CEA estimates that about 140,000 people attended CES, and the state of the industry is showing strength. Gary Shapiro predicts that consumer electronics spending will show a 6% increase for 2010, to $180 billion, and will rise an additional 3% this year, to more than $186 billion. The predominant themes this year were tablets, apps, 3D, 4G, gestural interfaces, and ‘smart’ connected devices. We saw a great deal in terms of sharing content across multiple CE platforms – and the high-speed networks required to do so. ETC will have a post show analysis with details of the major themes and trends available by next week.

While media convergence and related CE devices/services take center stage at CES, Hollywood is taking important steps toward addressing the digital production and distribution of media content. The Hollywood tech community – under leadership of the major studios and the ETC@USC – published its Interoperable Master Format (IMF) in 2010, a proposed voluntary specification designed to serve as a standard digital distribution master. Recently, SMPTE announced the creation of an IMF working group to move forward with standardizing the format. While we were covering the increasingly expanded array of connected, over-the-top, CE devices and platforms featured at CES, The Hollywood Reporter was addressing the relevance of IMF.

LG presented a new approach to television and board controls with its LG Pen Touch Multi Board, essentially a widescreen TV with stylus touch controls. The board is distinct from similar computer-driven boards in that it allows image manipulation via multiple controls and supports more than one user at a time. Imagine using two stylus controls to manipulate the screen, similar to how you’d use two fingers on the touchscreen of an iPad. This advancement enables multiple simultaneous users, which really opens up new possibilities.

Winners of this year’s CNET Best of CES Awards were announced Saturday morning in the lobby of South Hall. ‘Best of Show’ went to Motorola’s Android-based XOOM tablet, one in a growing number of tablets targeting the burgeoning iPad market. This year’s ‘People’s Voice Award’ went to the Razer Switchblade – an Intel Atom-based concept design to bring PC gaming to a portable form factor. Razer has taken the familiar keyboard and redesigned it as a tool for mobile gaming controls.

Facebook and Twitter had a strong presence at CES … in the form of apps on connected TVs, Blu-ray players, set-top-boxes, and just about any connected device. Samsung even announced that their new connected refrigerator could display your Twitter feed. The popularity of social networks have forced CE manufacturers to include them on their products’ feature specs, irrespective of how appropriate the application truly is. Unfortunately, this knee jerk reaction to include social networks clearly demonstrates the lack of imagination or understanding as to how social networks are really used by people.

Cisco’s Videoscape is an end-to-end content management solution that ties social networks, advertisers, content providers, unmanaged network/Internet and managed access networks into one cohesive system that allows service providers to seamlessly manage the consumer experience across multiple screens.

The CE industry made great progress on the green front in 2010. Green technology is more sophisticated and practical, and green initiatives have transformed from gimmicky fringe products to important corporate strategies for the biggest global manufacturers.

HDMI cables manufacturers are bringing sophisticated custom cable designs to the market to meet practically every consumer need. RedMere makes active HDMI cables that are mind-blowingly thin and flexible. KCD makes HDMI cables bent at right angles or even hinged connectors. And if you need a cable that is up to 55 meters long, but can be run under carpet or along the baseboard out of site, you need to step up to Hentek’s flat HDMI.

Adobe announces partnership with Samsung to support the AIR development platform on Smart TVs. This will allow developers to reuse existing assets to quickly develop apps for connected televisions. AIR’s cross-platform technology is especially good news for content companies who can re-purpose existing assets to quickly create an app for a movie property that can then be delivered across an array of CE devices.

Qualcomm promoted its partnership with Mattel on a new line of game products that utilize a vision-based Augmented Reality technology. The partnership was announced last year, beta appeared in the fall, and cross-platform, peer-to-peer demos have recently taken place. The first product out of this partnership is the Android smartphone-based version of the iconic 1960s game, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. In addition to gaming, Qualcomm sees Augmented Reality as a potential for travel, entertainment, education, and other applications.