Television is always a big centerpiece of CES, but video really dominated the show this year. For the consumer, this is mostly about buying a new, thin HDTV. There are plenty of those on the floor, although several vendors told me that demand is so high right now that getting a top tier LCD or plasma may be tough for the next six month or so.

For the industry, however, there was a huge focus on working with the video itself: time-shifting it, burning it to disc, distributing it over the Net, slinging it around the home, making it portable, and so on. Everyone wants to offer their own version of TIVO. TIVO itself showed off new Series 3 box, which supports HD, but perhaps more importantly they announced a set of open source APIs that will let anyone build video services for distribution on the TIVO network.

Of course, this shift from a broadcast model to a on-demand, time-shifted, mobile video platform has left the business guys struggling for figure out business models and pricing schemes.

As a geek, I am just looking forward to figuring out how to make this stuff work.

(Apologies for the gratuitous video wall shot.)