! Still, I remain excited about these small innovations. The Zune AV Kit was one of those yawner products. But it was still impressive. People have questioned why you want 720p HD video on a portable media player. The screen isn't big enough. Right? This is true until you think about connecting your portable media player to your friend's 61" flat screen, hotel room television, or mini-van. But while this is interesting to me - it's really just an edge case. However, this all changes when you add a powerful smart phone to the mix. And not just HD video out, but also keyboard and mouse input. This is called AV Tethering. The concept is simple. You take your phone and connect it to a bigger screen and keyboard. KVM 2.0? Maybe. A number of small players like Celio have been commercializing products based on this concept over the past few years. The biggest flaws I've seen with these new products are that they're 1) too expensive, 2) have a broken UX, and/or 3) work on a phone you don't want. That's why the NexusOne dock looks interesting. If their product team gets it right it is going to force OEMs take this type of accessory seriously. The scenario? You connect your phone to a dock and it's powering your 24" monitor and working with a full size keyboard and mouse. All while charging the phone itself. You pop open the browser and use the phone's 3G connection to get on the Internet. This could also work for a tablet. This wouldn't be the end of the PC. I think they'll coexist (e.g. oven + microwave) and we'll be more mobile than ever before. Bottom Line: AV tethering is going to catch on. And when it does it's going to transform personal computing. Update: The Nexus One Desktop Dock doesn't do AV Tethering. Boo. Oh well. Someone else will have to start the trend.