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.

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.

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.

Home Server Technologies Inc. (HSTi) showcased an innovative new technology called Wireless Media Stick, a simple and affordable ($119) product that allows media connectivity between mobile devices, TVs, DVD players and other devices. What’s especially interesting about the technology is that you can also stream on-the-go; the Wireless Media Stick app is downloadable for smartphones and by taking the Stick to any location you can directly stream data from a mobile device to any TV, computer or stereo that is USB playback compatible.

Vidtonic provides open source hardware solutions for tinkerers hoping to build their own Android TV platforms. When the SageTV, MythTV and current Android hacking communities get their hands on these units we’ll see a wave of incredibly innovative applications for media hubs.

Sensio has announced a 3D VOD channel available for network streaming customers and VOD providers. Sensio has also announced increased efforts at enabling 3D console gaming by providing a software kit to developers that will encode the 3D game output into a number of 3D formats. Additionally, Sensio Autodetect technology can detect and display a wide range of 3D formats.

The Orb BR is a Blu-ray disc that leverages the connectivity of your BD Live enabled Blu-ray player. When you place the Orb BR disc in your Blu-ray player, it uses BD Live to stream content from your PC or Mac directly to your Blu-ray player. The key is that you must have the Orb Caster client software running on your computer. The client can stream content from sites such as Netflix, Amazon VOD, Pandora, and Hulu as well as being able to stream personal content from your music, photo and video collections.